Posts by Fred Flintstone

As we stand on the precipice of science fiction into science fact, people say: Hell yeah, I want to augment my eyesight!

There's also the problem with door openings as they may not be high enough :)

(which reminds me of that cartoon with a chin-up bar fitted in a door frame and an unconscious person on the floor :) ).

Bad apples: US customs seize OnePlus earbuds thinking they're knock-off AirPods

Hmm, do we qualify this as a "person"?

"It's life, Jim, but not as we know it"

I like your thinking :)

US ponders tech export ban on SMIC, China's biggest chipmaker

So, translating this..

.. the Trump administration is trying to see if they can gain from threatening with a ban, either in votes, or in the most expensive Trump hotel reservations.

Cynic, moi?

Google wants to listen in to whatever you get up to in hotel rooms

Let's turn this around..

Play back a speech by Enver Hoxha and any other confusing rubbish you can think off. Horror movies, cop shows, a Trump speech, you name it. Any old rubbish will do.

Intercepts become much more fun when you know it takes place, and as there's no camera yet (IMHO guaranteed to be in the next hardware release) the device will have a hard time picking up something useful. Create credible deniability from the start.

Apple: Don't close MacBooks with a webcam cover on, you might damage the display

Simple solution..

Download Oversight as an extra safety layer and be done with it.

Anything else I can help with?

Dems take a crack at banning Feds from using facial-recog tech. Congress will put it on todo list after 'learn Klingon'

Re: If you want to see the scary bit ..

Bizarre uses of facial recognition? In public toilets there you have to look at the camera for 3 seconds in order for toilet paper to be dispensed.

Does that also work with a strained face (on account of the specific circumstances)?

:)

One year ago, Apple promised breakthrough features to help iPhone, iPad, Mac owners with disabilities. It failed them

Re: Lack of engagement with disable people

You may have just given Apple an argument for poor battery life.

:)

Not so nice, we investigated them twice: EU opens double whammy of inquiries into Apple's biz practices

Re: Not only Apple in the EU's sights

They'll do Google AFTER they have finished Google-ing for evidence in the first two cases.

They're not silly :).

Bloke rolls up to KFC drive-thru riding horse-drawn cart only to be told: Neigh

True, that's nothing to be sniffed at.

That said, you'd have to stop them even coming up the driveway to fully prevent such, er, "deposits"..

Not going Huawei just yet: UK ministers reportedly rethinking pledge to kick Chinese firm out of telco networks by 2023

Re: shambles.gov.uk/2020-05-27#huawei

"Yes Minister" was a documentary..

Linus Torvalds drops Intel and adopts 32-core AMD Ryzen Threadripper on personal PC

AMD's new marketing slogan: "Intel outside"

Come on, this one was obvious..

:)

Record-breaking Aussie boffins send 44.2 terabits a second screaming down 75km of fiber from single chip

Re: DWDM on a chip

I just want to see where they'll fit this on a shark, being this small..

UK's Ministry of Defence: We'll harvest and anonymise private COVID-19 apps' tracing data by handing it to 'behavioural science' arm

It has ceased to be..

Ironically that reminds me more of the fantastic rib the Not The Nine O'Clock News crew pulled on the Pythons in the days of the "Life of Brian" controversy (which was IMHO indeed as idiotic as a clearly frustrated John Cleese was considering it).

Breaking virus lockdown rules, suing officials, threatening staff, raging on Twitter. Just Elon Musk things

Re: Same as the Nebraska meat packing plants

No, you TOUCH it, that's why it's called packaging, and that's why the incessant hand washing is so essential.

Re: Suprise

Headlines to die for, this time literally :(

Microsoft's Family Safety app drills into kids' screen time, browsing habits to help 'facilitate a dialogue'

Re: This will actually be useful...

On the plus side, it teaches them early how to bypass al this nonsense.

Kid filtering is the modern version of the VCR clock blinking "12:00"

For the rest I couldn't agree with you more.

'We're changing shift, and no one can log on!' It was at this moment our hero knew server-lugging chap had screwed up

Re: Ah, ye olde tricks to ID machines..

Despite the DO NOT SWITCH OFF label on the socket and DO NOT DISCONNECT on the plug

That's just about the surest method I know to achieve the opposite. This could be a worthy attempt at an Ig Noble prize: checking what would happen if you used a label "KEEP THIS OFF, absolutely DO NOT LEAVE CONNECTED". I suspect it would peel off from old age before anyone touched that.

OK, so you've air-gapped that PC. Cut the speakers. Covered the LEDs. Disconnected the monitor. Now, about the data-leaking power supply unit...

Re: Of course you've got to know what you're looking for

Ah, that explains why U2 never went into the spy business..

Square peg of modem won't fit into round hole of PC? I saw to it, bloke tells horrified mate

Re: DIMM Slots

That's part of it.

The full one, just for reference:

Measure with a micrometer, mark with chalk and cut with an axe.

If it doesn't fit, use a larger hammer and if it breaks, it needed replacing anyway.

A paper clip, a spool of phone wire and a recalcitrant RS-232 line: Going MacGyver in the wonderful world of hotel IT

Re: Thanks for reminding me...

Even SCSI was never this bad!

Oh yes it was, and don't get me started on terminators which did indeed terminate, just not as intended.

I need a drink now. No, just leave the bottle, thanks.

As Amazon's stock price soars and Bezos adds to his billions, affiliates face massive cuts in their commissions

Re: I Would be grateful if You could find a New Photo of the Ineffable Bezos

.. need .. more .. upvotes.

LOL

From Brit telly presenter Eamonn Holmes to burning 5G towers in the Netherlands: Stupid week turns into stupid fortnight for radio standard

Re: limit their communications to good old pen and paper.

stone, a chisel and a hammer

I think we want to avoid putting anything dangerously heavy in those hands. Quills and ink are fine, thanks.

Goop anyone?

That would be OK, I don't think that smearing the towers with avocado will do much harm..

UK MPs fume after Huawei posts open letter stating: 'Disrupting our involvement in the 5G rollout would do Britain a disservice'

Re: Huawei horror story!

They are the only telecoms vendor who have had their code inspected in this way.

.. as opposed to, say, 100% of US sourced gear. I find the disparity more revealing than anything else and it suggests it has really zip to do with security, more of protection of another kind.

The kind we really can do without.

Suspicious senate stock sale spurt spurs scrutiny scheme: This website tracks which shares US senators are unloading mid-pandemic

Re: How long before his site is DoS'd or forced to be taken down?

I think that classes as exceptional rare honesty amongst a career where only now the number of Covid19 victims is surpassing the number of lies he has told (he's past 18.000 now).

Well, according to Michael Moore it has better healthcare than the rest of the USA so that's an incentive in itself. The only problem I see is that he may end up partially invisible as his skin tone matches the prison garb there..

Whoa, someone actually texted you in 2020? Oh, nvm, it's just Boris Johnson, telling you to stay the f**k at home

Re: Spam spam spam spam

he's probably one of the more switched-on ministers

Now THERE is a concept: could we fit some with an off switch?

Facebook, distributor of deceptive political ads, sues registrar Namecheap over deceptive domain names

Re: Only in England the source of the Skripal fantasy would this title fly

Thank you for ending the week with what I consider a Comment Of The Week.

Well done, and yes, I had to reread that too as I initially thought I still had too much blood in my coffee stream..

Brit MPs, US senators ramp up pressure on UK.gov to switch off that green-light for Huawei 5G gear

Re: Trade deal?

And so, yet again, we reach for the mind bleach.

:)

Breaking bad... browser use: New Mexico accuses Google of illegally slurping kids' private data via G Suite

That Microsoft et al have convoluted and possibly conflicting privacy statements doesn't surprise me. I would like to refer you to this rather excellent Freefall cartoon which describes the situation beautifully IMHO.

That said, when it comes to confusion I still think that Adobe remains a strong number one regarding complicating the access to legal statements. What they cooked up is award winning as requires *serious* effort to find the bit of data that applies to you - I'm assuming the idea is to make people give up halfway through their search.

If you're interested in these matters I would suggest a visit to Google's archive of previous statements, because it allows you to see which words Marketing has changed to more benign appearing texts. The words "into perpetuity", for instance, have been replaced with text that means the same, but appearing more benign.

Shipping is so insecure we could have driven off in an oil rig, says Pen Test Partners

Re: An oil drilling rig (file photo)

both have similar aerodynamic properties.

... aand I have found my Comment of the Week. Thanks :)

Tutanota cries 'censorship!' after secure email biz blocked – for real this time – in Russia

More than a few democracies try to head that way too.

I think we can safely call them former democracies..

C'mon SPARCky, it's just an admin utility update. What could possibly go wrong?

Re: different colors

I had an orange one :)

Uncle Sam: Secretly spying on networks around the world without telling anyone, Huawei? But that's OUR job

Re: @notathome

Yes, it's the same story.

In a nutshell: Swiss company Crypto AG wasn't as clean as Swiss manufactured gear normally is, it had been backdoored by the Americans.

This is why you cannot trust gear whose manufacturer does not expose themselves to public testing and validation - which is what Huawei has done, but Cisco not. Hence the amused snorts heard from security specialists worldwide when US people declared Huawei to be unsafe and that the world should use US gear.

Caveat: those evaluations have a limited lifespan, though, you're but one unevaluated update away from a backdoor and you only have to look at the entries for the obfuscated C contest to see what evaluators are up against. It's a job for people far more persistent than I will ever be :).

The Curse of macOS Catalina strikes again as AccountEdge stays 32-bit

Re: Worlds tiniest violin

Tax deductible, of course

:)

Hit one up on Insta, would you? Her Maj is after a social media manager

Re: Drawback....

Been binging on Black Adder episodes again?

:)

Mozilla locks nosy Avast, AVG extensions out of Firefox store amid row over web privacy

Re: So..

Methinks your sarcasm reservoir is empty.

As it is Friday, could I suggest you refuel it at the nearest pub?

Can't you hear me knocking? But I installed a smart knocker

Re: Brilliant

LOL. I should have known better than drink coffee and read these discussions.

Now looking for a cleaning cloth..

.. and safer. That said, at least that one is exclusively YouTube.

Microsoft crams Office 365 docs into Edge-style sandboxes to thwart malware infections

Screenshots :)

Socket to the energy bill: 5-bed home with stupid number of power outlets leaves us asking... why?

Oh, the last time I moved I just put all the power blocks in one box.

I think I had about 20 of them, couldn't believe it myself.

Maybe the owner doesn't like to look for a socket?

With that density of sockets you only have to vaguely aim at the wall to get a connection :)

And we're back with the third review of Privacy Shield: Meh, sighs the European Commission

The problem is simple: Privacy Shield is a *trade* agreement

The problem really lies on the US side (no surprise there, sorry): although the Privacy Shield agreement is mainly a tool to stop an all out trade war (or, to be precise, a mechanism by which US companies can continue to make vast profits off the private details of EU citizens), there is no actual legal match between the two entities.

US law has at federal level so many backdoors (they seem to love them over there) that privacy protection for even US citizens is but a vague and as yet unsubstantiated rumour, which is wholly at odds with the EU situation. As that gap is unlikely to be addressed (because, you know, profit), any attempt to pretend it's all fixed is just marketing and, to be frank, the same BS we were served even befoe Safe Harbor died.

UK govt snubs Intel, seeks second-gen AMD Epyc processors for 28PFLOPS Archer2 supercomputer

Re: I was thinking of buying one myself

Judging by the ever increasing power demands of smartphones you will have to bite that bullet at some point anyway.

:)

That's parallel computing for you :)

(and laggy networks).

From Libra to leave-ya: eBay, Visa, Stripe, PayPal, others flee Facebook's crypto-coin

Re: social impact organizations?

Cynical, and oh so correct..

Boris Brexit bluff binds .eu domains to time-bending itinerary

Re: Out of curiosity ...

Having said that Esperanto was a universal language and hardly anyone uses that.

Ah, that explains the lack of an .esperanto TLD.

Also telling: there is actually a .fail :)

So we're going back to the Moon: NASA triggers countdown by firing up spacecraft production

Given Trump's general scientific knowledge I reckon it would not take much to make this about cheese..

Bored and looking for something to do with your fingers? Why not try speed-cubing at a central London pop-up?

We'll end up at micro-fest, next iteration nano-fest..