Posts by mark l 2

Knock, knock. Whois there? Get ready for anonymized email addresses after domain privacy shake-up

Whois data was never particularly good at identifying the true owner of a site, especially if it is a scam website, pirate site etc. Lots of registrars will let you buy a domain and put in any name, address and phone number without verifying the information. You can also pay with some registrars using Bitcoin, Western Union or Pre-paid debit cards meaning that even the payment information doesn't tie to a specific person.

We should pass laws to make Google's life hard! Oh no, sorry, did we say that out loud? asks IBM

HP and IBM are behind this change not because they feel it will help stop trafficking but because it will directly benefit them by making things harder for Facebook, Twitter, Google etc. No doubt if IBM had a stake in a social media platform that allowed people to post content they would be lobbying against it.

You can Ring my bell: Amazon pays ONE BEEEEELLION+ dollars for smart home upstart

Don't see the value in spending that amount on Ring, The tech isn't that innovative its just a wireless webcam which connects to an app on a phone. I am sure Amazon could have knocked up their own 'Fire bell' version for considerably less money.

US Supremes take a look at Microsoft's Irish email slurp battle, and yeah, not a great start

Team America : World Police

Cryptocurrencies kill people and may kill again, says Bill Gates

Well Mr Gates it appears the local dealer near me didn't want to be dealing with crypto currencies, just read in the local paper that he was found with £245,000 in cash stuffed in the bottom of his wardrobe. So it appears cash is still king with criminals for now.

Google: Class search results as journalism so we can dodge Right To Be Forgotten

Surely if Google wins this case and become classed a journalists, they they are editorially responsible for all the search results that are published on their website, and could therefore be sued for libel if a website were to run a fake story and Google showed part of it on the snippets in the search results.

Full shift to electric vans would melt Royal Mail's London hub, MPs told

Where I live is a row of terrace houses with no off road parking so charging an EV in the evening while parked on the road is not a option. I would consider getting a hybrid car though that doesn't require direct charging and instead tops up the batteries using a small petrol engine. All my previous cars have been second hand as I cannot afford to buy brand new cars. But since there is no real second hand market yet for EVs, I am worried that running costs of a used EVs is going to be a lot more than a similar aged petrol car especially when they require the batteries replacing.

Google asked to take down 2.4 MEEELLION URLs under EU law

Re: This protection is good, but...

This protection is good, but...

[Quote]It doesn't solve the main issue: people should stop to think about the consequences of their own actions. Don't share stuff in public which you may regret later. In other words: try to understand what you're doing!

As said: this protection is good, but sometimes people should really clue up as well. For example: register with Google's webmaster tools and you don't need any official takedown requests: you can do them yourself (automated) because you've established to be the owner of the site.

Life can be so simple... If people try to understand what they're messing with.[/Quote]

I fail to see how registering with Google webmaster tools helps you to get Google to de-list say an article from your local newspaper website or pages from social media. Google webmaster tools lets you remove pages from your own websites from the Google listings, but not remove other websites links.

BBC Telly Tax heavies got pat on the head from snoopers' overseers

I don't mind paying a fee for ad free telly, It annoyed me when i had Sky that you paid a subscription and yet you still had to sit through adverts, often more frequent ad breaks that you had on free to view commercial channels.

There are some shows that I enjoy watching that would probably get axed if the BBC were to go commercial. Shows like Spring/Autumn watch would probably never survive in a world where the ad men dictate what programs are commissioned.

Use of HTTPS among top sites is growing, but weirdly so is deprecated HTTP public key pinning

Some of Ebay still on insecure HTTP rather than HTTPS, it takes me to http://bulksell.ebay.co.uk when i choose to do an advance listing rather than a basic listing

IPv6 and 5G will make life hell for spooks and cops say Australia's spooks and cops

These days virtually every shop and cafe, even in small towns offers some sort of free WiFi hotspot for its customers. These could easily to be used by people who want to commit criminal acts and keep their activity anonymous and I don't see them calling for bans on free wireless hotspots.

Comcast offers £22bn to snatch Sky from Rupert Murdoch

Apart from the Sports packages (If your into Sport) I fail to see anything worth paying for on Sky compared to what you could get with Freeview / Freesat and a Netflix subscription instead.

Thankfully the few Sports I do watch are available on Freeview atm, Snooker and the F1.

Nokia tribute band HMD revives another hit

"That could provide a cheap one-off way to register WhatsApp to run on my desktop."

Even at a price of 79 Euro that is quite expensive just to activate Whatsapp to run on your desktop. Much cheaper to just buy a used phone from Ebay or your local classified for under 20 quid, or even just buy a pre-paid SIM card and put it in your existing phone (if your phone has a SIM slot)

Intel didn't tell CERTS, govs, about Meltdown and Spectre because they couldn't help fix it

Another reason Intel spoke with Microsoft, Google and Amazon first is that these are some of the biggest purchasers of Intel CPU's and Intel didn't want to piss them off by not giving them the heads up, just in case they switched their datacentres to use AMD chips or even switch to ARM based SOC because they were not made aware of the flaw with advance notice.

The YouTube crackdown on fake news: Promoting bonkers Florida school shooting conspiracies

With automated systems there will always be ways to defeat them and this video shows it. Maybe the uploader bought a load of views and likes for the video to bump it up in the rankings or perhaps he just shared the video to it on some other high traffic website which got it a lot of views. It is not really Googles fault though, as soon as it was flagged it was removed.

Australia joins the 'decrypt it or we'll legislate' club

No matter whether you believe end to end encryption to be a good thing or a bad thing its too late to put the cat back in the bag now and say that the government can have a backdoor.

All this will do is allow the government to spy on innocent people or stupid criminals. Terrorist, criminals who really want there messages to stay encrypted will just switch to using software that has no backdoor.

Farewell, Android Pay. We hardly tapped you

If buying from a local shop or small business I always try to pay in cash, as it maybe more convenient to the customer to use contactless but the business owner has to pay merchant fees to Mastercard, Visa and Amex for the privilege of taking card payments. Which if you have just popped in and bought a can of pop and some crisps can be a big chunk of any profit the shop would make on the sale. Especially now they are legally no longer allowed to charge extra for card payments.

Use ad blockers? Mine some Monero to get access to news, says US site

Re: Ads

"How are sites getting revenue from ads these days? Is it what's shown or is it still what is clicked on?"

Its usually both, publishers can earn a few dollars per 1000 impressions of an ad without any clicks but will earn more revenue if the ads get click upon.

So by blocking the ads completely, even if you would have never clicked on them you are stopping the site from earning anything from your visit to their site. I can see more sites blocking you from access and requiring you to turn off adblockers to enter if revenues from ads continue to drop.

I know people will say "any site that won't let be view with my adblocker switched on i will not visit", but will they really be bothered by you not using their site and not gaining them any revenue?

The e-waste warrior, 28,000 copied Windows restore discs, and a fight to stay out of jail

"Arguing that a copy of Windows is essentially useless without a product key, and that all of the recycled machines had their own valid keys.."

Some might argue a copy of windows is essentially useless even with a product key.

But on a serious note, i have burned copies of Windows 7 OEM DVDs for people before when i have fixed their PCs that only came with a 'recovery partition' to reinstall the OS. Which is useless if the hard drive is knackard. Without the COA and product key the disc is essentially a coaster.

Crunch time: Maplin in talks to sell the business

Re: Staff not enthusiastic

"Went into my local branch for an SD card for my dashcam and the guy I spoke to quietly suggested that if I'm not desperate, go to Amazon and even pulled up the relevant item on his own phone on Amazon's site!"

Could be that the Maplins employee was running his own side business selling items on Amazon and that i why he was directing you to go there and buy. I wouldn't buy any SD cards from Amazon or Ebay again, there are loads of Chinese fakes for sale on these platforms that will report they are the correct size to the OS but after you have written about 8GB you files will start to disappear or corrupt. I got my fingers burnt with that one and will only buy from a reputable retailer now

Flight Simulator's DRM fighter nosedives into Chrome's cache

According to Flight Sims Labs pirates only use Chrome for a browser. I am sure freetards everywhere are no switching to Firefox and Edge.

Kentucky gov: Violent video games, not guns, to blame for Florida school massacre

I don't think within my lifetime the US will change their attitude on gun ownership, but there are areas where it could be improved. For a start the US requires people to be trained and pass a test before they can drive a car, yet as long as you have no criminal record and no history of mental illness you can buy a gun without any training, and kill a lot more people than with a car.

Perhaps all gun owners should be required to be given a set number of hours of training on the safe use of guns and pass a test to get an 'gun operators license'. No license and you can't own a gun. This should at least reduce the number of accidental shootings even it might not stop someone like the Florida shooter. But then again if the shooter had been monitored for a few hours in an environment around guns it might have shown up some signs of instability or recklessness and the shooting might have been prevented

Facebook's big solution to combating election ad fraud: Snail mail

'It isn't clear exactly how the system will work, but presumably it will be more complex than sending potential purchasers a postcard to an address they supply'

You reckon? I think this is exactly what it will be. I think your giving them way to much credit. It will be a simple send out a letter with a confirmation code to a US registered address, the recipient has to enter the code on the website to become verified.

*Wakes up in Chrome's post-adblockalyptic landscape* Wow, hardly anything's changed!

So pop ups are not allowed with the new Chrome ad block, but what about pop unders, where a new window or tab opens up in the background? Wouldn't suprise me if they are exempt as these are the type that usually have autoplaying videos in them

Mueller bombshell: 13 Russian 'troll factory' staffers charged with allegedly meddling in US presidential election

I am sure all 13 of the Russians are going to be extradited to the US to face these charges as well.

Only the one person will probably ever do any prison time over this, the American. And he was more than likely duped into accepting payments by the Russians, just as lots of people end up laundering money for criminal gangs get caught but the masterminds get away with it.

Hands up who HASN'T sued Intel over Spectre, Meltdown chip flaws

I guess it comes down to the fact that if for around 6 months Intel knowingly shipped defective products just to line their pockets, knowing that a patch to fix the flaw would cause the CPUs to become less effective.

Chrome adblockalypse will 'accelerate Google-Facebook duopoly'

There was a time when online adverts used to be static images or text and i have no problem with these type of ads. But then the admen got involved with internet ads and everything had to be animated with videos and sounds distracting you from the main content you were actually their to view, and using up precious bandwidth and CPU cycles. That is when i started to use adblockers.

Now i do visit El Reg often and was blocking ads by default but to help them out since i am usually using visiting from my laptop connected to WiFi i have unblocked the ads. I doubt i will ever click on any of the ads but they should still earn a few pennies from CPM just for having the ads displayed.

Microsoft's Windows 10 Workstation adds killer feature: No Candy Crush

For my mind all these games should have only been preinstalled on the Windows home editions anyway. Sure you got a few small games like minesweeper and solitaire games pre-installed on Windows 7 pro but if you then upgrade to Windows 10 Pro it adds a load more like Disney Magic Kingdoms and Candy Crush which takes up hundreds of MB of games on a supposedly 'Professional' edition of Windows.

Despite the headlines, Rudd's online terror takedown tool is only part of the solution

I am guessing the creators of this AI have not checked out some of the more nefarious black hat forums on the internet where there are entire threads on how to bypass the copyright filters used by Youtube and the like to upload copyrighted content without it getting flagged.

All that will happen now is that ISIS will start to use those black hat techniques to fool the AI and by pass the checks, resulting in ISIS videos making in through while lots of false positives will be held for moderation.

Roses are red, revenge is so sweet. Microsoft extracts a few quid from Corel Office Suite

It is a pity Microsoft won out on this one, I don't think it should be possible to copyright the laying out of a few icons in a certain order, it is hardly an original idea. It's just another way of MS protecting it's monopoly by not allowing competitors to make an office suite which allow users to easily switch without needing to learn a new UI.

Not cool, dude: Brit web host Hotchilli Internet freezes itself for good

I don't know how many existing customers Hotchilli has but i am sure if they had approached a competitor and asking if they would be willing to take over the hosting of Hotchilli customers websites, this would be better than just telling them to backup and move to another host.

Why aren't you being arbiters of truth? MPs scream at Facebook, YouTube, Twitter

Do MPs really expect social media sites to fact check every single piece of information that is posted on their platform?

If they legislate to make them publishers and are responsible for the content their users post they will probably just shut their UK offices and retreat back to the US, as there aren't enough moderators in the world to check the massive amount of posts, videos and photos uploaded to these sites everyday.

Home taping revisited: A mic in each hand, pointing at speakers

Myself and my mates were all keen bedroom DJs back in the 90s and the only way of recording our mixes was on cassette tapes. I also use to tape a lot of DJ mixes from the likes of Pete Tong, Stu Allan and Andy Roberts from the radio which I still have on cassette and I doubt these recording exist anywhere else these days. I dug all my tapes out a few months ago to digitise them and they are still waiting for me to hook up my Technics tape deck to record them onto my computer.

BT backs down from charging millions in phone book listing fees

They still have paper phone books?

Wish you could log into someone's Netgear box without a password? Summon a &genie=1

I still don't know why Netgear, Dlink etc don't use OpenWRT or similar on their devices rather than their own badly written crud.

As GDPR draws close, ICANN suggests 12 conflicting ways to cure domain privacy pains

The whois data was never really checked for accuracy anyway, they would send you an email every year to say 'is this info correct' but you could pretty much put in whatever you want and as long as your bill was paid when it was time for renewal most registrar's never gave a toss.

I always use the whois privacy option on .com and .net domains so i don't get spammed. Freenom don't charge any extra for this and their prices are reasonable rather than offering 1st year really cheap then ramping up the price for the 2nd year.

Unfortunately Nominet didn't allow privacy registrations for .co.uk domains when I registered my domain back in 200 (this may have changed now) and because of that the .co.uk domain gets loads spam about my domain expiring and even got some postal mail domain name scams because I had my home postal address linked to that site is published in the whois.

It took us less than 30 seconds to find banned 'deepfake' AI smut on the internet

Well not to worry as the UK is coming to the rescue and we won't be able to see any pr0n without the BBFC approving it first. So Mumsnet users let your kids run free on the internet and if they do see pr0n it's the government's fault not yours.

From July, Chrome will name and shame insecure HTTP websites

Where as any site where you enter personal information or login needs to be SSL secured, It is not needed for all websites. I visit some retro computing sites that remain on http to be compatible with old browsers on original hardware that don't support SSL/TLS and it will be annoying if Chrome makes me jump through hoops every time i want to visit them from my laptop. If i can't switch this off in Chrome I will be moving to another browser.

Intel adopts Orwellian irony with call for fast Meltdown-Spectre action after slow patch delivery

If the HP, Dell etc refused to provide the patch because your 'outside of warranty' you could return it under the sale of goods act to the place you originally purchased it as not fit for purpose, for up to 6 years in the EU i believe. I am sure if enough PCs got returned this way the PC sellers would put pressure on the manufactures to resolve the issue or they will stop selling their gear with Intel inside in favour of AMD or Arm systems.

Beware the looming Google Chrome HTTPS certificate apocalypse!

I wouldn't trust any Symantec software not just their certs. I have never known such a terrible company, they consistently manage to take a good product and make it into a steaming pile of crap.

Why is Bitcoin fscked? Here are three reasons: South Korea, India... and now China clamps down on cryptocurrencies

Even fiat currencies can get undermined by rogue states or criminals. If enough fake cash is created and distributed then people loose confidence in the currency and the value of the real money get's devalued.

It has happened before, Germany had virtually flawless counterfeit US dollars and British pound notes at the end of WW2 but never got around to circulating them in large numbers. It's also believe that North Korea is behind better than the original copies of US $100 notes called the 'supernote'.

Skype for Biz users: Go watch nature vids. Microsoft wants you to get good at migration

Just what businesses want, to have to keep migrating to new products when MS get bored and decide that they will release something new to replace the thing that was new only a couple of years ago.

2017 tablet market trended towards torpor

"Microsoft certainly has high hopes for its efforts, not least because they’ll be sold through telcos with a data plan and offer battery life said to be an order of magnitude beyond that of current tablets"

Other than them having bigger batteries that iPads or Android tablets i fail to see how Windows ARM tablets will offer that much better battery life, even with a custom designed SOC just for Windows on Arm i doubt it is going to be that much of an improvement

Lloyds Bank bans Bitcoin purchases by credit card customers

What next from your bank?

No using your card to purchase booze, cigarettes, fast food as these could all kill you and we need your interest payments to keep paying out big fat bonuses?

Peers approve Brit film board as pr0n overlords despite concerns

Who uses a credit card to view pr0n these days anyway?

Even the new stuff from p0rn site is available on forums within hours of it being published on the pay websites to download for free. Or just type whatever fetish your in to on Google images and let it come back with 1000s of hits

All this is going to do is create load of phishing sites that look like naughtyspankglrls.com but with a fake age verification page to harvest credit card details.

And unless the BBFC are suddenly taking on 1000s of new staff to monitor the millions of sites that peddle smut online there is no way they will be able to keep any sort of list up to date.

CableLabs signs off MAC spec for DOCSIS full duplex

Re: What difference does it make what wifi router you put on it?

"I can run a school with 500 pupils off a 100Mbit leased line. But every member of staff probably has 75-100Mbps connections to their home"

I remember back about 15 years ago i was called out to a problem at a school site which had about 500 pupils and their internet was a 128 kilobit ISDN connection for the whole site, including the staff. To fix their issue I needed to download a service pack which came in at a few hundred megabyes in size. I worked out it was quicker to go home (a 40 minute round trip) and download it on my home cable internet connection put it on a USB drive and then go back than continue to wait for it to download on the schools internet connection.

No Windows 10, no Office 2019, says Microsoft

This is clearly a way of MS trying to sell more Window 10 upgrades as I doubt there is any technical reason why Office 2019 couldn't run on Windows 7. And i bet someone will work how out to do it when it eventually arrives.

As others have pointed out, other than the fact there are no support for the older Office versions there is usually little worth upgrading to a new version of Office for most users.

Should ISPs pay to block pirate websites? Supreme Court to decide

Does blocking even make any difference to people buying from these counterfeit goods websites? I doubt it. As soon as the ISP block one domain name the scammers can have another one online in hours. Look at how effective blocking The Pirate Bay has been, I just typed 'The Pirate bay' into Google and the first link i clicked on took me straight there, even though it is supposed to be blocked.

Although i don't used my ISP's DNS servers so perhaps this is why i can get to it.

Fella faked Cisco, Microsoft gear death – then sold replacement kit for millions, say Feds

I never understood the US legal system and their sentence lengths, unless the US government thinks that that superheroes or aliens are actually among us who live for centuries, why bother given sentences of hundreds of years for a crime?

Intel alerted Chinese cloud giants 'before US govt' about CPU bugs

Since 2 different security teams discovered the bugs it seems very likely the NSA knew about it before the announcement, they probably had malware that took advantage of it but as with all the other flaws they discoverer they wouldn't have informed the vendors when they discovered it as they want to keep it for their own use as long as possible.