* Posts by Ole Juul

2726 publicly visible posts • joined 27 Apr 2007

SCO slapped in latest round of eternal 'Who owns UNIX?' lawsuit

Ole Juul

Re: Judge David Nuffer ...

I was about to say nuffer that.

Submarine cable cut lops Terabits off Australia's data bridge

Ole Juul

Send help

I guess it's time for us to mail some DVDs to our friends in .AU. They'll be crying out for the latest ISOs and movies.

UC Berkeley profs blast secret IT monitoring kit on campus

Ole Juul

Re: Only one thing to do

Mario, where are you!

"There's a time when the operation of the machine becomes so odious, makes you so sick at heart, that you can't take part! You can't even passively take part! And you've got to put your bodies upon the gears and upon the wheels…upon the levers, upon all the apparatus, and you've got to make it stop! And you've got to indicate to the people who run it, to the people who own it, that unless you're free, the machine will be prevented from working at all!"

~ Mario Savio on the steps of Sproul Hall, 1964

Assange will 'accept arrest' on Friday if found guilty

Ole Juul

Re: Maybe not Friday.

To where?

Ecuador I think. That's where he applied for asylum before.

Ole Juul

Maybe not Friday.

Apparently the verdict is already in the hands of the UK and Swedish authorities but will be publicly revealed on Friday morning. However, if he gets a positive outcome from the UN complaint his lawyer says he won't just walk out until he is guaranteed safe passage. Yet another stumbling block. If all goes well for Assange in these endeavours then I think there is still a great likelihood of the US pulling some nasty trick at the last moment. It's not like that's never happened before.

It killed Safe Harbor. Will Europe's highest court now kill off hyperlinks?

Ole Juul

Easily findable?

Quite right, if it isn't in the top 10 Google results then it's probably not even findable at all by many people.

Get ready to tear into next round of hacker tool rules in Wassenaar Arrangement refresh

Ole Juul

I think there's a good chance. I also think that tools to stay anonymous will continue to develop so there will be better ways to avoid these things.

Google to deep six dodgy download buttons

Ole Juul

balance

They're using the less of them means more of us model.

Europe wants end to anonymous Bitcoin transactions

Ole Juul

$US

There's no mention of US currency being used to finance terrorists. I wonder why.

US government's $6bn super firewall doesn't even monitor web traffic

Ole Juul

Re: "... six per cent coverage ... for $6bn"

I was about to write the same thing, but then I got to thinking. The first 6% is probably way cheaper than the last 6%. In fact the curve might even be exponential. I'd say it would be closer to $1 trillion to get into the 90% range. Anyway, in the end it's just a lolfest on salary. Like others have suggested, putting the money toward a workable solution might be more prudent.

Research: By 2017, a third of home Wi-Fi routers will power passers-by

Ole Juul

Re: Non-starter, at least here in the US

"No, that's not how it works. Your ISP-supplied WiFi router has a factory-baked option, where it opens a secondary WiFi channel for Customers of said ISP, or any third party companies who paid for that."

Point well taken. Most people won't suffer from this. I seem to recall some British company was doing it and people complaining were shown to be quite silly about their bandwidth complaints. The only thing which came out of their budget was a portion of the electricity to run the router.

However, I'm probably not the only one who, in this day and age, refuses to have any kind of black box installed in my house. Trust simply isn't part of the equation any more.

"Since this firmware is baked in and you have no choice on how they control it, your only option is to short out the WiFi antennas, and use the ethernet cables to hook up to your own network, and use your own regular WiFi router, this one being entirely within your control."

Sounds like a good idea under the circumstances.

Ole Juul

Re: Non-starter, at least here in the US

My small ISP has it in their TOS to not share because it would break their business model. In fact it would probably break their business. And then there's people like me who will not (repeat: will not) run software which I haven't personally chosen and over which I have no control. Add to that the opportunity for MITM attacks that this opens up and yes, it's a non-starter alright.

Open source plugin aims to defeat link rot

Ole Juul

caring is sharing

"There are lots of reasons for link rot: websites are restructured or shifted to a new content management system and break all the previous URLs . . . "

In other words the reason is incompetent website management. This is standard practice for government sites in these parts and it just goes to show that they value fashion over content. They just don't care. Idiots.

US still lagging on broadband but FCC promises change is coming

Ole Juul

Privacy warriors plead with FCC to wield sword of net neutrality against snooping ISPs

Ole Juul

users should deal with this

It's always been good practice to not give your ISP all your browsing info. People are already moving in that direction by using VPNs. Here is yet another reason to do so. Actually even just not using their DNS servers can go a long way. Try OpenNIC for example.

India just about accuses Facebook of faking Free Basics fandom

Ole Juul

Americans, you can't take then anywhere

The regulator therefore labels Facebook's actions “a crudely majoritarian and orchestrated opinion poll” rather than a genuine consultation following India's standard procedures for such matters.

What gets me is that Zuckerberg probably isn't even embarrassed. You're not in Kansas anymore.

Nest thermostat owners out in the cold after software update cockup

Ole Juul

Re: Can one experience schadenfreude...

Indeed, I'm laughing all the way to the wood stove. No batteries, and always works.

Ole Juul

Toys

This is really not mature technology. I wonder if these guys want to come out and replace burst water pipes because their expensive plaything didn't actually work in the real world. Of course not. And anybody who bought into it should know not to take this stuff seriously.

Cisco admins gear up for a late night – hardcoded password in wireless points nuked

Ole Juul

Re: Ooops!

Obviously the fault of rogue engineers. Nothing to do with management or the integrity of the company.

Indeed, that is what a rogue management would say.

Open Web Application Security Project issues new secure coding bible

Ole Juul
Facepalm

Eureka

"three to four years ago he and others in the industry were doing penetration testing at the end of a build. Now, the best work with builders from the start."

This is a good idea and has been standard in other fields for a long time. For example bridge building and high-rise construction.

Bloke sues dad who shot down his drone – and why it may decide who owns the skies

Ole Juul
Joke

Re: "250 grams (1 pound)"

whichever is less

Who's laughing now, doubters? Cloud makers rake in £75bn in sales

Ole Juul

Who's laughing now?

Me.

(and a lot of other guys too)

Invite-only bug bounty criticised for turning up the heat on Tor

Ole Juul

Re: Attention

Who is this guy anyway? And why is he being quoted for this story?

Bash, smash, trash Flash – earn $100k cash

Ole Juul

That's nice. Now go away.

But if you hang around, could you at least solve the problem of "your flash player is out of date" messages, when it isn't?

Docker proffers guide to better headers

Ole Juul

Cloudflare

SSL Labs on the other hand will hand out top marks to anyone using Cloudflare, he says. (El Reg is a Cloudflare customer.)

Since El Reg went to Cloudflare the site occasionally doesn't load and is often very slow. I've been here since 2007 and it's sad to see them taking up fashionable technology at the expense of their readers.

Another downside is that now I can't recommend articles to my friends in the security world because Cloudflare doesn't pass encrypted traffic without throwing insolvable (literally) captchas in the way. I connect over clearnet so don't have such a problem, but that both SSL Labs and El Reg come out on the wrong side of anonymous browsing is a disappointment.

Library web filtering removes info access for vulnerable, says shushing collective

Ole Juul
Mushroom

are news sites blocked?

Holy god! This Irish Catholic sex-ed video . . . RT questions more.

Ole Juul
Coat

Time to teach the kids (and councils) some IT.

some councils involved in six-figure contracts to support web-blocking over multi-year periods.

Perhaps the council could also employ another six-figure contractor to have a VPN installed to fix the first problem.

YouTube’s 10 years of hits: Global recognition at last for Rick Astley

Ole Juul

What does the Fox say is insanely catchy ?

I guess my attention span isn't what it used to be since I couldn't make it past the first refrain before I figured I got it all.

NSA spying on US and Israeli politicians stirs Congress from Christmas slumbers

Ole Juul

good timing

and now the legislature is calling for immediate investigations – seasonal holidays be damned.

Lots of overtime to help pay off those Christmas bills.

Forget anonymity, we can remember you wholesale with machine intel, hackers warned

Ole Juul

Re: Hmmm.....

He codes with an accent.

Good news! US broadband speeds are up. Bad news – they're still rubbish

Ole Juul

Median would be equally useless. Note that they're compiling a list of advertised speeds. In any case to do any analysis using those you'd have to have number of users at each supposed speed.

Ole Juul

Advertised speeds?

Akamai reports the average U.S. Internet connection speed was 11.9Mbps in 2015 which might be a more useful number than the 72Mbps that the FCC is reporting from a survey of advertising.

Watch infosec bods swipe PINs, magstripe data from card readers live on stage

Ole Juul

comfort zone

German banks have shrugged off their research as merely "theoretical."

Well, someone "theoretically" might want to compromise the payment system. Of course "theoretically" they're not supposed to do that.

EU privacy watchdog calls for new controls on surveillance tech export

Ole Juul

Re: Aaaaand here we go again..

Quite right it won't work. But, as with all laws which are ineffective for their stated purpose, I still wonder if this proposed law wouldn't be used for some other invasive purpose as well.

Chicago cops under fire for astonishingly high dashcam, mic failures

Ole Juul

Re: Technology New And Old.

Can someone please provide proof that 10 inch floppies were ever made? Surely he meant 8 inch floppies.

How to log into any backdoored Juniper firewall – hard-coded password published

Ole Juul

Re: B̶a̶c̶k̶d̶o̶o̶r̶ Frontdoor

Depends on where you're comin' from - if you know what I mean.

The Firewall Awakens: ICANN's exiting CEO takes internet governance to the dark side

Ole Juul

prepare

It's time to start looking for another solution. Here's one choice.

Facebook arrives at commonsense 'real names' policy

Ole Juul

some would say commonsense

Frankly I think it is a mistake to use that term in the context of Facebook. Commonly people aren't nearly that evil.

3 continents, 8 countries and one cyber attack on a fake petrol company

Ole Juul

real target

Indeed, they could have spent all those resources targeting the crims. Or perhaps Pogo had it right: "We have met the enemy and he is us."

New gear needed to capture net connection records, say ISPs

Ole Juul

Re: What would be required (technically)

the cheapest virtual servers, at home or abroad, can be hand for a few pounds a months

Being into this, I just thought I'd point out that the cost can be much lower if you just buy a small Virtual Private Server. I'm currently using one with overkill specs which costs me $15 per year ( £10). The Low End Box VPS thing has taken off and you can actually get an adequate server for 1/3 that price ... per year. Check out Low End Stock. Get one and install the VPN software of your choice.

PS: I have no vested interest there, other than to advocate for people setting up their own VPN servers. Most people on this forum probably have the skills.

Windows' authentication 'flaw' exposed in detail

Ole Juul

choices

Some people want security, others just wish for it.

Silicon Valley's Congresswoman comes to the defense of Tor

Ole Juul

where you been man?

Nothing any of them is reported to have done is illegal or even unreasonable.

If not illegal, it should be for them to put pressure on people like that. In any case it is unreasonable.

NZ unfurls proposed new flag

Ole Juul

Re: Roll out any version of Fern

Yes, but the Maple Leaf was cleverly pushed through on an off day in Parliament by a very presumptuous Liberal government. We'll never know what a democratic process would have brought us. In any case the solution with the veterans et al actually was quite interesting. They adopted the Union Flag a month earlier as also being an official flag. Even though the Maple Leaf is the only national flag, Canada now does have two official flags.

Linksys routers vulnerable through CGI scripts

Ole Juul

Re: Remote access?

Isn't it usually off by default anyway? Who would ever turn it on?

You're probably right. So, to fix this vulnerability the instructions would then be to do nothing.

Ole Juul

Remote access?

Since this is a low end consumer router, I really don't see the problem. What user of this device really needs remoter access anyway? Just turn it off ffs.

To my way of thinking the real, and major, problem here is that the market is accepting second rate router firmware as standard and acceptable. It may be the former, but it certainly isn't the latter. Consumers deserve better.

Pirate Bay domain suspended thanks to controversial verification system

Ole Juul

Re: OpenNIC

If they use 8.8.8.8 (Google DNS) they mainly swap censorship for surveillance.

You're quite right. And that's why you should use OpenNic name servers. Not Google. They're not only non logging, but also resolve both ICANN TLDs as well as their own.

Ole Juul

OpenNIC

It's all about domain name servers and there is nothing stopping us from running our own. For those not familiar with OpenNIC, it's a democratic, non-national, alternative to the traditional Top-Level Domain registries. OK, this might not take off any time soon but still, ICANN could end up encouraging a parallel internet.

If people can learn to use 8.8.8.8 in order to overcome censorship, then they can just as well learn to use some other number.

Donald Trump wants Bill Gates to 'close the Internet', Jeff Bezos to pay tax

Ole Juul

see you later Donald

"We have to go see Bill Gates and a lot of different people that really understand what's happening.”

Why yes, we do. Yes we do.

Snowden to the IETF: Please make an internet for users, not the spies

Ole Juul

Spud gun

SPUD is a prototype for grouping UDP packets together in a "tube", also allowing network devices on the path between endpoints to participate explicitly in the tube outside the end-to-end context.

So Ted Stevens was right.

IBM kills Hack A Hair Dryer women-in-tech vid after backlash

Ole Juul

Re: Shocking!

It's actually pretty simple. Less for singular, fewer for plural.

AC, I'm in complete agreement with you, but do notice that contemporary English appears to use plural for most things. For example, it is common to say "Microsoft are these days - even in the press. I foresee that people will be saying "I are" in a few years.