Posts by Captain Hogwash

Facebook gardening group triumphs over slapdash Zuck censorbots

>"usually spelled without the "e" at the end"

So hoemophone but not hoemonym. Good gag though.

Brain-computer interface researchers warn of a 'bleak' cyberpunk future – unless we tread carefully

Re: considerable interest in using electronics to read peoples' minds

Here comes the flood.

Windows 11 gets chatty as Teams integration turns up

Re: I'm waiting with baited breath

What do you hope to catch?

Hundreds of irate UK Parliamentary staffers sue IPSA over 2017 salary spreadsheet publication snafu

Re: The judge is wrong

This! It seemed obvious to me as I read the article.

America tops ITU's Global Cyber Security Index, UK in tie for second with Saudi Arabia

I have. There is no difference. They are ranked equally.

Re: "How would you rank the difference between the UK and Saudi Arabia given that they have the same score of 99.54 ?"

In the same way as it is customary to rank two sprinters, horses or match anglers who came in at exactly the same time or weight behind the winner. That is why Estonia is fourth.

"Estonia, for example, ranked third"

Fourth surely?

America world’s sole cyber superpower, ten years ahead of China, says Brit think tank

Re "which government in their right mind would allow their citizens to..."

...collaborate with like minded others and undermine their tyranny?

UK's Vodafone network runs trials on standalone 5G in London, Manchester and Cardiff

EMF "nightmares"?

Unbelievable!

Roger Waters tells Facebook CEO to Zuck off after 'huge' song rights request

Re: Pedant alert.

I much prefer it when bands drop the definite article. It would have caused a few problems for The The however.

What Microsoft's Windows 11 will probably look like

Re: Why bother?

Home users.

Funny how Sir Tim Berners-Lee, famous for hyperlinks, is into NFTs, glorified hyperlinks

Re: "He praised them as a way of “avoiding central control,”"

I'm still struggling with this one.

Sold: €15k invisible sculpture that's a must-see for art lovers

Thanks for the Stormy Six tip

I hadn't heard of them before. They're rather good.

Google employee helped UK government switch from disastrous COVID-19 strategy, according to Dominic Cummings

Re: So much for a PPE education

Classics in Johnson's case. You'd think he'd know something about hubris & nemesis.

UK digital secretary Oliver Dowden starts national security probe into proposed Arm-Nvidia merger

Re: Confused

Thanks for explaining.

Confused

How does the UK government get to stick their oar into the proposed sale of a Japanese company to an American one?

Bank of England ponders minting 'Britcoin' to sit alongside the Pound

Re: "exist alongside cash and bank deposits, rather than replacing them."

For now. I think we can all see where they'd like this to go in the longer term. Every transaction publicly visible for ever.

Won't somebody please think of the children!!! UK to mount fresh assault on end-to-end encryption in Facebook

Massive bunch of hypocrites

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2019/dec/17/tories-switch-to-messaging-app-signal-to-curb-whatsapp-leaks

Plot twist! South Korean telco uses 5G to fight coronavirus via hospital-patrolling robot

Yongin Severance Hospital

Seems like a very narrow specialism to me. Where exactly on the body would one find the yongin?

Facebook says dump of 533m accounts is old news. But my date of birth, name, etc haven't changed in years, Zuck

Re: Interesting

If that doesn't wake people up I don't know what will.

Interesting

https://www.msn.com/en-in/money/news/leaked-phone-number-of-mark-zuckerberg-reveals-he-is-on-signal/ar-BB1fjNfL

Mullet over: Aussie boys' school tells kids 'business in the front, party in the back' hairstyle is 'not acceptable'

Re: Very open-minded

When I was at school the girls tended to push the bounds of what could still be classified as uniform while showing as much as possible of what ought to be concealed by the uniform. Have times changed?

Re: shaving your head

Or the official school head!

AI recommendations fail fans who like hard rock and hip hop – official science

Re: So it's racist

That might have been true when hip hop first emerged, but today I think the dividing line between those who like it and those who don't is probably one of age rather than race.

Browser tracking protections won't stop tracking, warns DuckDuckGo

I expect...

...that you'll also be downvoted for using Google, Facebook and Twitter. Especially Facebook. Containers or not, you know you really shouldn't.

5-year-old Fairphone 2 is about to receive a major update to Android 9

"difficulties in porting Android 9 to the use of the obsolete Snapdragon 801 chipset"

LineageOS managed this ages ago. I've been running it and subsequently /e/ on a Galaxy S5 for a long time.

Richard Stallman says he has returned to the Free Software Foundation board of directors and won't be resigning again

"Quick to judge, quick to anger, slow to understand"

RIP Neal

So it appears some of you really don't want us to use the word 'hacker' when we really mean 'criminal'

Whatever El Reg decides...

...it'll eventually backtrack. Anyone else remember "mobe"?

Hacking is not a crime – and the media should stop using 'hacker' as a pejorative

Re: English is definded by it's users

I am not surprising. I wear psuedo pshoes.

Copper broadband phaseout will leave UK customers with higher bills and less choice, says comparison site

Re: My mother pays £15-£18 *a quarter* for her landline

https://www.ispreview.co.uk/index.php/2020/12/bt-to-continue-discount-for-landline-only-uk-phone-users.html

Smartphones are becoming like white goods, says analyst, with users only upgrading when their handsets break

Why upgrade?

That's just one of the things LineageOS, /e/, etc is for.

Back to the office with you: 'Perhaps 5 days is too much family time' – Workday CEO

Re: humans are social creatures

We're not all anywhere near as social as you think. There's a reason some of us chose to start programming computers.

Offices are cold, draughty, noisy, uncomfortable places with bad lighting.

In multiple occupancy tower blocks with shared toilet and kitchen facilities they are an absolute nightmare.

Coworkers believe that their problem is more important than anyone else's and that if they can see you then it's only right that they interrupt you.

I'll give you my WFH when you pry it from my cold dead hands.

Signal boost: Secure chat app is wobbly at the moment. Not surprising after gaining 30m+ users in a week, though

Android: Conversations (or forks Conver6ations, Pix-Art)

Re: It's been obvious for days

Everyone has something to hide. Not everyone realises this or knows what it is until the failure to hide it bites them.

Under that pile of spare keys and obsolete cables is an IoT device: Samsung pushes useful retirement project for older phones

Re: Until some passing low-life sees it & thinks "hey, a free phone", that is.

Do you think the phone might take photos/video of them stealing it?

Already doing it

Automate running on Galaxy S3. Phone logged into a free SIP account. Cheap shower bluetooth speaker connected to it and fixed outside front door.

User, er I mean visitor presses button on speaker, phone calls the only account it knows, the phone I'm carrying rings, I tell the guy where to put the parcel.

Thou shalt not hack indiscriminately, High Court of England tells Britain's spy agencies

Erm

"Boris Johnson's Conservative government started a formal review last year aimed at reducing the power of judicial reviews to change the law. ®"

But they're not changing the law are they? They're upholding the law and rapping the government over the knuckles when they break it, or have I misunderstood something?

If you're a WhatsApp user, you'll have to share your personal data with Facebook's empire from next month – or stop using the chat app

Re: FOSS

I run both Matrix & XMPP servers. Matrix is a massive resource hog and most users are concentrated on the matrix.org server which makes comms run like a dog with three legs. I recommend XMPP.

Re: I now want to leave

If you use WhatsApp, but not Facebook, then Facebook probably knows almost as much about you as if you used both or only Facebook. This is through the combination of all of the unique IDs associated with the account (phone number, device IDs, SIM ID,) the accounts of people you interact with, cross references of those accounts with Facebook accounts accessed from the same devices, uploaded contacts lists to WhatsApp & Facebook accounts of people you interact with, and those crappy little Facebook & WhatApp 'contact us' things you see on websites you visit.

If you want to partially blind Facebook, don't use any of its services and block those website trackers. Even then, unless everyone you know is equally diligent, they will still know of your existence and part of your real world social graph.

Re: FOSS

A better option would be to run your own XMPP Server.

Xabber client connects to their servers on every start regardless of where your account is so Conversations client (or various forks) is a better option on Android. It also does voice & video calling. Finding suitable clients for other operating systems is left as an exercise for the reader.

Lay down your souls to the gods of rock 'n' roll: Conspiracy theorists' 5G 'vaccine' chip schematic is actually for a guitar pedal

I'll just leave this here

Well I'm sick and tired of hearing 'bout the world and it's hang ups

Gonna get myself together, take a ride downtown

Gotta see my Rock'n'Roll doctor

Gotta see my Rock'n'Roll doctor

Gotta see my Rock'n'Roll doctor

Gotta see him, see him today

He's gonna blow me away

Welcome to the splinternet – where freedom of expression is suppressed and repressed, and Big Brother is watching

Re: Only allow verified truth?

It was rhetorical.

Re: @Captain Hogwash - what if the net stopped being one big, connected thing?

I'm not suggesting for a minute that the situation in e.g. US or Europe is good. I am saying it's better than e.g. China or Iran. I'm also saying that there is a door slightly ajar from the former which leads to something better than either. However, it is rather heavy and does require some effort to push it right open.

Re: Only allow verified truth?

Quite. After all, are we adults or children?

Re: what if the net stopped being one big, connected thing?

Oh, that wasn't clear. But yes, I agree, a third stream is always welcome. Long live Jacques Loussier!

Re: what if the net stopped being one big, connected thing?

Big corporations can't throw you in jail or worse, so I know which side of your proposal I'd rather be.

Come, chant with us over a sacrificial goat and predict 2021's biggest tech stories to a high degree of accuracy

Goat

Seems a bit of a stretch to me.

As UK breaks away from Europe, Facebook tells Brits: You'll all be Californians soon

Re: The fundamental difference between the US and the EU

arises from the difference between having your cities destroyed by air bombing raids or not, I suspect.

Where's the mysterious metal monolith today then? Oh look, it's atop a California mountain

"a wanky art project or marketing campaign"

There's a difference?