* Posts by An nonymous Cowerd

144 publicly visible posts • joined 26 Aug 2008

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China, Russia and Iran all attacking US elections and using some nasty new tactics, says Microsoft

An nonymous Cowerd

Re: Oxymoron

persona? Mr doodoo, 77th??

Step away from that Windows 7 machine, order UK cyber-cops: It's not safe for managing your cash digitally

An nonymous Cowerd

agree on the iPad for 'safe'-ish home banking

primarily as last time I looked, the exploits against iOS devices such as iPad were 6-figures $£$£$€$ on the market, whilst Win7/Android exploits seem to start already at around thruppence-ha'penny.

I did research mobile device banking apps about 5-yrs ago, and I do hope they have improved since then....(accepting *any* certificate...etc)

Apple have sadly done away with their 'cheap but good' iPad so entry level is now around £350 both refurb and new, but that's cheaper than a new Win10 PC, and is what I would class as the minimum level of operational security.

Hash snag: Security shamans shame SHA-1 standard, confirm crucial collisions citing circa $45k chip cost

An nonymous Cowerd

Re: Is there a database somewhere keeping track of these 'deprecations' ?

There are of course slightly differing interpretations of secure/insecure (elliptic curves etc) and much subtlety, even just pre-QC.

I think a main international standard list is transmitted by ESI ALGO from the Electronic Signatures and Infrastructures (ESI) group at the European Telecommunication Standards Institute (ETSI)

perhaps their documents are publicly available somewhere?

I seem to have found 2019 here

https://portal.etsi.org/webapp/WorkProgram/Report_WorkItem.asp?wki_id=56765

excellent work by Ernst & the team (of which I was a brief member)

"ETSI TS 119 312 V1.3.1 (2019-02)" and it is very readable, but more nuanced than an API

a sort of flowchart "keylen" chart exists here, that might be scriptable https://www.keylength.com/en/1/ (also available in french)

but none of these factor in the most important vuln which is simply the available budget of your 'opponent', as some groups are allegedly approaching infinite budget, then plan accordingly..

FedEx fed up playing box cop, sues Uncle Sam to make it stop: 'We do transportation, not law enforcement'

An nonymous Cowerd

there are strange BGP reroutes going-on too at the document level, https://www.engadget.com/2019/05/27/huawei-fedex-diverting-documents-accusation/?guccounter=1&guce_referrer=5VEY_HUAWEI_IS_MORDOR

it is only 2% of FedEx business (1B$) going down the pan https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-06-25/china-considers-blacklisting-fedex-after-huawei-delivery-errors

Russia is stirring it up, as usual! https://www.rt.com/business/462553-china-fedex-blacklist-huawei/

"PC Magazine ... tried to send a Huawei P30 smartphone from Britain to the United States. Tracking services revealed the shipment was returned to London after it spent several hours in Indianapolis"

Kaspersky updates its cybercrook look book: Smashing Office is hot, browser vulns are not

An nonymous Cowerd

In other Kaspersky news

A large institution which banned ‘em , due to spying endemic in AV products, has revealed to MEPs, that there is zero documented spying

According to zero day https://www.zdnet.com/article/eu-no-evidence-of-kaspersky-spying-despite-confirmed-malicious-classification/

How do you sing 'We're jamming and we hope you like jamming, too' in Russian? Kremlin's sat-nav spoofing revealed

An nonymous Cowerd

think you just need to evaluate relative measured vs expected signal strength from all the minority signals,

and you can do this with a fixed antenna as all the constellations are busy rising and setting, all over the place, all the time

I'd like to verify around just thirteen, non-essential for maths , birds, as many extant chips, last time I looked were very satisfied with one single large "gps" signal, sigh

One click and you're out: UK makes it an offence to view terrorist propaganda even once

An nonymous Cowerd

Re: Goodbye Freedoms?

flying into Edinburgh Airport recently, waiting for my suitcase to be delivered, there were three or four information screens at baggage reclaim.

They showed a loop of happy travellers collecting bags, then a warning page from HMG Customs

"Do not pack any of these items in your suitcases when travelling to UK", "it is illegal to import these items above the limits stated"

showed a page of [something-like] arsenic, cyanide, plutonium etc with milligrams,

but the page went further, and listed a whole bunch of chemicals that I had never heard of, and their maximum quantities in your incoming baggage. [pedant: this was displayed on way IN, surely needs to be shown somewhere else on WAY out?]

This long list of chemicals, I immediately became suspicious that this broadcast would be USEFUL to terrorists, and that HMG Police might now need to arrest HMG Customs. I checked one item on the list,

using it as a 'naughty' shopping list - the item was, shall we call it "OxRhubarb-Acid" and you could only bring in 5 milligrams without being shot.

I browsed a major shopping website, using the free airport Wi-Fi and found that I could get 7 kilograms of that specific bloody acid delivered within 24 hous, prime, to my hotel in Edinburgh - for just £25!

which is "legal to view" - the long list of naughty chemicals, or searching shopping for "boat deck cleaner" in humongous quantities?

Hopefully, as someone above mentioned, the few remaining cops in UK would be able to sort out terrrrzm from industrial use; but I naively thought one of the main counters to terrrrzm that actually works, worldwide, was to actually INCREASE the size and capabilities of the local police forces.

Whilst we get the opposite. . . Methinks a bit of playing is going on somewhere!

UK's ICO slaps £120k fines on Arron Banks' insurance biz and Leave.EU campaign

An nonymous Cowerd

Re: No Complaints?

The Guardian's Carole Cadwalladr listed as a speaker at one of the Integrity Initiative events . . . complained about something, was she amplifying covertly or was it something that she really believed in, I'm hopelessly lost with all the psyop nudge allegations

WD you like to know the damage? Analyst predicts sales dip ahead for Western Digital

An nonymous Cowerd

spinning disk purchase

for home use, I needed to buy some spinning rust, to backup my older spinning rusts, 6TB seemed to be the sweet point today, but the usual outlets were price gouging, seemingly?

I briefly considered a WD 6TB 3.5", but this was exactly double the price for an 6TB external USB3 for X-Box & PS4, I ended up buying a plastic box & USB3/sata interface in addition to the naked OEM drive with 2 years warranty, for half the WD Black £.

(accidentally double posted)

EU politely asks if China could stop snaffling IP as precondition for doing business

An nonymous Cowerd

and ECHELON?

Quote REPORT, FINAL Session document, 7 September 2001 A5-0264/2001 European Parliament

"on the existence of a global system for the interception of private and commercial communications" (ECHELON interception system) (2001/2098(INI))

pardon me if I shout, but some ex-members of the royal tank regiment are possibly a bit hard of hearing

Concern was aroused in particular by the assertion in the report that ECHELON had moved away from its original purpose of defence against the Eastern Bloc and was currently being used for purposes of industrial espionage. Examples of alleged industrial espionage were given in support of the claim: in particular, it was stated that Airbus and Thomson CFS had been damaged as a result

this is from http://cryptome.org/echelon-ep-fin.htm Page 11 of 88, I've no idea if the docu has been hidden since then

ECHELON of course is now subsumed into the PRISM mess, apparently, and the previous attackees are now tier-pardner consumers of the raw intel, apparently.

so China is evil for IP theft today, (maybe true) but may well be a PRISM tier partner in seventeen years?

explain international integrity & statecraft to me once again, please, I'm slightly confused

Tech sector unites in attempt to avoid Oz's anti-crypto push, again

An nonymous Cowerd
Flame

Re: The government wants ???

ukusacannzAus needs to ban crypto because of terrrrrsts & criminals about to kill the prime minister!

Like this guy?

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2018/12/04/brother-australia-cricketer-arrested-fake-terror-hit-list/

Er, we cannot comment on this case due to privacy reasons !

It's nearly 2019, and your network can get pwned through an oscilloscope

An nonymous Cowerd

Re: Horrible workplace security

@AC under reasonable security rules, as I was taught them, as I left the office (locking it) , I would have tidied up the desk, locked all the loose paperwork AND the test-equipment hard-disks in the reliable office safe. That was the life. Also if I forgot to unplug the soldering iron I would similarly be sacked.

In my current lab we just lock a backup copy of critical data in the office safe, for fire recovery purposes (allegedly a fireproof data safe) and there are mountains of paperwork everywhere and we give all data away, openly - but some places will have very clean desks so your fiendish paper-based master-plan has flaws!

Check how many serious test-eqpt vendors provide extractable HDDs, at extra $$$, of course

An nonymous Cowerd

Re: IEEE-488

still used in my calibration lab for a scientific project,

GPIB is reliable and is fairly easy to programme in LabView

I just bought $10K of hp/agilent/keysight PSUs (four) in order to GPIB a one second (six kilowatt) flash from rather a lot of LEDs. They should be arriving today!

Resident evil: Inside a UEFI rootkit used to spy on govts, made by you-know-who (hi, Russia)

An nonymous Cowerd

Re: VPNs?

Nowadays I suspect that the Kreml doesn’t always go for data-in-transit, perhaps they just let the HCA hack us, then they read the data-at-rest mountains?

Scary Putin recently complained that his oppos seem to be Pigeons pecking on a chessboard, rather than playing the game - but I might be mixed-up in my memes.

Nutanix shares briefly wobble over Google server appliance fears

An nonymous Cowerd

Re: Weasel words?

No Such Appliance?

No, no, you're all wrong. That's not a Kremlin agent. It's someone with 'inauthentic behavior'

An nonymous Cowerd

Re: Foreboding Forecast?

according to the BBC financial news this morning, there was an empty chair at the meeting described in this article, the empty chair was supposedly reserved for "Google"

- too busy to come?,

- traffic bad??,

- didn't get the email???

or is it related to this 'old news' from a Kremlin linked news source eh, El'Reg?

https://www.theregister.co.uk/2016/03/18/latest_clinton_email_release_google_foreign_policy_efforts/

Nope, the NSA isn't sitting in front of a supercomputer hooked up to a terrorist’s hard drive

An nonymous Cowerd

voluntarily?

“The governments of the Five Eyes encourage information and communications technology service providers to voluntarily establish lawful access solutions to their products and services that they create or operate in our countries,”

the "voluntarily" word struck me, as it did in about 2009 when US Qwest Comms International CEO Joseph Nacchio did NOT volunteer his customers data to the N.S.A. and was then imprisoned on ‘unrelated’ tax fraud charges - also US Sprint telco fought as well as they could in the secret courts trying, but failing NOT to ‘volunteer’ for the data theft

lots of redacted stuff here http://www.dni.gov/files/documents/0708/BR%2009-19%20Primary%20Order.pdf (pdf 1.6MB)

Encryption doesn't stop him or her or you... from working out what Thing 1 is up to

An nonymous Cowerd

I wrote a paper on this a few years ago, with great colleagues

I snooped everything 'encrypted' from the first 'Smart' device I bought for research, a 55" Sammy 3D telly.

It neeed a bit of AI/ML but basically could profile all the Smart TV's owner's Wi-Fi traffic, political affiliation, nationality etc by cross referencing the encrypted but analysed packets against similarly chunked Alexa sites, till we found a match.

Rights groups challenge UK cops over refusal to hand over info on IMSI catchers

An nonymous Cowerd

my friends work at DATONG who have/do supply lots of IMSI's in the past according to both the Guardian and the NYT. When I called to ask my mate for a pricelist, he agreed to meet next time I'm in Leeds for a beer, but he refused completely to even tell me what items were on their 'for sale' catalog. I havent dared go and have the beer, in case he has to file a 'contact report' or some such twaddle.

I have a budget, and a valid use for IMSI's at work, but there is rather a lot of secrecy - hence suspicion!

I suppose UK plod, the one's who are left after the cuts, don't wish to own up to "parallel construction" and "database policing" - tho' they have referred to "intelligence led policing" when they actually shoot the right/wrong target.

NSA's crummy crypto crop Suite B binned, and other network nuggets

An nonymous Cowerd

everyone's doing something that one day might be needed by the 5-eyes

from Tony Blair, (Miranda, really?)

to Corbyn (this week's made-up stuff)

that's what total information awareness gets you, pervasive storage, Xkeyscore LUT

Now, what's this about Linux kernel crypto????

https://itsfoss.com/nsas-encryption-algorithm-in-linux-kernel-is-creating-unease-in-the-community/

it’s not a backdoor in your PC, just very weak encryption that your PC might choose to use, although those sensible crypto engineers at the International Standards Organisation (ISO) rejected the code due to their backdoor concerns. Not many other trusty OS’s are available . . .

No big deal... Kremlin hackers 'jumped air-gapped networks' to pwn US power utilities

An nonymous Cowerd

Re: Ukraine? caution there be много spooks, playing

"the attack" ?

"journalist murdered" ?? !!

'nuff said

UK spies broke law for 15 years, but what can you do? shrugs judge

An nonymous Cowerd

Re: What to do about it ?

Korea has done what it can

Imprisoned their lying prime minister/president who abused/was bribed by the spooks

imprisoned the spooks

and written the rules such that the spooks are no longer able to perform sock puppetry etc in the public sphere, for election fraud etc

https://www.dw.com/en/south-koreas-park-geun-hye-given-more-jail-time-over-spy-funds/a-44757713 [Deutsche Welle]

http://m.yna.co.kr/mob2/en/contents_en.jsp?cid=AEN20180720001252315 [YonHap news agency, I can't find the desktop url - but this mobe site still works]

Chrome sends old Macs on permanent Safari: Browser bricks itself

An nonymous Cowerd

"Have you tried running Mavericks on 2GB of RAM"

Yes, I bought a cheap (refurb) 11" MBA quite a while ago (hence with a still working keyboard!)

it did only come with 2GB RAM & a typical apple undersized SSD

It works great on Mavericks, the Memory Pressure being always green

I threw away the tiny apple SSD bar and put a 340GB something from OWC in & performance then tripled, I think the new SSD flash (feels) nearly as fast as RAM, so any swapping isnt noticed. I have MacMinis etc with 16GB RAM running Mojave beta, and the feel of the MBA remains similar to these.

Dont turn down a cheap, old but still good mac, just on terms of low RAM, unless you need VM's of course.

I still have 10.6.8 on some machines, old iMacs with 5GB RAM, and it remains a great OS - but I think highly vulnerable nowadays.

AT&T offloads a bunch of data centres for a billion bucks

An nonymous Cowerd

Mergers and acquisitions (M&A)

but didnt American Telephone and Telegraph recently merge with the National Security Agency?, [according to wacky website the intercept https://theintercept.com/ ]

USA! USA! We're No.1! And we want to keep it that way – in spaaaace

An nonymous Cowerd
Thumb Up

Isn’t NASA announcing life/water found on Mars tomorrow?

Meanwhile, over in exit lands, space gets more funding!

https://www.theguardian.com/science/2018/jun/06/european-space-agency-boss-warns-eu-over-star-wars

In World Cup Russia, our Wi-Fi networks will log on to you!

An nonymous Cowerd

Re: Why would you even let Russia host the world cup ?

So , I actually agree with you, I prefer USA to Russia, but I've done a bit more research

Why would you even let Russia host the world cup ?

- Shooting down a plane full of innocent people...

https://www.britannica.com/event/Iran-Air-flight-655

https://www.nytimes.com/2013/02/11/world/europe/itavia-flight-870-ruling-adds-support-to-a-theory.html

- Annexing another sovereign country...

https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2017/02/the-last-time-the-us-invaded-mexico-214738

- Meddling in the democratic elections of other countries....

https://www.npr.org/2016/12/22/506625913/database-tracks-history-of-u-s-meddling-in-foreign-elections

- Poisoning and killing people in foreign countries...

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/09/15/opinion/agent-orange-vietnam-effects.html

- Cheating on the Olympics...

https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/us-olympic-team-cheating-russia_us_5a2aca81e4b073789f695a21

Why-the-F*CK would you give a country like that the honor of hosting the world cup ?

The food's not that good in russia, the politicos are all corrupt, some/most of the people there are very nice & intelligent , and some are very drunk. USA has better food, people are also nice - I don't think theres anything creative that I can say about the US securocrats/politicos and their trillion dollar budget, they already have all your data!

for the Wi-Fi, would suggest doing what alternative comedian Frankie Boyle did when he recently toured Russia looking for hooligans, he bought a local phone for a very good price [it helpfully came complete with social media accounts and credits as it had been 'recycled'] Frankie could't find any Ruski hooligans as the KGB had already been to visit them all at home and threatened to knee-cap anyone who makes a fuss, nice.

Five actually useful real-world things that came out at Apple's WWDC

An nonymous Cowerd

macOS password management seems screwed anyway?

having recently updated a mac-mini to something bigger that should be able to run 3 x eGPUs when GPUs come back on sale, I noticed that I'm worried about Apple's parity

giving third-party password managers parity with Apple's own password manager

Apple's own Keychain doesnt have (all of) your passwords, many remain in Safari or Chrome.

Chrome wouldnt allow me to d/l my passwords - but would give them to anyone with access to passwords.google.com who can guess my first password.

I eventually, by using Time Machine backups and finding an ancient version of Chrome, setting some obscure settings, was able to d/l all usernames & passwords in .csv format.

But safari, nope, Safari recently decided (from 10.0 onwards?) that it wouldnt give/export the owner their password list either, nor save it in local Keychain. I had to revert to post-it notes, copying one at a time.

I guess the national security letters are waiting around iCloud Keychain-sharing as well as the voice samples, after all, although Apple 'really believes' in 'our privacy' they also have no alternative but to comply with secret stuff.

this secret squirrel behaviour only offends ~5% of the USA tech staff, across all the US companies!

https://www.stripes.com/news/us/big-tech-firms-march-to-the-beat-of-pentagon-cia-despite-dissension-1.531048#

maybe I'm wrong, and 1-password (for example) can find everything that the data controller/owner can't

Open justice FTW! El Reg fought the law – and El Reg won

An nonymous Cowerd

Re: "There are a few others left"

Beeb has recently been, completely, irrationally, over the top with Auntie Semitic propaganda mud, Grauniad has been reprinting articles verbatim from “Radio Free Europe” - they are both partly subverted. I think a lot of their staffing is primarily concerned with job retention than speaking peace unto nations’ or defending the working class around Manchester.

BBC still have great music channels, nice antiques& gardening progs, the whole of BBC4 etc, and er . . there must be something positive to say about the Guardian since its brief foray into Snowden territory - yes, Steve Bell and Martin Rowson are amazing cartoonists, pity that Comment-is-Free does not apply to some of their more accurate reports that threaten the corporate-security-pigopoly.

/rant. Just an opinion - keep your end up El’Reg!

Make masses carry their mobes, suggests wig in not-at-all-creepy speech

An nonymous Cowerd

France

allegedly, a couple of years ago, maybe 5

there were French people, allegedly arrested for allegedly being terrorists, who allegedly went to a remote evening meeting [uniquely, strangely and suspiciously] without their mobes, and they were then allegedly arrested.

fair enuff, some people call them terrrrrsts, certainly, they were planning (allegedly) to do evil things to TGV infrastructure with bicycle chains [power is off all night, then comes on, sharp, at 4am for testing!]

however, it has since come to my attention that they were allegedly 'being helped' by one of the 'Mets finest Special Demonstration Squad rapists, sorry, man with a van, sorry Agent Provocateur - whatever the French word for that is - so who knows who exactly are the crims in this & future cases, with probably many parallels. constructions.

Shocker: Cambridge Analytica scandal touch-paper Aleksandr Kogan tapped Twitter data too

An nonymous Cowerd
Boffin

I agree with the recently broadcast BBC news anchors that we are in a full-blown information war - since around 2014.

I personally don’t think it’s Airstrip1 against east/west-eurasia & vice-versa but simply a war of control against the people.

How soon to gdpr-day, and can we have retrospective fines from day-1 please?

I have a little list

Ozzie Ozzie Ozzie, oi oi oi! Tech zillionaire Ray's backdoor crypto for the Feds is Clipper chip v2

An nonymous Cowerd
WTF?

Re: Sweden pwned

According to security/liberty Professor Susan Landau, the Lotus Notes 24 bits of key escrow was held by the trendy friendly National Security Agency, N.S.A. of the U.S.A. (Hence IBM/Lotus reticence in talking)

On the plus side for Ozzie, she says that he mentioned publicly in the mid 1990s that his ‘Notes design would comply with the (then) foreign hard-crypto export ban. But the odd governments here & there seem not to have noticed, or understood.

Apple grounds AirPort once and for all. It has departed. Not gonna fly any more. The baggage is dropped off...

An nonymous Cowerd

eBay?

I’ve been buying some old Airport gear on eBay, since on of my airport expresses ‘died’. It’s easy to dremel into two halves one with 3-volt psu and other with mini-router, then replace the 3-volt psi with an external wall-wart and stick the working bits inside a hollowed out D-Link case or why. Apple helpfully has all wiring coded black, + black, - black, so some care is needed. I accidentally bought an old terabyte TC as some UK ebayer put it on sale as an ‘express’.

Apple now offer a ‘family’ 200GB of cloud storage (in Maryland or Utah?) for under £3/mo & a terabyte for not much more. I suppose your future time capsule Mac backup will be on somone else’s h/w?

Anyway, don’t throw away ‘dead’ airport stuff, sell it to me on eBay, thanks!

Boffins pull off quantum leap in true random number generation

An nonymous Cowerd

Re: Randomness

"Cryptographically, we believe that the Intel RNG is strong and that it is unlikely that any computationally feasible test will be found to distinguish data produced by Intel’s RNG library from output from a perfect RNG" ? , methinks, if he uses IvyBridge

RIP... almost: Brit high street gadget shack Maplin Electronics

An nonymous Cowerd

Re: I'll miss them

True, so now the secret to buying 'one transistor' is to buy components direct from fleabay for a quid, 3 months before you need it, for the little grey packet to travel around the world. It's not the purchase price that is high, just the, (when) will I ever get it?

luckily I have the wide & varied stock bought historically from M&B Radio in Leeds

That microchipped e-passport you've got? US border cops still can't verify the data in it

An nonymous Cowerd

Re: Software?

a front-line desk Ethernet connection to check the server in Singapore!

Twitter breaks bad news to 677,775 twits: You were duped by Russia

An nonymous Cowerd

US Navy, of all people!

For quite a lot years, the RIF ‘volunteers’ from the US Navy were offered a choice on leaving - a) leave or b) retrain to become cyberwarfare operative. I don’t know why they chose the Navy!

From DoD sbir/sttr procurement documents - these online-warfare typists were then issued with powerful 10-logical sock-puppet identities per workstation {or per USB stick} for use internationally.

I wonder where Vlado Vladimirivich got his politically manipulative typists idea from?

Who's using 2FA? Sweet FA. Less than 10% of Gmail users enable two-factor authentication

An nonymous Cowerd

Re: Better than Amazon 2FA? (another Amazon 2FA)

Amazon suddenly started requiring & sending me these 6-digit tokens, last summer, whilst I was 1000 miles from my registered PC/email. As you can only complain/negotiate with Mr.Bz from within an Amazing account, I had to create a new throw-away a/c each time I wanted to discuss internet security with a second tier employee, as Tier-1 Joyce from the Philippines was very helpful - but not quite upto speed on security.

I eventually got them to switch to SMS based 2FA. They never explained why they autonomously established 2FA, in an unuseable way, via open email postcards.

Server load: The similarly open postcard SMS 2FA takes baseline about 10 seconds to arrive, be it for AMZN..com/de/uk/fr) except during Black Friday week when their (the original!) cloud was too busy to bother sending anything!. BFW was much busier than Xmas week, SMS 2FA took just 30 seconds in the run-up to the solstice.

I don't use 2FA on Slurp, what's the point! Hello state department. . . nice day to you too

I have setup 4FA on some nice work projects , mind, and the Slurp authenticator was quite easy to integrate

Ford giving electric car investment a jolt to the tune of $11bn

An nonymous Cowerd

Re: solved (for one particular case)

what the (electric) Norwegian fjord ferries do (as the ships were impossible to charge quickly) is to buy two or three battery packs. Battery A moves the ship across the fjord, where it docks with Battery B which has been trickle charged overnight. Then as the cars/parrots unload, Battery B connects and delivers everything it has, as an *almost* impossible busbar melting impulse. The ship then sets off for Battery C back at the home harbour. . .rinse & repeat etc. I have no idea if the resultant charging mag field is what is actually causing the aurora borealis or not - could be co-incidence

for homes & Ford's not Fjords, the best idea so-far seems to be to offer a street charger per 8 houses or so, a bit more thinking is needed, soon, hopefully, somewhere. I'd probably start with a Mayor.

An nonymous Cowerd

Tesla & Ford

I have tested the model-S in my lab, for a week. it was a very nice car at €98K, tho' actually drove too fast around town. I was planning to charge it (with its personalised universal charging adapter dongle , kept in the boot , at ~150KW) but after a couple of cycles at a couple of hours @ ~50KW my lab 3-phase tripped, permanently. Lab is now being rewired.

Good luck to all city-centres in meeting the demands of the market, it is however nice to see that Ford is rising to the actualité of the near future.

<mods> I didn't mention toxic nano-particles from d****l engines this time or any particular way that city-centres might also meet the challenges of the charging infrastructure, I will carry on testing. I still think panic! is the correct reaction, but then I am an optimist, and I live in a small village - with fresh air.

US border cops told to stop copying people's files just for the hell of it

An nonymous Cowerd

obligatory hacker reference CCC lecture 2017

https://media.ccc.de/v/34c3-9270-dude_you_broke_the_future

UK citizen talks about slow AI, and the slurping, a bit, then gets worried

Nest's slick IoT burglar alarm catches crooks... while it eyes your wallet

An nonymous Cowerd

Re: Rasberry Pi to the rescue?

yep, got one of these, RPi/Arduino based, BUT have to watch out for the different fake (near wifi) mesh comms modules, buy as genuine as you can find, or just use wires. 6.7Ah 'RavPower' iSmart powerbank makes a great micro-UPS.

European Commission intervenes in Microsoft Irish data centre spat

An nonymous Cowerd

Re: Time for clarity...Privacy?

When you see that a random world government is buying and badly deploying cyber-weapons, before what they do next to the journo’s or interested motivated citizens or - let’s just call them ‘targets’

Should targets get privacy? An interesting debate.

https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/security/ethiopian-cyber-spies-left-spyware-operational-logs-on-public-web-folder/

(According to the IMF.org, Ethiopia is #169 down the list of world’s richest countries - yet they are able to afford fake digital certificates etc, presumably we could therefore name another 168 nations that are at full cyberwar status with their populace?)

Report: Underwater net cables are prime targets for terrorists and Russia

An nonymous Cowerd
Coat

Re: Sharks with Lasers!

Sharks seek out the electric field associated with the undersea telecom cables and do attack them, one reason why the cables are armoured!

The +/- (plus at one end, minus at the other) power feed into the cables is used for powering the laser amplifiers, domestic fridge sized boxes under the Atlantic, some trials of laser pumped erbium doped fibre optics waveguides were carried out, where the soliton pulses were able to cross the ocean without degrading the pulse, hence not needing the amplifiers, hence potentially avoiding the hungry sharks!

Investigatory Powers Act: You're not being paranoid. UK.gov really is watching you

An nonymous Cowerd
WTF?

Re: Forage Pension plan

As the MEP conditions of service are openly displayed (eventually found) in Europa.eu,

it’s quite likely that he’s still too young to retire(in, say, March 2019). He could probably get a reduced pensh out of the EU, by sometime in 2022, but going on his age in wackipedia, it’s more like 2026 for the full amount.

As for his kids’ nationality, we have yet to see how the pantomime of exit plays out for those 3-million EU’ers in UK and those 2-million UK’ers in the EU. Oh Yes we are, Oh No you’re not! She’s behind you! Paraphrasing slightly the DUP’s life and founding-thought, as interpreted by that great British philosopher Ali-G “So, you live in Ireland for 400 years but you’re not Irish, are youse just on holiday?” ☘️

Facebook and pals to US Senate's Russia probe: Pleeease don't pass a law on political web ads

An nonymous Cowerd

they were *all* at it

if one, sorry, believes the DailyWail

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-5042027/Hillary-Clinton-DEFENDS-paying-Steele-dossier-Trump.html

US voting server in election security probe is mysteriously wiped

An nonymous Cowerd

Re: You can get it back

@ST - check out magnetic remnance imaging of hard disks, the laid down patterns of 1's & 0's apply to a (relatively) sizeable track on the HDD, not yet to single monopole elements

residual grain polarisation - even after $proprietry_solution - of the 3dimensional magnetic permeability of a permalloy layer is extant. True, if the energy barrier becomes comparable to the thermal energy kBT, [where kB is the Boltzmann constant and T is the absolute temperature], the magnetic moment of the data grains in the 'pixel-volume' can reverse spontaneously under thermal activation. This implies that data retention time in a recording medium is always finite and it is just a matter of how long before your data are thermally erased.

However if your data grains have not yet been thermally erased, then $TLA with enough $$$ & time can recover anything off of a rusty rotary.

Li-ion batteries blow up because they breed nanowire crystals

An nonymous Cowerd

Re: Tim whiskers

in early 'pit' training at the world's first wireless factory (Marconi0 where I did my 3 month training course in how to solder, one of the super advanced anti-dendrites ideas required for mil-std radars in those days was to de-gold the electronic component terminal wires; 2N3866 etc were usually CBE leads fully gold plated, and we were required to dip them in a hot solder pot for a second, to 'tin' the gold plate with real Sn/Pb and remove enough gold which was recycled to later buy a racehorse, apparently.

For the generic Li batt dendrites, didn't some other researchers come up with "nano-aspirin" style self-repair mechanisms to counter the various failure modes - I suspect those modes didn't yet include dendrites.

Finally, is this why (insert famous electric car name) limit their batteries with firmware to 80% charge, also just noticed that that other famous sports car manufacturer (Doctor Engineer Ferdinand famous name) wishes to have fully electric supercars to do 200 kilometres range then recharge at a 300kilowatt charging station (in 15 minutes whilst you sip tea)

Brit spooks 'kept oversight bodies in the dark' over data sharing

An nonymous Cowerd
FAIL

Re: "Industry Partners"? WTF?

Privacy International did mention summat about the University of Bristol getting a raw pipeline of (our)cheltenham-slurped-data, once a day - with seemingly un-monitored access.

I’m guessing wildly that it would be sent directly to the Psychology department, hopefully with the aim of finding elusive terrorists, rather than just pure fascism? Or would it be more open, better check!

Searching www.bristol.ac.uk gave this “Heilbronn Institute for Mathematical Research – a joint partnership between GCHQ and the University of Bristol. This institute has not only provided a focus for the growth of pure mathematics at Bristol; it has also acted as a catalyst for the subject’s sustainability across the United Kingdom” excellent!

Datamining - rather than psycho-history?

Release the KRACKen patches: The good, the bad, and the ugly on this WPA2 Wi-Fi drama

An nonymous Cowerd

Re: Has to be within range

I have ethically hacked, as in taken over my own wi-fi router and intercepted a client using it, from a Landrover parked >2.5 kilometres away on a hill. Because I was asked to do it, in writing, and then it was publicly published somewhere in IEEE proceedings or similar, never to be seen again. been there done that!

requirements:

£99 https://hakshop.com/products/wifi-pineapple or similar

£99 https://www.wimo.com/download/18686.24.pdf (1MB pdf) to get you >sixty watts EIRP

tho' many wardrivers, and I know some - they do exist - probably use the ebay £40 Alfa.com.tw adapters with a 9-dBi vertical (the wardrivers that I know have toured my area, and done a slurp on all open/WEP/WPS APs, plotted them on OS maps or equivalent, and $Deity alone knows what they are up to)

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