* Posts by frank ly

6077 publicly visible posts • joined 10 Jun 2009

Paint your wagon (with electric circuits) but leave my crotch alone

frank ly

Kids nowadays

"... arming tweenagers with cheeseboard and soldering irons ..."

When I were a lad, we had to make do with breadboard and tallow candles.

Want a Windows 10 update? Don't go to Microsoft ... please

frank ly
Coat

The article picture

Something about haemorrhoids.

Coat: I'm going but you know it's true.

Lenovo's tablet with a real pen, Acer's monster laptop, Samsung Galaxy S3 watch

frank ly

Yoga 'virtual' keyboard

Isn't it just a backlit fixed display with the touch surface being read for keypresses? A truly virtual keyboard would have software defined display and you'd be able to change the keyboard 'nationality' in software. With a suitable API you'd be able to develop your own 'keyboard', customised for various applications.

FBI Director wants 'adult conversation' about backdooring encryption

frank ly

Consider this

"We want to lock some people up, so that we send a message ..."

That's supposed to be the job of the court and it's not for 'sending a message'. Punishing people to 'send a message' is what the Mafia (etc) do.

Blink and you missed it: Asteroid came within 90,000 km, only one sky-watcher saw it

frank ly

At its closest pass, whatever distance it is, would its orbit around the sun be affected by earth's gravity and maybe make it come closer next time?

Deep inside Nantero's non-volatile carbon nanotube RAM tech

frank ly

It sounds good

"Reliability-wise it retains data for >1,000 years ..."

You have to make certain assumptions about material properties and behaviour to extrapolate that theoretical result from testing that lasts a lot less that 1000 years. CNTs are a very new material so how can they be certain that those assumptions are true for CNTs?

Also, what is the theoretical working lifetime of the associated support and driver electronics? Random gamma rays do pass through everything, etc.

Microsoft's beta language service gets C# dev kit

frank ly

"a more nuanced response"

“I'd like to buy a black dress”

'There are some interesting new dieting and exercise websites that I can give you links to.'

Li-Fi with my little eye … a vulnerability

frank ly

Deja vu, again

"That assumption has led developers to pay too little attention to security, ..."

$329 for a MacBook? Well, really a 'HacBook' built on an old HP

frank ly

It's not their ball but it does have round corners, everywhere, all over.

Ripper! Boffins find malware thought behind $347k Thai ATM raids

frank ly

WTF!

"Thieves insert a custom EMV card into ATMs which sets up the machines ..."

Who thought it was a good idea to make this functionality possible? Everything you do can be stripped and analysed and reverse engineered, then taken advantage of.

Microsoft redfaced after Bing translation cockup enrages Saudis

frank ly

Use established references

"... the error occurred because Bing Translator has a crowdsourcing function ..."

They should have used an Urban Dictionary lookup. Oh, maybe they did?

Chinese CA hands guy base certificates for GitHub, Florida uni

frank ly

You can't trust anybody

I've said it before and it looks like I'll keep on saying it.

Why is a Chinese CA capable of handing out a base certificate for Github and a University in Florida? That's a genuine puzzled question because I don't know how certificate issuance is organised and managed.

Big data busts crypto: 'Sweet32' captures collisions in old ciphers

frank ly

"Decrypt the login cookie."

So, they get the login cookie for the malicious site that they control, after it's had lots of cyber chat with another site that they control. This is about the connection and login to their malicious site. I don't understand how that helps them to break the encryption of the user's VPN link, because I always assumed that the VPN was 'transparent' and its encryption was between the user and the end point operator (who must be trusted).

Apple is making life terrible in its factories – labor rights warriors

frank ly

Re: Uh, hello!?!

I wondered how someone's thinking could be so 'limited', so I looked at your previous posts. They are all about Apple and supportive of Apple and Apple products, often in a sarcastic way. Are you an employee or just a fanboi?

NHS slaps private firm Health IQ for moving Brits' data offshore

frank ly

"... the errors are often basic and avoidable."

They are not errors. It's deliberate, probably to save money, and they know there will be no penalty if they get detected. You can't trust anybody with data. They wouldn't store it for you unless they thought they could make a profit in some way and then the profit becomes the driving and only consideration.

I fart in your general direction! Comet 67P lets rip on Europe's Rosetta probe

frank ly

Atum region

So it was a burp, not the other one.

What wedding cake would an engineer make? A LEGO one

frank ly

Excellent!

That was a very well produced video and a marvellous 'cake'. I'm sure she loved it and I'm wondering if the top is in the fridge waiting for their anniversary.

Facebook, Twitter and Google are to blame for terrorism, say MPs

frank ly

Why not

just educate people that what they read on social media and also in the newspapers is often just someone's attempt to influence them for that other person or organisation's benefit. Teach them critical thinking and to cross reference a variety of sources and opinions to get a better idea of how 'truthful' something is.

Oh, ..... wait a minute.

Kindle Paperwhites turn Windows 10 PCs into paperweights: Plugging one in 'triggers a BSOD'

frank ly

I remember

Plugging an empty USB-SD card reader into a Win 2K laptop and getting BSOD every time I did that. I learned to remember to put an SD card in before trying that. There always seems to be something that makes it flip in some way.

Top facial recognition algo joins the dots and sees pretend people

frank ly

So

What is it that I do, very quickly, as a human, which tells me that those are not faces? Maybe it's that those images have no similarity to any face I've ever seen, have no standard facial features, etc.

Dell trademarks everything it does as 'Cross Cloud'

frank ly

Hmm

Does this mean that nobody else can advertise 'cross-cloud' migration/computing services, etc. ? Maybe they'll need to call it 'intercloud' services.

Windows Update borks PowerShell – Microsoft won't fix it for a week

frank ly

Smile :)

"To undo the update, uninstall it or run the following in PowerShell:"

Am I the only one who smiled at that. Were the rest of you too busy crying/laughing to notice?

Unlimited mobile data in America – where's the catch? There's always a catch

frank ly

First world problem

"A customer who has used almost all of her data could still binge on HBO, but would be unable to make an important video call with her doctor,"

Are there many people who have important video calls with their doctor?

North Korea unveils its home-grown Netflix rival – Manbang

frank ly

@AC Re: Typical monolinguistic anglophone

I wasn't aware of that but did suspect it was so. Please give us a few examples for our education and amusement.

Das ist empörend: Microsoft slams umlaut for email depth charge

frank ly

@DonL Re: Microsoft or Americans?

"I speak with German people daily and come in Germany a lot ..."

The Germans must be very exciting people. I'm guessing you're not a native English speaker. Oh, those euphemisms and prepositions!

Microsoft's kinder, gentler collaboration war: Evernote, you're first

frank ly

@Alienrat and ASAC

For a small outlay, you can set up a little solid-state FTP server in your own home. For about ten years, I've had an NSLU2 device that just keeps on running. You can still get them on ebay and there are other devices that will do the same thing. All you'd need then is an FTP client on your devices. You'd have to use email for 'collaboration'.

frank ly

Ex Evernote user here

I used to use Evernote on Android when it first came out. It recognised phone numbers and you could tap them and have it dial the number for you. So, I used it mainly as a contacts directory. After a while, it stopped being able to do that.

The Colornote application (Android only) was still able to dial a number from a stored note and also has active links between notes, so I switched to using that as a contacts directory. Its disadvantage is that it doesn't have a PC client or a web client but you can e-mail its notes to yourself as backup for later copy/paste back into Colornote if needed.

German minister seeks facial recognition at airports, train stations

frank ly

Re: Ban my backpack? You don't want my money then.

You could wear a jacket with lots of big pockets in it for your essential personal needs. Also, a couple of bandoliers with lots of small screw-top storage cannisters. That would work.

I got the power – over your IoT power-point

frank ly

Mitigation?

Fail the third: Would a properly set-up firewall block that? What data does it send back to the mothership?

Fail the last: I'd give it the Edimax e-mail address.

Fail the continuous: Why do they think that any of this is ever a good idea? What do they want the data for anyway?

IOActive turns up the most SOHOpeless router so far

frank ly

Tell us more

What does the injected JavaScript do?

NASA wants to sell International Space Station to private enterprise

frank ly

Re: OK. So...

The tropical island with a secret base is just one of the six components needed. The space station is another one.

New science: Pathetic humans can't bring themselves to fire lovable klutz-bots

frank ly

Possibilities

I'd like to see a video of a kitchen robot with a Gordon Ramsay personality/vocabulary assisting a human.

Cops break up German sausage fight between pair of Neubrandenburgers

frank ly

Choose wisely

"... it was a metal clip on the sausage that caused the actual damage, "

I find that a smooth, close fitting metal ring around my sausage is very effective and doesn't cause any damage or discomfort to anyone involved.

FalseCONNECT sends vendors scrambling to patch proxy MITM bug

frank ly

Security Design

When the various security protocols were formulated and issued, didn't they have a group of experienced white/black hat hackers to go over them with a fine-toothed comb to try to break them?

This attack seems like simple trickery and not particularly clever or complicated.

Microsoft to overhaul Windows 10 UI – with a 3D Holographic Shell

frank ly

From the video

"The word 'pantheon' ... means 'to honour all deities'."

No, it doesn't. As usual, they can't even get the simple and long established stuff right.

China launches quantum satellite to test spooky action at a distance

frank ly

As I understand it

The key exchange would be using a particular property of a quantangled photon link which ensures that any attempt to monitor the exchange would be detected; hence this is suitable for secure exchange of keys, if a bit slow compared to other communication methods and quite expensive.

From what I've read, the instant and 'spooky' communication at a distance can't be used for the instant transmission of data at a distance, for various practical and physical reasons.

I'm just a dog-basket physicist; a proper armchair physicist will be along in a minute.

Native Skype for Windows Phone walked behind shed, shot heard

frank ly

Numbers please

"... if it focuses resources on the platforms Skype users prefer. "

What are their figures for platform usage and how did they determine user preferences?

Labor's new comms spokesperson Michelle Rowland gets off to a bad start

frank ly

Politician Twists Facts To Suit Own Purposes!

You can use that as a headline every day.

In other news: The government said that ISP speed test websites show that broadband speeds are close to their claimed maximum.

Vivaldi's tweaky grinders fire out another release: Add themes, security

frank ly

The last time (only time) I tried Vivaldi, I couldn't get it to import my bookmarks.html file. I've installed, setup, configured and used many applications over the years but Vivaldi had me baffled. Is it now possible to easily import an external bookmarks .html file, like you can in Chromium, Firefox and Palemoon? Is it worth bothering?

'I found the intern curled up on the data centre floor moaning'

frank ly

A possible 'Laura' scenario

What would really have brought Laura wide awake would be if after a few minutes of following her instructions, the caller had screamed and shouted, "They've all launched! The missiles have all launched!!"

Boffins' blur-busting face recognition can ID you with one bad photo

frank ly

Amazing

"...accurately identify completely obscured faces using recognition systems trained on only a handful of well lit photos."

So, if I wear a thick black bag on my head, it can still recognise my face?

Investors to be allowed to sue Volkswagen over emission row

frank ly
Coat

Wrong target

Shouldn't they be suing those two rogue engineers who did all the fiddling and sneakily hid their nefarious deeds from management for many years?

ICO wades in after GP doxxes woman to her estranged ex-partner

frank ly

Re: Do you really need training?

"The person responsible for handling the request advised the child's GP about it when it was initially sent, but in the absence of a sufficient written procedure, they "went ahead and released everything" according to the ICO."

A totally different dimension.

Linux security backfires: Flaw lets hackers inject malware into downloads, disrupt Tor users, etc

frank ly

At least it's an easy fix

/etc/sysctl.conf is quite a short config file. I notice the following in my Linux Mint installation:

# Uncomment the next two lines to enable Spoof protection (reverse-path filter)

# Turn on Source Address Verification in all interfaces to

# prevent some spoofing attacks

#net.ipv4.conf.default.rp_filter=1

#net.ipv4.conf.all.rp_filter=1

I wonder why these haven't been enabled by default for a distribution that is obviously intended as a domestic computer. (Also, it shouldn't say "the next two lines", it should say "the final two lines".)

There is this one too:

# Do not accept ICMP redirects (prevent MITM attacks)

#net.ipv4.conf.all.accept_redirects = 0

#net.ipv6.conf.all.accept_redirects = 0

However, there is a comment that "Some network environments, however, require that these settings are disabled so review and enable them as needed."

Judges put FCC back in its box: No, you can't override state laws, not even for city broadband

frank ly

what is "government"?

"... these projects run up against state laws that prohibit governments from competing with private businesses."

Does the law actually say "government" or does it say "any form of legislative power" or similar expression? Is the law written in such a way that a remote town council counts as 'government'?

Cox stiffed for $25m after letting subscribers pirate music online

frank ly

It gets complicated

"... complaints by BMG that Cox ... and had blacklisted some of the services BMG used to track and report music piracy ..."

Would those be the torrent sites that BMG had seeded with their own torrents/seeders (for their own detection and tracking purposes) which had been blacklisted by Cox because they were under court order to do so as a result of other legal action?

Bungling Microsoft singlehandedly proves that golden backdoor keys are a terrible idea

frank ly

Re: I did that quicker..

Welcome ! :)

(Remember to regularly boot from a Gparted Live CD to copy your root and /home partitions onto another drive, as a backup, in case you get too inquisitive and experimental in the early stages.)

#Censusfail Australia: Not an attack, data safe, no heads to roll

frank ly

Re: No,No,No

My apologies to Darren for overlooking him. I'm sure he's been installed and configured properly.

frank ly

No,No,No

"MacGibbon said the vast bulk of DoS attacks are thwarted; ..."

"... Malcolm Turnbull has commented ... , labelling the incident a DDOS attack ..."

It wasn't an attack!

"(and Vulture South could not ask, because the press conference took place in a city where our operatives do not live)"

So, insufficient geographic redundancy, no failover agreements with other news providers, no emergency comms links. What happens if you or Simon are subject to a DDoS (Definite Display of Sickness) attack?

Facebook to forcefeed you web ads, whether you like it or not: Ad blocker? Get the Zuck out!

frank ly

I'm wondering

If the website operators (and the advertisers) are so concerned about ads being blocked, why don't they just buffer up the ads at the website server and deliver them as part of the main page? That way, nobody could block them. Some targeting software would need to be running at the webserver end but it doesn't sound too complicated in principle.