Posts by mark l 2

Meta latest to tell world its AI agent wandered out of test pen

If they are correct and the AI 'escaped' the testing environment and hacked into another unrelated business, then surely there is a case for corporate neglect as they should have had better safe guards and been monitoring what is was doing. Not just saying ooops after it had happened.

Chinese router vendor denies its firmware contains backdoors – but pauses downloads to fix security issues anyway

I picked up a ZBT-WG3526 router cheap from Aliexpress as I saw it came with Openwrt and was supported by the Openwrt website. The firmware pre-installed was a custom version of Openwrt 17 which is quite a few years old anyway, so i flashed it with an official 25.12 version direct from the Openwrt.org website, as never particularly trusted the vendor supplied firmware anyway. So hopefully that would get rid of this backdoor unless it exists below the OpenWRT OS layer?

Jailed Flock vandal wipes out three cameras, racks up thousands in damages

"Flock’s spokespeople have repeatedly condemned the cases of camera vandalism, highlighting the risk of losing evidence that could be crucial to solving ongoing criminal cases"

Surely the evidence is not stored on the actual camera but on a server in some data centre, so the camera getting vandalized is not going to delete data its already captured. And i don't class the fact that the camera could potentially have provided evidence IF if hadn't been damaged as 'losing evidence', as you can't loose something you never had to begin with.

Impostor Chinese models pretend they're Claude

AI companies complaining about distillation is like a thief complaining that a rival has 'stolen' all their ill gotten wares.

The Document Foundation says Microsoft's file formats keep users on a short leash

Microslop don't want to fix it, because its a lock in to carry on using Microsoft products. it the same reason why the don't want to port Office to Linux as Office license in the business world usually mean Windows license to.

OpenAI makes ChatGPT better at banter

How many Giga Watts of additional energy is going to be used up over the course of a year for it to be saying 'hmm yeah' and other nonsense that isn't needed?

Sounds like they know the bubble is ready to burst and kinda just giving up on providing anything of any actual use now

Microsoft Global Device Identifier fingers Scattered Spider suspect

Microsofts own evidence submitted in this case shows that they are vacuuming up all your online activity and sending it back to the mothership. Today its being used to catch hackers, but who knows how many times the 3 letter agencies have used this as a way to spy on foreign governments, political activists, whistleblowers or journalists internet activity.

This should be a wake up call to all that are concerned about their privacy, as it appears Windows is sending a lot more data back to the MS mothership that was previously known about.

DRAM prices are killing the cheap smartphone

There is no reason why a higher end phone from 5+ years ago can't still be usable as a daily driver in 2026, if the software is kept up to date. My 2018 Oneplus 6t with LineageOS still feels snappy and quick 8 years after launch. The only downside is the none user replaceable battery, which on my phone is still at 89% of original capacity so has some life left in it yet thankfully.

Court tosses Microsoft's appeal in pre-owned software licenses spat

(A Microsoft spokesperson told The Register: "We respectfully disagree with the court's decision and will seek permission to appeal....)

They already appealed the original decision and the court denied their appeal. They should get told for every subsequent appeal going forward if it fails again the resulting penalty will be increased by a factor of 10 each time. That would stop these companies who just keep appealing hoping the other side runs out of legal fees before any settlement.

Europe's new import rules are coming for your bargains

Re: Now then...

All my recent orders from Aliexpress and Temu have been delivered by courier services such as Evri and Yodel. I can't remember the last time i had a parcel from China come via the Royal Mail, so im not sure that the international discounted postage is really making any difference to the price of stuff coming from China, as surely the couriers aren't obligated to give them a discount (other than for however much volume of parcels they are shipping)

Zombie ‘who owns Unix?’ lawsuit comes alive again

How much of that code from almost 30 years ago is still in use in 2026 anyway? Fscking patent trolls just trying to get some money out of something which they had nothing to do with creating from decades earlier. Hope it bankrupts them with the legal fees and this finally dies

Raspberry Pi OS gets a new kernel but apparently not a new version number

Bodhi Linux is a good lightweight distro based on Debian/Ubuntu for x86 machines. I have it installed a Atom based thin client with only 2GB RAM. The DE looks decent enough as well without using too many resources, leaving me about 1.6GB of free RAM after booting for running applications.

As another UK prime minister bites the dust, a contradictory tech legacy remains

Lets hope with Starmer gone his bat shit crazy idea of forcing Apple and Google to scan everybody phones for naughty pics to 'protect the kids' gets dropped like a hot potato.

Anthropic reserves right to check ID for Claude subs

Yeah cos im sure that requiring a government ID is going to stop someone outside the US from accessing the service. Cos they will never just use a fake ID or even pay one of the millions of US citizen who is is debt to do the ID checks.

Met Police, Apple join forces to choke London's stolen phone trade

I would not be suprised if the big tech companies have been dragging their feet on blocking stolen phones is because there is no financial incentive to do so. Implementing blocking tech will cost them to develop, administer and maintain and at the moment when someones phone is half inched it could well result in a new phone sale once the victim realised they are unlikely to get it back.

The treat of legislation has probably prompted them to react as they will always prefer a voluntary scheme that they are in control of the rules rather than one set by government they must abide by.

Signal says UK plan to scan devices for nude images 'endangers us all'

Sounds like Starmer is just doing the dead cat on the table with this to distract from how awful the labour party did in the local elections and how badly hes doing in the opinion polls.

But of course its hard for any of the opposition parties to speak out against what a terrible idea it is it without people accusing them of siding with abusers and failing to protect the kids.

I recall Apple announced they were going to implement something like this about 5 years ago to scan for CSA images on peoples phones, but there was such a backlash against it they dropped the idea.

UK fraudsters using AI to doctor 'evidence' in motor insurance claims

“Fraud isn’t a victimless crime – it drives up the cost of insurance for everyone"

So because they have caught all these fraudulent claims they can offer people lower renewal premiums for their next year? No thought not, those saving will get passed on as executive bonuses and to the shareholders. While the customers will get told they have to pay more because of 'market conditions'

England's exam watchdog frets over smart specs turning GCSEs into Google searches

If you don't know the subject so have to cheat in the exam then you just get a meaningless piece of paper with a grade on it, but it won't help you if you want to actually get a job where the skills in the subject are required, as it won't take long before they realise you don't know shit.

You might as well just sit the exam and if you fail get a fake certificate with whatever grade you want on it for all the falsely obtained real certificate is worth to getting a job.

'Please do not vibe f--- up this software': Broken backups spark AI coding row in rsync project

What the bet that 99.9% of those complaining that the new version broke their backups, have never once contributed a single line of code to the project or donated any money towards it, yet they demand the dev stop using a particular tool to help maintain the code. What would they do if he just decided to stop maintaining it period and walked away from the project?

6G: The next gen of wireless tech nobody's ready to pay for

(There may be a slower rollout of 6G, he added. "Given the difficulty that some operators have found in monetizing 5G, they may not be interested in investing in 6G unless clear use cases are established.)

I have yet to here any real use cases where 5G is required cos 4G isn't good enough. 5G offers better speeds IF you can achieve them, but the example the telco often give is you can download a full HD movie in under 30 seconds, but thats not something most people are actually doing on their phones. The only time i ever download movies to my phone is when im going on a flight so will have no internet, and then i do it in advance when at home on WiFI anyway. And if you are watching movies while out at about then its most likely its being streamed so a 4G connection can cope with that with bandwidth to spare.

California may let Linux bypass age check

My worry is that once apps, browsers and other software get the API's to link in with the OS age verification that FOSS will end up getting locked out of web sites and services since they will start to mandate they only support OS with the age verification API's, eg ones from Microsoft, Google and Apple.

InPost locker caught shipping unactivated Windows

Well it explains why I have always felt that the UI on those lockers is laggy if they are running full fat Windows behind them. The ones near me when you pressed on the touch screen there was a couple of seconds delay before anything would happen, meaning sometimes i thought it had frozen.

HP customer claims firmware update shoved printer off support cliff

HP thinks that a 5 year old printer is now obsolete? My Epson CX3600 was purchased in 2005 and still works 21 years later and never once have i needed to download a firmware update for it, yet modern printers seem to need to do that every few weeks for some reason.

I've even networked it by plugging its USB into the back of a BT homehub 5 running OpenWRT so i can print to it over WiFi

Firefox 151 helps you edit PDFs – and switch OSes

Maybe i am lucky but ive never had a problem with Firefox sync. I use FF on my Android phone, on couple of PCs and also a tablet and in the last 8 years or so its work fine to keep them all in sync. Even though the tablet is only every booted up occasionally as its my travel device so for months on end can be sat in a drawer.

Utah tells porn sites to take the P out of VPNs, and it's their fault that they can't

I am no lawyer but i would assume unless your company actually has offices in Utah then there is little the state could do to prosecute/fine out of state companies for breaching the law if they tried to take it to court cos they found out little Johnny had been using a VPN to pretend to be from another state/country?

Just like Ofcom trying to get these American based business who refuse to implement UK age checks to pay a fine when they have no presence in the UK, its a futile exercise and waste of tax payer money.

Mozilla warns UK: Breaking VPNs will not magically fix Britain's age-check mess

I suspect the increase in VPN usage is not kids but adults who don't want to have to deal with facial recognition or uploading their photo ID to random third parties be able get onto pronhub etc, when they can just download a VPN app and set their location to outside the UK and job done.

Of course the UK gov doesn't like that more and more people are using VPN as it causes RIPA to no longer work since your ISP isn't the one who is logging your traffic anymore since its going through some server in a another country where the UK can't spy on you. That really what its all about as i bet only a small fraction of kids are bothering with VPNs.

Surprise AI bills leave AWS and Google Cloud users aghast

Unless you spend zero with Google cloud then their caps are meaningless if they can just automatically upgrade you without your knowledge or consent for an account thats only 30 days old!

Still they gotta claw back the billions they spent on AI some how to show the shareholders it was all worth it.

Classic 7 is Windows 10 LTSC cosplaying as Windows 7

I mean it would be trivial for MS to actually offer their own users to be able to change to a 'Windows classic' theme if they actually gave a toss about them. The used to have that option on XP where you change the theme to look like the 2000/ME interface. But now its you get what we give you and like it or you have to rely on 3rd party tools which could break the next time MS pushes out a feature update.

Google users fight for refunds as unauthorized API usage bills soar

Re: Poogle

For the amounts involved which are large to us mere mortals but when you are Google and you make $100k profit in a few seconds its a rounding error, there would be little incentive for them to bother chasing up the perps who used the stolen credentials. Unless they were dumb enough to be using their own IP and not via a proxy or VPN to access it that would probably end up being a dead end. And even if they find the person if they are in a jurisdiction like China or Russia its unlikely it would get to court to get their money back.

This shouldn't have happened in the first place if you have set a $250 spending cap that cap should NOT be automatically upped by Google without the account holder explicitly agreeing to that. I guess until Google fixes it the way forward is to use one of those virtual credit cards where you can set your own spending cap on the card and if it tries to exceed it the transaction get declined.

Phone users know when to hold ’em, delay upgrades amid inflation

I'm daily driving a 2018 Oneplus 6. Other than the battery now not holding as much charge there is nothing wrong with the hardware, and the software is kept up to date thanks to Lineage OS.

I don't really feel the need to replace the phone while its working for just some incremental improvements in CPU, RAM and cameras.

Australia threatens tech companies with 2.25 percent tax if they don’t pay publishers

Gotta be careful Australia, if the orange one finds out your going to tax 'the big beautiful American tech companies' he will TACO threat you with extra tariffs just like hes is doing with the UK.

Trump to UK: Stop taxing our big beautiful tech corps or face tariff tsunami

Didn't the supreme court say he wasn't allowed to go around adding additional tariffs on an entire countries, like he had been doing? So how does he think he can increase the tariff on the UK without putting it up for every country, now we know that he can't so its just an empty threat.

Vibe coding upstart Lovable denies data leak, cites 'intentional behavior,' then throws HackerOne under the bus

Do we actually think this supposedly valued at billions of dollars vibe coding AI start up actually has any devs left now? I mean if management really believe in the quality of their service why would they need to employ experience devs to maintain the code, they can just vibe code using their AI to fix all the vulns.

Google Chrome lacks protection against one of the most basic and common ways to track users online

What good reason is there for having the details of my GPU, CPU, Keyboard layout etc available to any website that requests it? This should be info i specifically have to allow a website to access if i want it to be able to do so, not something that a browser freely gives up.

I sounds like a privacy focus browser should be either outright refusing to provide this info or even better randomising this info every time you open the browser to stop fingerprinting being possible.

California ghost-gun bill wants 3D printers to play cop, EFF says

it will probably work as well as the law that was supposed to stop you being able to use a scanner to scan a bank note. Sure your HP and Canon included bloatware software might not let you but loads of 3rd party software will absolutely let you.

Microsoft sends Outlook Lite to the great inbox in the sky as memory costs skyrocket

Its crazy that we now think of machines with 'only 1GB of RAM' to be low end for an Outlook email client?

The versions of Outlook that shipped with Office 2000 could be run on systems with just 32MB of RAM!

Adobe finally patches PDF pest after months of abuse

Why was javascript even put into a document format, it was just asking for trouble.

I vibe coded a feed reading web app. It was enlightening and uncomfortable

Re: In sympathy

if it doesn't have barcode then lots of people put it through as loose onions or carrots. I remember hearing an anecdote that a big UK supermarket chain had 'sold' more onions and carrots through the self check out that they had purchased from their suppliers.

Apple update looks like Czech mate for locked-out iPhone user

Mostly likely an Apple dev who had no familiarity with the Czech language decided that that character was unnecessary as it made the lock screen keyboard too cluttered so removed it without thinking of any of the consequences, Sounds like probably another case of form over function to make something look pretty.

Fewer than 3 in 10 register for HMRC's Making Tax Digital shake-up

MTD = Making tax difficult

"Making Tax Digital will make it easier for sole traders and landlords to get their tax right by providing a more real-time overview of their finances, freeing up their time to focus on growing their business,"

Yes because making business owners have more red tape and paperwork to do and having to spend money on tax software they didn't previously require, always frees up time to focus on their business!

We know what day it is but these Raspberry Pi price hikes are no joke

Re: Love

While for some things a second hand x86 PC might be cheaper and offer better value than a Raspberry PI, power consumption isn't generally one of them. Where as a Raspberry PI or other SBC can be left on all 24/7 and only using a small amount of power without you worrying that your next electric bill is going to give you a heart attach.

For example I have a used Dell Optiplex that you could pick up easily on ebay for just a few quid, but it also draws about 65W of power at idle and 100W when the CPU is stressed out. And a ARM based SBC (not actually a Raspberry PI but similar) which runs off a 10W PSU and usually draws about 5W at idle.

Don't open that WhatsApp message, Microsoft warns

I wasn't even aware Whatsapp existed for Windows PCs. I just assumed it was a mobile app and they have a web version.

Age checks creep into Linux as systemd gets a DOB field

For those bemoaning that Systemd devs or any other FOSS software are implementing a facility to record ages of user, they are just trying to get ahead on what the law says they will have to do. And just like any laws you might not like it, but if you don't follow it then there will be legal repercussions. And its the politicians that vote to implement these ill thought out laws that you need to direct your ire towards.

I don't think ages checks are going to go away anytime soon, Australia and the UK already have them, and its not just California that is bringing them in the US its also a bunch of other states proposing they have similar laws so the devs are just preparing to be able to comply with what they maybe legally be obliged to do across the whole world. So I can see why it would make sense to record the DOB then let an API extract out an age range or provide a token to say this user is over or under 18 than record several different bits of info for different jurisdictions.

I predict that the way things are going within the next decade there will be more countries and states requiring some sort of age checks than those that don't. And while i don't like where things are going with age checks, if it is going to become widely adopted then I prefer the option of setting my age once at the OS level and an API that tells any website or app that i am 18+. Than the individual age verification checks we currently have in the UK, which needs to be done for every different app or service and often that personal info is getting sent off to 3rd parties.

Google gives Android users a way to install unverified apps if they prove they really, really want to

WTF! Imagine this was how Microsoft decided that Windows should work, and if you want to download and exe from the internet, you had wait 24 hours before you can install it.

Nvidia's DLSS 5 promises to bring you out the other side of the uncanny valley

its funny how Nvidia wants to use AI to make video game characters look more like real humans, while social media influencers use it to look less like real people.

Apple’s MacBook Neo turns out to be its most repairable lappy in 14 years

For the price the Macbook Neo seems like a great laptop with a decent spec and good build quality. So hopefully even if your not interested in buying an Apple device, having them release a lower priced laptop will make other manufactures have to up their game and release better hardware to compete with it. And so should hopefully be a benefit for everyone.

RAM is getting expensive, so squeeze the most from it

I believe pretty much all Android phones use Zram for RAM compression but some manufactures give it a fancy name such as Memory extender.

After years of being stood up, ARM64 Linux users finally get Chrome date

"The question, therefore, is, why would Google do this now? A surge in Chromebooks?"

I am fairly certain that Chromebooks with ARM SOC's would have already been running a native ARM version of the Chrome browser. As although ChromeOS is built on top of the Linux Kernel the user space apps aren't Linux apps but all Google proprietary ones.

This move is more than likely aimed at devs using some of the ARM workstations that are now available such as those with the Ampere Altra chips or NVIDIA Jetson Nano. And there are millions of Raspberry Pi and other such ARM based SBC that run Linux who might want to run Chrome as well if they use that other other systems and are familiar with it?.

Running full Linux on ARM based Chromebooks is not well supported compared to being able to boot Linux on x86 Chromebooks use something like MrChromebox scripts.

Nanny state discovers Linux, demands it check kids' IDs before booting

If you look at one of the businesses lobbying FOR this law its Meta, as then once the age verification is the responsibility of the OS they are then off the hook for doing age verification themselves as they can just say we allow users to access our services based on what age the OS says they are. And pass the buck for any age checks to someone else.

The whole age verification falls apart anyway as soon as you move from consumer OS to that of businesses. No enterprise is going to want to have to do external age verification checks for every device and user they set up on their network, or what about servers that don't run a GUI and could be admin by people from all over the world. So no doubt there will have to be some use cases carved out for exemptions to this ill thought out law and as soon as you start making exemptions the kids will jump on that and find ways around ages check in minutes.

Although it might actually be good for Linux in these states as once kids realise that it will be trivial to bypass age checks on Linux since the source code is available and within days of any distro putting in age checks someone will fork the code and have removed it. It might actually push adaptation of FOSS in those regions.

Microsoft adding Xbox mode to Windows 11 – even the Professional edition

Just more confusing names from Microsoft as you assume that an Xbox mode should enable you to play Xbox games, but no that would be too sensible. Instead they choose to use the brand name associated with their long line of gaming consoles to rename Windows 'game mode' which has existed on Windows 10 since 2017 as 'Xbox mode'.

Come on Microsoft why no Copilot and 365 branding in their too?