Posts by Ole Juul

Alabama man gets electrocuted after sleeping with iPhone

Re: I was hoping for more snarky comedy

"/me imagines some lawsuit because the instructions did not say that"

Don't give lawyers ideas. I don't want to start seeing stickers on everything (like ladders) saying not to sleep with them.

Kremlin hackers suspected in assault on athletics governing body

"So when will the world pull the Russian Internet connections to isolate the problem? Yeah... I'm trolling but . . . "

I get the trolling, but I've got a problem with abandoning the idea of the internet being a world wide affair.

Facebook, Mozilla and Craigslist Craig fund fake news firefighter

You be the judge.

"The interesting question is what is going to be defined as fake news?"

Some papers just seem to have a different slant on life. Here's a National Enquirer headline I saw at the checkout many years ago.

Dwarf Poses As Baby, Gets Adopted By Blind Couple

a matter of choice

Those that care to know the truth have little problem discerning, and tend to choose different sources. Those that don't care will buy "fake news" because they like it.

DDR5 to jump off the drawing board in 2018

June 2018 is not far off

What I want to know is when will I be able to use/afford it on my computers. I've still got plenty of DDR3, and I see it's still very popular. If it's going to be in less that 2 years until DDR5 is common then it would seem that DDR4 is going to be a losing proposition unless there's a big price differential.

Good Guy Comcast: We're not going to sell your data, trust us

Re: Did they also say that...

What they didn't say is that they won't change their mind or "forget" what they said.

Trump sets sights on net neutrality

Someone tell these guys.

There really is a difference between business strategy and democracy.

Facebook, Google, etc: Yeah, yeah, we'll work on the nasty stuff about bombs – but we ain't doing no backdoors

Motion Picture Production Code

This was a voluntary code which some Catholic convinced Hollywood to follow for 40 years, starting in 1930. Will we see this kind of thing again? It's starting to look like it. I don't expect that standards will go back to having married couples in twin beds again, but the fact that it will likely apply to all public communion is very bad.

It's also interesting that the Production Code was done "voluntarily" in order to avoid the government stepping in.

Is this a solution to Trump signing away your digital privacy? We give Invizbox Go a go

there's always another way

I'm not sure you understand VPN and Tor usage. :)

Use port 443 to your VPN and the ISP can't distinguish it from regular https traffic. Use the VPN to carry the Tor traffic past the ISP and you can use Tor without them being able to detect it.

Re: OK - now it's up to the US congress to ban VPN, HTTPS, Tor

What you the really paranoid need is for the VPN's to

1) run to endpoints in different countries

2) switch between those endpoints every minute or so.

And that's exactly what companies like proxy.sh offer with their multi-hop technology. They're not cheap, but they're good and trivial to set up. In fact I'd ague that it's a lot easier for a non-techie to set up than what's on offer in this review.

Yes, I've tried their service, but currently prefer to just use a cheap VPS as a single point VPN to browse though. That's cheap and easy for someone with a bit of tech interest, and good enough for me.

Europe to push new laws to access encrypted apps data

This will not go well

Actually, I take that back. It will go very well for some criminals who can't wait for this to happen fast enough so they can get to work.

Today's WWW is built on pillars of sand: Buggy, exploitable JavaScript libs are everywhere

choices

If the plan is to make good web sites then JavaScript is the wrong solution. If the idea is to make lots of things work quickly and then run away, it is a great solution.

Naming computers endangers privacy, say 'Net standards boffins

privacy still hasn't caught on

It seems a bit risky to use private information in a name that's intended to be broadcast, locally or otherwise. But yes, I've seen it on things like routers with the owner's name in the SSID.

I've always named my computers so I can access them without having to memorise IP addresses, something which will be even more needed when the more complex IPv6 becomes common. However, since my personal system uses only three letter combinations they're not going to carry useful data if they leak outside the network.

US-CERT's top tip: Hack your crap Netgear router before miscreants arrive

Re: 3rd Party Firmware

Tomato Shibby here. I've had a lot of routers and I've rarely even looked at whatever was originally installed on them. Why take a chance with written-for-profit proprietary software when there are perfectly good solutions already?

That said, most users are not going to be aware that there are better solutions or how to implement then. My theory is that they believe that the vendor knows best, and that is rarely the case with consumer routers.

Sad fact of the day: Most people still don't know how to protect themselves online

conflicting desires

A big problem is that there is a conflict between on-line security and the desire to be part of what is popular. Regardless of your skill level at protecting yourself online, it becomes easier once you learn to say "no" to a lot of things - especially peer pressure.

Do you use .home and .mail on your network? ICANN mulls .corp, .mail, .home dot-word domains

Alternate DNS roots

Anybody can set up DNS servers, and they do. ICANN's arrogance is going to work against them as time goes by and the already growing alts are just going to gain momentum.

Kid hackers break XSS defences, find hack hole in 2 million websites

It's a Google thing. From the site: "To be the moderator for this comment box, Log in to your Google account before you copy the code."

Japan tries to launch satellite on rocket the size of a telegraph pole

Telegraph pole?

I'm old enough that I didn't have to look it up, but where do they actually still use telegraphs?

Is your Windows 10, 8 PC falling off the 'net? Microsoft doesn't care

Re: It's all a bit farcical, isn't it?

That would probably work well for home users, with limited devices on their LAN and the privileges to set networking on the machine.

Sounds like you thought I meant a static IP rather than a static address for DNS. There is really no reason to have your DNS continually reset. Use the same one all the time regardless of the size of your network. Not changing is what I meant by static.

All the downvotes I got up there are presumably from people not thinking I meant static DNS address. Not sure why anybody would think that though, as it doesn't make sense.

Re: It's all a bit farcical, isn't it?

I don't do Windows support, but if I did I'd suggest setting a static address. People would do well to learn how to take control of their DNS anyway.

Meet Hyper.is – the terminal written in HTML, JS and CSS

Re: Toy

It's obvious why someone would make something like this. It's cool. But I can't imagine why anybody would use it in practice.

Icelandic Pirate Party sails away from attempt to form government

government wanted

Have you tried putting an ad in the paper?

My name's Jeff B and I'm here to say: Canada's getting an AWS region around the way

benefits?

use green energy, the company reports that its data centers in Canada are 99 per cent powered by locally sourced hydroelectric power

Also no doubt uses the freshest high quality Northern air for cooling. And I expect vitamin E will help keep my data from ageing. Seriously, I'm probably not alone in wondering what the real product is here.

US think-tank wants IoT device design regulated, because security

Regulation on IoT

Such think, much tank.

Real deal: Hackers steal steelmaker trade secrets

Re: Why exactly is a blast furnace online?

To save money on proprietary updates from the software vendor. It's how the world works. Companies buy services from other companies and when it comes to software that needs to be updated daily to take market conditions into account, it's not in-house resources. So, the bottom line is that a blast furnace needs to be directly responsive to sales and market conditions. A blast furnace has a huge lag time in response so it's not like operating many other machines. I hope that answers you question.

Say bye-bye to net neutrality next year, gloats FCC commish Pai

Re: "Just whose side is this guy on?"

"You know, something in the $100k a year for half a days "work" a week."

You can't be serious. Although the hours are longer, truck drivers and miners make that much. Surely he'd expect an executive level salary, even for half days. But then again, we're talking USA with it's, soon to be even more, depressed economy. (Disclaimer, I'm in Canada)

Body cams too fragile for Canadian Mounties – so they won't be used

You do realise that the "red surge" is for ceremonial use right? They don't wear that stuff on normal duty.

Re: Hmmm ...

"Funny that they don't get cameras from the same place as the other police forces that are rather happy with them."

And it did look like some US police forces were happy with them precisely because they were prone to breaking so there was plausible deniability.

Privacy is theft! Dave Eggers' big-screen takedown of Google and Facebook emerges

Re: "This is a satire of Silicon Valley ideology, "

It's not satire. It's similar to scientology and people actually internalise those values. Besides, if it was satire, the trailer wouldn't have made me vomit.

Microsoft says LinkedIn will make Trump, Brexit, voters feel great again

Where's my money?

If I had a dollar for every time Microsoft does something that I find distasteful . . . . .

England OUT (of Euro 2016, not the EU) tops Twitter year

miffed

The article fails to mention the sport in question. I had to do a search to find out.

Canada asks citizens: How would you like us to spy on you?

Re: Done.

I'm still working on it. It's hard to send the right message without just telling them to f**k off, which they wouldn't understand any more than they do the actual internet issues. This form is written with a mind to get the answers they want.

hidden agenda

Since the ones asking the question don't know how net security works and they're asking people who likely know less, I can only assume that this is really about something else.

If your smart home gear hasn't updated recently, throw it in the trash

Re: Security expert?

In fact I think some of the focus should be shifted. As the article points out:

the underlying issue remains the DNS itself

The current DNS problems seem almost hopeless and not enough effort is put into solving them. Security holes in BIND are trivial compared to issues with the DNS system itself which are still going to facilitate abuse on the grand level that we've been seeing lately.

US election pollsters weren't (very) wrong – statistically speaking

Re: Mandatory Voting

We don't need another law. There's too many already. What we need is more education so people can learn to be critical of everything they hear.

Actually I think that the general populace gained an intelligence point during this election. Not only did many see that the polls are not as competent as had been thought, but people are starting to learn that much of the press cannot be trusted and are actually reprinting government propaganda. That's a step in the right direction and something which cannot be achieved with a law.

Guessing valid credit card numbers in six seconds? Priceless

It's a cool looking login page, but you don't have to go there. People on this forum either have secure computers or know not to go there, so ... meh.

Icelandic Pirate Party asked to form government

Re: Excellent!

"(Insert appropriate citation from Shakespeare's "Henry V", whatever it is)"

That would be

Admit me Chorus to this history;

Who prologue-like your humble patience pray,

Gently to hear, kindly to judge, our play.

I'll be watching the show.

Microsoft refuses to join the Zero Outage brigade, Google and AWS keep mum

Re: Common Sense

Absolutes are always a myth. However, the internet has never reached the level of reliability that would normally be expected from something that we call infrastructure. Unfortunately with constant development and sales demanding new things be implemented before they can reasonably be considered out of beta, things don't look like they're going to improve any time soon. Microsoft knows this.

Microsoft, IBM, Intel refuse to hand over family jewels to China

a small step

This sort of distrust is everywhere and regardless of the motives in this case, I see it as a small step for open source to gain more favour in the future.

VCs to Trump: You know what would really make America great? Tax breaks for VCs

two sides

There is something to be said for encouraging investment in startups, but we must not forget that there is money in the VC business even when a startup fails. Could this suggestion end up making the VC business more profitable without startups actually gaining much ground? I note that liquidation preference is designed to protect an investor's capital.

Exclusive: Team Trump's net neutrality guru talks to El Reg

Who's interests?

"I want nothing to do with software or data that's in any way specific to an ISP, a cellular provider or their partners."

I couldn't agree more. I really get the the impression that Dr Roslyn Layton represents the interests of someone other than me.

It’s Brexploitation! Microsoft punishes UK for Brexit with cloud price-gouging

"the democratizing force of Microsoft technology"

Funny, but where I grew up we all had to pay for it. Some people could afford it and others couldn't.

Drive-by web nasty unmasks Tor Browser users, Mozilla dashes to patch zero-day vuln

Update

This thread is a couple days old, but in case anybody is still watching, there is a patch being pushed out right now and most people should have it automatically already. Also, here is a description of the problem:

* It looks like the vulnerability was in Firefox's SVG animation, so the exploit does not work unless you have both svg and javascript enabled. The "high" setting of Tor Browser's security slider disables both of these pieces of the browser.

So, it wasn't very serious in the first place.

Google turns on free public NTP servers that SMEAR TIME

is this fake news

or just another smear campaign?

Still too much discretion when it comes to that 'terrorism' stuff, repeats David Anderson QC

Opportunity for suppression.

there have only been two deaths in the UK from terrorist attacks in the last 11 years

And yet the effect of "terrorism" has been vastly broader than that.

Internet companies which may once have seen themselves as neutral carriers of content are coming to understand that it is incumbent on them also to edit that content: but it is a role with which not all are comfortable, and the process is fraught with difficulty.

The practice and acceptance of censorship has been pushed beyond anything that is even remotely acceptable in a civilised society. The loss of freedom due to the opportunistic actions of governments is unacceptable.

Inventor of McDonald's iconic Big Mac dies

Re: Guilt complex

The Earl of Sandwich probably didn't get paid either. Let's make Britain great again.

UCam247 tells El Reg most of its cams aren't vulnerable to GET vuln

Thumbs up for Paresh Morjaria

I wonder why the others didn't answer.

Congrats America, you can now safely slag off who you like online

Good for freedom of speech and consumer rights.

Reviews are still mostly useless though.

Imagine every mistake you can make with a new software rollout...

Alameda County spent $4.5m on the system.

And what about the cost in ruined lives. How do you add that into the price?

Cheap virtual box hosters – Amazon's Lightsail is out to destroy you (yes, you, Digital Ocean)

No worries

Amazon isn't going to destroy anybody.