Posts by teebie

UK data watchdog sees its approach to government health tech during COVID-19 outbreak as 'pragmatic'

Re: What?

Mandatory reporting means companies know that they are breached they will be found out, so they make at least token efforts to secure our data.

I may be being optimistic.

Nuisance call-blocking firm fined £170,000 for making almost 200,000 nuisance calls

"188,493 unsolicited direct marketing calls" "helped 12,000 customers "

Congratulations, that's an almost -1,500% success rate.

eBay ex-security boss sent down for 18 months for cyber-stalking, witness tampering

An excess of caution

"alleged involvement in a scheme to threaten and silence Ina and David Steiner:

Do you need the "alleged" after 5 people have pleaded guilty?

Re: What about EBAY

5 Did they submit an expenses form for "severed head of a fetal pig" and if so why didn't this raise a red flag?

DevOps still 'rarely done well at scale' concludes report after a decade of research

'Highly evolved means frequent deployments, very short lead time for application changes ("less than an hour"), quick response to failures ("less than an hour")'

If the application I was using before lunch might not be the same as the application I am using after lunch then I'm not going to want to use that application.

Re: I dunno, I'm going out on a limb here

Any true scotsman would agree with you

Compsci student walks off with $50,000 after bug bounty report blows gaping hole in Shopify software repos

Re: Generosity

If the token for nefarious purposes, it could well do more than 50k of damages, but earn less than 50k for the attacker, so generosity seems smart here.

I'm not sure about "give us a call when you finish studying" - if they said that then why is Zanellato cunningly slipping bits of their CV into interviews?

England's controversial extraction of personal medical histories from GP systems is delayed for a second time

Ok, so you have to imagine what Priti Patel's also evil twin would use it for.

Where on Gartner's Hype Cycle is Gartner's Hype Cycle?

I've heard a lot about WAP in the last year or two. Maybe it has a secondary meaning.

Report: 83% of UK software engineers suffer burnout, COVID-19 made it worse

Re: Agile methodology

"A methodology can never be agile because a methodology is a set of rules that you must follow"

It's a methodology about how to do agile developing, not a methodology that is necessarily agile itself. In the same way that most hat salesmen aren't hats.

It does seem to add to the admin though, I can't argue with that.

UK's data watchdog probes use of private email to discuss government business at the Department of Health

Re: open goal I should imagine

His full name is Mathaniel

UK health secretary Matt Hancock follows delay to GP data grab with campaign called 'Data saves lives'

Re: how do you stop it being used?

Does that do both the GP opt-out and the non-GP opt out, or just one of them? Or is the the old opt-out process, which won't apply to the process being discussed?

It's almost as if things are deliberately being made confusing .

UK government bows to pressure, agrees to delay NHS Digital grabbing the data of England's GP patients

Re: Accidental naming coincidence

Like the postcode lottery? Or the health lottery?

UK Computer Misuse Act convictions declined last year despite pandemic explosion in online criminal activity

"This data shows the increase in crime over the last year clearly isn't leading to more prosecutions"

If the acts being carried out are already crimes, then the problem with a lack of convictions isn't that the law is wrong, its that resources aren't being put toward upholding the law.

Beyond video to interactive, personalised content: BBC is experimenting with rebuilding its iPlayer in WebAssembly

That's a lot of words to say "As requested by nobody, we're going to ruin iPlayer for TV, just like we did for radio".

NHS Digital booking website had unexpected side effect: It leaked people's jab status

Re: Was it set up for a fat fee

Presumably this is the Accurx system (the description matches the accurx system I used, and it has an NHS address).

The Accurx directors are 30-40 years old, but I don't know if they got the contract through the normal tendering process (in other words, I don't know if they are Matt Hancock's neighbors)

There is no escape: Atlassian to send Jira into places only Excel dares to tread

Sorry to disagree with everyone, but I don't think that JIRA is very good.

39 Post Office convictions quashed after Fujitsu evidence about Horizon IT platform called into question

Re: Puzzled about error distribution?

Some or all of it could be behaviour related.

For instance the bug listed in the comment where logging off before a transaction is completed - a post master who diligently logged off when they finished might trigger this, whereas one who left themselves permanently logged in wouldn't.

UK.gov wants mobile makers to declare death dates for their new devices from launch

Re: Default Passwords

I did think that "publishing" was the wrong verb for that sentence.

They should be banned from having a default password across a class of devices.

NHS COVID-19 app update blocked by Apple, Google over location privacy fears

"the agreement the NHS signed with them"

I thought the NHS had nothing to do with 'NHS track and trace', and that the name was just a branding exercise to get people to trust the app?

So why is there a contact signed by the NHS?

UK terror law reviewer calls for expanded police powers to imprison people who refuse to hand over passwords

"use of section 49 by CT Police is likely to be rare indeed."

credulous simpleton

With Nominet’s board-culling vote just days away, we speak to one man who will publicly support the management

Re: Divorce after every argument?

I was going to say yes you do, if they spent years not listening to you and then one day sewed your e mouth shut.

AC's answer is more thorough.

California bans website 'dark patterns', confusing language when opting out of having your personal info sold

adding unnecessary steps

Currently we have a choice between "opting out is too much work, I'll let them see my stuff" and "opting out isn't worth it, I'll not read the page/kill the popup with developer tools"

Making the changes doesn't force the nobbers into "opting out isn't worth it" or "opting in isn't worth it". There is the option of adding a user friendly on/off switch. Was this objection written by somebody in a daytime TV advert demonstrating how hard it is to use a vaccum cleaner?

I'm surprised nobody has made a browser extension for autofilling the forms for the worst offenders.

Smart doorbells on business premises make your property more attractive to burglars, warns researcher

Re: It's not cool or trendy, but it'll make a real difference

"I'd expect a pro to have what they need already."

But a pro would know they don't want to be carrying a crowbar with them when they are stopped by police.

(I...maybe be overestimating how much pre-planning goes into household burglaries)

MPs slam UK's £22bn Test and Trace programme for failing to provide evidence that it slows COVID pandemic

Re: Testing in general...

Testing the same people again and again can be sensible - for example, we want to continually check if care home workers have the virus.

The word 'abysmal' certainly belongs in a description of track and trace, though.

UK to introduce new laws and a code of practice for police wanting to rifle through mobile phone messages

"part of a questionable response to a Crown Prosecution Service scandal where police and prosecutors had deliberately withheld evidence from courts"

Surely the correct response to that is to jail the offenders? Perverting the course of justice maybe?

Day 5 of Openreach strikes: No use of tech company toilets. No water. Fresh dates outlined

"The attempt to undermine our dispute with false numbers is embarrassing..."

Ouch, that reply would have been much more convincing if it had numbers in it.

The wastepaper basket is on the other side of the office – that must be why they put all these slots in the computer

Re: Whoops mind your head if there is a fire, and dont trip

Of course, then the rooms on either have access to the fire extinguisher when they inevitably catch fire due to being populated by the sort of people who prop fire doors open with fire extinguishers

Web prank horror: Man shot dead while pretending to rob someone at knife-point for a YouTube video

Re: Born idiots. All of 'em.

The twitter joke trial? He didn't do the same, he made a stupid tweet that nobody involved considered to be a credible threat.

AI clocks first-known 'binary sextuply-eclipsing sextuple star system'. Another AI will be along shortly to tell us how to pronounce that properly

How would there be a binary system that wasn't a binary eclipsing system? Surely one star is always eclipsing the other from a certain viewpoint.

UK ISP TalkTalk ready to go PrivatePrivate, says yes to £1.1bn takeover offer

I don't get it. When you are taken over by private equity the quality of your customer service is supposed to drop. I don't know how Talktalk will manage to achieve this.

Up yours, Europe! Our 100% prime British broadband is cheaper than yours... but also slower and a bit of a rip-off

"more than 96 per cent of the UK can access superfast broadband services but more than 40 per cent currently choose not to"

Maybe things would change if you actually sent the engineers out when you made a sodding appointment.

(I could add more, but you get the gist)

Re: New builds

Hancock is the one most likely to have bought a really expensive alarm system that is completely inappropriate for his needs.

He thinks technology is wonderful, but doesn't know what it is.

Top doctors slam Google for not backing up incredible claims of super-human cancer-spotting AI

Google Flu Trends

Google also claimed they could predict where flu outbreaks would be, and they couldn't. Throwing the term 'AI' on top of the false claim doesn't make it any more true.

UK govt advert encouraging re-skilling for cyber jobs implodes spectacularly

Re: Those raising issue at the outrage.

It may be related to the f word in the bottom twitter screenshot.

(It's hard to give a civil reply when the answer is 'fucking')

DuckDuckGo cries fowl after being expunged from Google's Android search preferences menu for most of Europe

..and doing better than Bing?

Securus sued for 'recording attorney-client jail calls, handing them to cops' – months after settling similar lawsuit

Re: Intent

Difference crimes require different levels of intent. Some are strict liability, some require intent, others require intent or recklessness.

And criminal law and civil law have different rules.

UK govt reboots A Level exam results after computer-driven fiasco: Now teacher-predicted grades will be used after all

Re: We don't need no education

That document shows that there isn't much difference between school types (see figure 3. why they say there is a good deal of variation is beyond me). In particular all school types are more likely to overpredict by 2 grades than get the right grade, and all school types are more likely to overpredict by 1 grades than get the right grade

Detroit Police make second wrongful facial-recog arrest when another man is misidentified by software

"It released statistics that showed average scores were actually higher compared to last year's, and that the distribution of grades was similar to last year's results too."

That's what would happen if that what the software was trained to do. It doesn't mean the right grades were given to the right person.

Ex-CEO of fintech biz Wirecard arrested over missing money: Vanished €1.9bn may not have existed in the first place

Re: Wow. €26bn lost in two years

exactly what investors will pay for it is the price of a company, not the value.

Someone got so fed up with GE fridge DRM – yes, fridge DRM – they made a whole website on how to bypass it

Re: Entirely legal

Whirlpool's kitchen heaters are surprisingly effective. I don't understand why they market them as washing machines.

Nine in ten biz applications harbor out-of-date, unsupported, insecure open-source code, study shows

"Ninety-one percent of the audited applications had components that are either four years out of date or have exhibited no active development for two years."

So if a component already works and nobody is mucking about with it then that is a bad thing?

UK finds itself almost alone with centralized virus contact-tracing app that probably won't work well, asks for your location, may be illegal

Re: I know you are lying* I just don't know how much

"Ping" could well be ignorance, not dishonesty. He probably heard the term - possibly from one of the maker of his privacy-and-security-disaster app - and has been using it incorrectly ever since. In this case to mean 'contacts a server, which contacts other phones.

In Hancock's defence he often displays astonishing ignorance, so this isn't too farfetched.

I am not a defence lawyer.

Aussie immunology legend consults Twitter for his local off-licence opening hours

What started as a great insightful comment was ultimately ruined by the addition of a question mark

We're in a timeline where Dettol maker has to beg folks not to inject cleaning fluid into their veins. Thanks, Trump

Hello, yes please, I would like to take medical advice from the man who doesn't know the word for 'brain'.

Vivaldi browser to perform a symphony of ad and tracker blocking with version 3.0

Re: El Reg ads

I don't think this will work.

The thing about loo roll is, over a long scale the overall demand is steady, so there is no incentive for the manufacturers to change how much they are making.

Food goes off, so the amount used in a year increases if it is panic bought. Hand sanitiser and masks get used more in a panic, but people don't fundamentally alter their bum output based on a respiratory disease.

GrubHub, DoorDash, Postmates and Uber Eats sued by hangry, overcharged coronavirus customers

Re: "We are going to be very strong on food supply."

I'm not sure about pissing themselves, but it may well involve somebody pissing someone.

Ofcom waves DAB radio licences under local broadcasters' noses as FM switchoff debate smoulders again

Re: Needs a big rethink

"a trend whose time came and went."

I'm not sure DAB's time ever came

Microsoft spares TLS 1.0 in Azure DevOps Services after customer backlash, Cosmos DB makes good on blurtage

Citing "early feedback from some customers," Redmond has said the deprecation is off for the time being.

The feedback being "we are devops, we don't do security, stop trying to make us improve ourselves"

Fire Brigades Union warns of wonky IT causing dangerous delays in 999 control rooms

Re: "Capita software"

They aren't very good with computers.