IPv6 please!
I do wish the BBC would join the rest of us in 2022 and support IPv6. They are one of the few large content providers along with Twitch that are stuck on legacy IPv4.
172 publicly visible posts • joined 17 Jul 2008
Our mobile phones are now powerful enough that is entirely feasible to use one time pads. All it needs is an app that makes it simple. Unless the phone itself is compromised (avoid android or iOS), it is unbreakable. The downside is you have to exchange them in person which could be difficult if you need to converse with someone a long way away.
Something that can complicate asset location is when one utility locates their assets relative to another. For example, 5m from kerb, but the road layout has subsequently change so there is no longer a point of reference. In some cases, roads have been laid over the top of an asset (likely something that was a contributing factor in the speed with which the Grenfell Tower fire was fought.
https://www.insidehousing.co.uk/news/news/emergency-valves-to-turn-off-gas-at-grenfell-tower-may-have-been-buried-by-refurbishment-71562
There is already a service called LSBUD ("Line Search Before U Dig"). When I heard of this, I tweeted Ordnance Survey and apparently they did not do their homework. Perhaps a case of "not invented here"?
https://twitter.com/chaz_6/status/1323618449621483520
https://twitter.com/chaz_6/status/1323643179493695491
At the end of the day, if you are digging into the ground, you should never rely on anything but your own investigation (e.g. ground-penetrating radar or other techniques) because there is no guarantee they are up to date. I guarantee that even the owners of some assets do not know where they are.
It seems like favoring corporations. If ransomware payouts are banned, then criminals will be inclined to hold individuals to ransom with the data they scraped. There was a big scandal in Canada where a healthcare company that stored therapists' notes was hacked and had its database stolen. Their clients subsequently received demands for payment otherwise their information would be published.
As a taxpayer it is disappointing that our money is being used for a private company to decide how to operate a public organization. Surely the civil service are far better placed for this, not least because a private company will no doubt engineer a structure that maximise the amount of fat they can cream off in contracts down the line.
Firefox makes it easy to use your own sync server (https://github.com/mozilla-services/syncserver) so you are not reliant on a third party. Simply change the config item identity.sync.tokenserver.uri to https://example.com/token/1.0/sync/1.5. OK it might not be *easy* easy but it's a lot easier than doing so for Chrome for which AFAIK there is no public sync server implementation available, nor can you easily change the sync service in Chrome.
It makes me wonder why so many tech companies are successful in the USA where they have software patents. If Amazon had its HQ elsewhere, perhaps they would gain an even bigger advantage without having to worry about paying royalties. It also makes me wonder why Elastic have not patented their USP.
Any half decent mobile provider will let you roam onto any WiFi network, so it seems like a waste of time. I do not want to have to worry about finding specific networks that I can use. Besides, I'm not even bothered about voice or sms, all I need is data, which a public WiFi network can provide independently of a mobile network.
If they want that, then they really made a mistake by forgetting what happened in the 90's when they lost a big anti-trust for abusing their position to disadvantage Netscape. They should have offered it as an optional download, but instead they have forcibly installed it on every computer they can, which in my books make it malware.
I have seen it time and time again, companies changing back and forth between systems over time. If only they maintained the system they had properly, they would not need to keep procuring a new one. Whilst in this case they claim the cost is the reason, I expect the cost is down to all the bodges they have put in place rather than having competent people working on it who understand the data and processes properly. Switching your ERP is a massive undertaking, costly and prone to unforeseen problems. If they actually save any money over the first 10 years I will eat my hat.
I own the device, I should be able to flash my own firmware onto it. At the very least, the manufacturer should be required to provide the signing certificate upon request, but this needs a change in the law. Prohibiting consumers to flash new software encourages planned obsolescence and waste, which is bad for the environment.