Posts by Chris Clawson

Anatomy of suspected top-tier decade-hidden NSA backdoor

So, did this rely on some previously undisclosed exploit? Has it been found and patched?

Intel's recent Atom, Celeron, Pentium chips can be lulled into a debug mode, potentially revealing system secrets

Re: Oh please

Client devices would not have the private key needed to sign firmware updates.

All hands on Steam Deck: Fancy a handheld Linux PC that runs Windows apps, sports a custom AMD Zen APU and a touch screen?

I know I'm not alone in this

The thing I want to know is whether the eMMC model can upgraded with an NVMe SSD. Reports so far are inconclusive.

Re: Wonder if I can expense one of these...?

Which coat is yours, sir?

Twilio: Someone waltzed into our unsecured AWS S3 silo, added dodgy code to our JavaScript SDK for customers

This is worrying

I use Authy for two-factor authentication, and Twilio owns Authy now. If their security is this lax, how will I know if my accounts are protected?

Facebook, AWS team up to produce open-source PyTorch AI libraries, grad student says he successfully used GPT-2 to write his homework....

"Its output quality begins to fall apart, becoming incoherent or absurd, as it rambles in subsequent paragraphs. It also doesn’t care about facts, which is why it won’t be good as a collaborator for subjects such as history and science."

Well, now we know who writes Donald Trump's speeches.

Uncle Sam tells F-35B allies they'll have to fly the things a lot more if they want to help out around South China Sea

Whatever happened to EMALS? I seem to recall reading here that space for an electric catapult system was intentionally left in the carrier hulls.

That is an F-35. Check out https://www.airforce-technology.com/features/featuref-35-lightning-up-and-away-5851856/ and scroll down a bit.

Astroboffins rethink black hole theory after spotting tiny example with its own star buddy

"If the object in question is indeed a black hole then the researchers may have stumbled on a new type of black hole that hasn’t been seen before."

What, no rimshot? No snarky comment from the editor?

Help! I bought a domain and ended up with a stranger's PayPal! And I can't give it back

Mostly related

I discovered last year that Ebay was not bothering to verify email addresses after someone opened an Ebay account using my address. Ebay tech support said they would flag the account to make the owner change the address, but after a few days I got impatient, took control of the account and shut it down.

Chap uncovers privilege escalation vuln in Steam only to be told by Valve that bug 'not applicable'

So... what's the mitigation?

Huawei to the danger zone, ride into the danger zone... Chinese giant denies America's secrets theft, fraud charges

Is the Chinese govt still holding some Canadians hostage over this?

Latest Windows 10 preview lets users link an Android to their PC

If they give us an easy and reliable way to transfer files between Android and Windows, I'll be interested. Till then I'm hitting snooze.

Obi: These ARE the 'droids you're looking for

I'm kinda surprised they didn't go for the Star Wars reference and call it the "Obi One".

Why Nobody Should Ever Search The Ashley Madison Data

I'm calling the ACLU

"But is it fair to selfishly deny a person sex? No. It is not, people have a right to have sex"

Dammit, why is no one looking out for my rights? This is an outrage!

USB 3.0 speed to DOUBLE in 2013

Re: The name

That was my first thought. No one I know uses the name "SuperSpeed" anyway.

NASA reveals secrets of Curiosity’s selfies

Hold off on the tinfoil for now

I think we're safe from the nuclear-powered laser tanks until they learn how to make "duck face" poses.

'Over half' of Android devices have unpatched holes

Too many middlemen

My phone came with Froyo (2.2) and we were promised an upgrade to Gingerbread (2.3) by LG. It took them 9 months to deliver, plus another 7 months for my carrier to add its bloatware and make an OTA update. I'm glad I only waited about 2 months before getting Gingerbread with CyanogenMod.

The weird thing is, LG had a minor update ready at the time, but it wouldn't install. LG was at a loss as to why it wouldn't work.

Ten... PC games you may have missed

Re: SWTOR - Is NOT free to play.....

Yes, I've heard rumors of it going F2P but nothing solid.

PGP founder, Navy SEALs uncloak encrypted comms biz

A bit out of date

"PGP is the world's most popular encryption system, in a large part because it's free." This has not been true for several years unless you're thinking of GPG, an open source alternative. I do remember that when PGP went commercial, Phil said that there would always be a free version for personal use, but sometime after Network Associates was formed the company went back on that promise.

Netflix overtakes Bittorrent as traffic champ

Makes you wonder

I mentioned Netflix having more traffic than Bittorrent to a friend, and he said "You'd think it had porn."

Mine's the one with the hood (I thought it was supposed to be spring by now?)

Updates galore in Microsoft's biggest ever Patch Tuesday

Windows Update overloaded?

It's running really slowly for me, and a few times it has stopped altogether. It took a couple of hours to get my home machines updated.

IE9: Downloads beat Angry Birds, lag Firefox and Opera

Blurry ClearType is blurry

Warning: once installed, there is no option to uninstall. Be sure to make a system restore point before installing (tho' one should be created automatically.) As to why I removed IE 9: it forces ClearType on in IE and other programs like Windows Live Mail, and there is no way to turn it off. I can't read webpages when they're displayed as a blurry mess. Doesn't anyone at Microsoft understand the awful irony in the word "ClearType"?

'Completely useless' Windows 3.1 hits Google's Android

DOSBox

"DOSBox is usually used to run old MS-DOS games for Intel x86 PCs that can't run modern operating systems such as Window XP, Vista, Linux, or FreeBSD."

Not quite. DOSBox is used to play old MS-DOS games ON modern operating systems. Those old games expect to have things like direct access to old Soundblaster hardware complete with IRQs. A modern OS can't provide that, so DOSBox emulates it.

Sunbelt buckles up for anti-bloatware drive

I don't get it

Why are they talking about system slowdown while doing MANUAL scans? You'd expect it to be slow then...

BOFH: On the brink

OS/2 on a VM

I haven't checked in a couple years, but last time I tried running OS/2 in a VM it did not work in VMware, but it did work in VirtualPC (from Microsoft. Go figure.)

Bad hair day for alternative browser users

Thunderbird?

The 2.0.0.8 Thunderbird update doesn't seem to exist - their website still shows the latest version as 2.0.0.6.

Researcher releases unofficial IE fix for URI bug

Vista?

What's the take on Vista? That part of the story seems to have been cut off.

BioShockers delivered from DRM hell

Not quite a rootkit

"One Reg reader has compared all this to the infamous Sony rootkit fiasco. But we think that's a little much."

Perhaps, but it seems a bit ironic that SuckyROM is owned by Sony...

Clearing swap and hibernation files properly

More hibernation love

My laptop takes an incredibly long time to boot and shutdown, even with 1 gig of RAM. Hibernation is much faster. Also, one of my desktops has a nifty feature: the BIOS detects when the PC is coming out of hibernation and will skip the POST checks to make it even faster.

For setting ClearPageFileAtShutdown there's a safer way than mucking about in the registry:

1. Open Control Panel/Administrative Tools/Local Security Policy

2. Navigate to Local Policies/Security Options

3. Enable the option "Shutdown: Clear virtual memory pagefile."

And lastly, for Frank Denton: Open the Power Options in the Control Panel, go to the Advanced tab and check "Prompt for password when computer resumes from standby."