Posts by Dan 55

BOOM! Cambridge Analytica explodes following extraordinary TV expose

Re: Proves nothing really

Well be a sweet and watch the C4 News item. It's included in the article.

Re: Proves nothing really

Is there anything they said that didn't happen? It was all recorded.

"His team of 120 is down to 3 people"

Another Facebook employee whose job it was to investigate data breaches also left. He went to somewhere where he could work with a clear conscience... Uber.

If Facebook is worse than Uber God knows what they get up to in there. No wonder they all walked, their job is completely pointless.

Re: I really can't stand facebook

There is an option in WhatsApp to delete your account. It might even work too.

US cops go all Minority Report: Google told to cough up info on anyone near a crime scene

Re: You are aware that...

Cell tower logs are not as precise as location services which gets data from GPS, nearby WiFi, and nearby Bluetooth.

Re: Possibilities

Because Google slurp anything and everything, in all their apps, because it's in their nature.

And that is probably why Google Play Services has no location permission toggle, you have to go to location in settings instead. Notice that that screen says nothing about Google Play Services' location permissions.

No, Stephen Hawking's last paper didn't prove the existence of a multiverse

Re: Awesome

Having more than one universe however, makes perfect sense to me. We're always blabbing about how unfathomably huge our universe is, but huge is such a subjective word, as our universe is only big from our perspective. In the grand scheme of existence, our universe may in fact be very, very small and in that context it's no great leap to imagine that if one universe could spawn, why not more?

Men in Black already has the answer to that.

Samsung’s DeX dock clicks the second time around

I guess the dock is a powered USB hub so you can plug in a mouse and keyboard and charge the phone, but by making the dock obligatory it's just an excuse to sell more hardware.

The N8 allowed HDMI to TV, you could plug a keyboard or mouse in with USB OTG (never tried a hub with both but I guess it worked), and you could power it with a charger while you worked as it used the Nokia charger port to charge.

The "only" thing that was missing was a desktop GUI, but it shows how little we've progressed in eight years.

Windows 10 to force you to use Edge, even if it isn't default browser

Re: That will be an improvement

Security updates arrive monthly on LTSB and it seems an eminently sensible way of avoiding most of the TIFKAM crap.

Re: Fucking idiots

Well there is a difference, if they hadn't announced it I doubt anyone would have noticed, even so it's the thin end of the wedge.

Re: Perfect timing

I don't know who would seriously consider Windows 10's Mail app. It's a TIFKAM app, where does it store the local mailbox and in what format if you want to take an archive copy?

The latest few versions of macOS bug you a bit if it's not Safari though.

Facebook confirms Cambridge Analytica harvested profile data

Re: Fake News!!

Facebook's got the data, they should make sure that anyone who uses their API has the right to get at that data.

If Facebook were so clever, they would have managed to make a big matrix of from-to countries by now so they can automatically deny data to people who shouldn't have it, unless they've previously applied to Facebook showing they've got Privacy Shield or something.

Airbus CIO: We dumped Microsoft Office not over cost but because Google G Suite looks sweet

Re: Courageous

Read the entire page, not just the title at the top.

Re: Courageous

Linux in Munich: 'No compelling technical reason to return to Windows,' says city's IT chief

Re: Courageous

I'm head of infrastructure for a FTSE 250 financial and apparently the only one of us that knows what he is talking about

Indeed.

https://support.google.com/a/answer/40057?hl=en

There you go, bulk add/edit with a CSV file and you can mangle that any which way you want with any language you want. Even with PowerShell for Linux if you're feeling masochistic.

Re: Courageous

Seeing as they wasted ~ €100 million on that project its of public interest.

It's not wasted, it works, it saved licence fees. Now they're wasting money switching to back completely to MS. There's some kind of cosy relationship between MS, Accenture, and the mayor. That's in the public interest.

Re: Courageous

If your AD forest goes down but nobody's using an MS Office suite, would anybody notice in the first place?

"no scripts like Powershell"

Sign me up!

"no support for GDPR"

You could at least try a bit harder. Anyone who knows how to search the Internet knows that's bollocks.

Nest reveals the first truly connected home

Did you ask Dave what he thought about that?

With the company's smart IQ technology, it may even be able to tell you "Dave is at the door" thanks to facial-recognition.

What should happen - you'll have to check if your in idIoT doorbell is compliant with GDPR in case Dave doesn't want to be slurped and stored in a Silly Valley data centre.

What will happen instead - idIoT doorbells will connect to your Facebook photo feed to automatically find out who's there.

I don't think Kieren is the right reviewer for this kind of tech. They are nice toys but the reviews need someone who will only dole out grudging praise if the security aspect is done right so readers can protect themselves from the oncoming privacy apocalypse. As far as I know, only Ikea does that (it works on a LAN without a connection to the outside world).

Brexit in spaaaace! At T-1 year and counting: UK politicos ponder impact

there's no reason we can't keep that role

Apart from the reasons given in the article, no...

UK.gov urged to ensure punters can 'still roam like at home' after Brexit

Re: Ha

Which is solved by either a soft border (a lie) or a trade agreement (requires the EU to agree).

This is the crux of it. The EU and Canada and the EU and Korea have a trade agreement but you've forgotten there's a hard border between them. So no, it's not solved by a trade agreement as a trade agreement would allow different tariffs and rules between the UK and EU but having no border makes a mockery of the trade agreement.

I don't know what "a soft border (a lie)" means but in any case there cannot be any otherwise that's a contravention of the GFA.

So the solution is the same regulatory environment in NI as there is in Ireland. That means either a special agreement for NI (or the whole of the UK) to mirror SM and CU rules or it means NI (or the whole of the UK) staying in the EEA/EFTA.

Hope you now understand.

Re: Ha

Then the problem is solved, they can remove their demand for a hard border (it is their demand) and either a soft border (a lie) can be agreed on or a trade agreement just for Ireland to deal with the unique situation. The EU demanding a border while the UK and both halves of Ireland dont want a border puts a dent in your statement the EU dont want one.

Of course Ireland doesn't want a border, a border means dead people. The UK says it doesn't want a border and says it doesn't want dead people either, but if that were really true it wouldn't insist at the same time on the right to set different tariffs and standards on the island of Ireland which implies a border.

No no no and no. To assume this is the UKs issue is to be wrong. Not just possibly wrong but outright wrong. It is the EU demanding a border, it is the EU's problem. Otherwise it is solved.

The British government has decided it wanted the impossible and you agree with it. You, like the British government, completely fail to address the tariff/standards divergence issue which means a border is necessary. Pretending the border is not there while there is tariff and standards divergence creates a opportunity for illegal activity and contravenes WTO rules. Neither you nor the UK government have the option of thinking happy thoughts to make a squadron of flying unicorns come and take the problem away.

You and the British government have to decide what you like more:

a) trading in the same regulatory environment on the island of Ireland (or the entire UK) or

b) a return of the troubles

That's the choice. Why don't you tell us here what you want?

Re: Ha

I never said it required some fancy IT. Actually what I clearly stated was it requires only the EU (as the only party to want a border) to change its mind.

The government says it requires fancy IT.

The EU don't want a border, the fact is there must be a border otherwise goods could be imported to the UK then go over the NI border without paying the difference in tariffs or lower standard goods could be imported into the UK then go over the border and be illegal inside the EU. If you argue against that then you're arguing against logic.

This is why the EU and the UK agreed in December that the GFA must be upheld in all circumstances, deal or no deal. If the GFA is not upheld then that would imply a border. So, the ball is in the UK's court, they have to come up with a solution which respects the GFA and means no border will have to be implemented.

Most people believe that means no divergence from the other side of the border on the island of Ireland, and believe it doesn't mean a magic IT system as the government propose.

Re: Ha

You can't leave a customs union because you want to diverge on tariffs and standards yet say you want free access to the same customs union (i.e. no border controls) which means you have to follow its tariffs and standards. Nobody has done it in the world yet because it can't be done and some magic unspecified IT system won't change the fact that it is fundamentally impossible.

Also, you don't see any other country in the world leaving their trading bloc because they claim it prevents them from trading with countries the other side of the world.

Fermi famously asked: 'Where is everybody?' Probably dead, says renewed Drake equation

Re: What I'm looking forward to

What we'd need is kind of ship which can travel through time and relative dimensions in space so we could go to Earth's signal event horizon and watch the lost episodes of Doctor Who.

I'll get my coat and stripey scarf.

Transport for NSW scrambles to patch servers missing fixes released in 2007

Don't you just love these multinationals that pocket billions and behind the scenes on every project it's two or three overworked staff barely keeping the thing going, while marketing just sold the cure to cancer which will be ready in six months and suddenly staff need to be taken off other projects to come up with that too.

Remember information-centric networking? It's on the way back

The Netflix example is just a CDN

It's not the holy grail of a URI identifying the piece of data, the browser connecting to the fastest server to get it, and changes to it being replicated across all copies.

It's Pi day: Care to stuff a brand new Raspberry one in your wallet?

Can't tell if I was downvoted because of the typo (it should be FLIRC) or downvoted because it didn't work for some people. Seems to work okay for me.

You either need a HUGE heatsink or the f-word (fan). Downclocking does not help unless you downclock it all the way to 600 which defeats the purpose of havinga 1200MHz CPU in the first place.

Buy a FIRC case.

Re: Dates

It wouldn't be so bad if the formats were mutually exclusive but some American dates work with some rest of the damn world dates and vice versa which causes no end of problems.

Excel oh how I hate thee. It's half aware that countries outside the US exist, but only aware enough to screw up dates even more. If it said, "no, everything's MM/DD/YYY" then at least you'd know where you stand, but the "let me guess the date format only I'm not telling you I'm doing that" thing is useless.

Mozilla sends more snooping Web APIs to smartphone Siberia

Re: The trend is more worrying than the security risks themselves

Websites cannot be treated as similar to signed apps from registered developers made available from one source after being verified. There's too much scope for XSS, malvertising, DNS hijacking, the website being exploited, or a third party website which supplies fonts, JS or CSS being DNS hijacked or exploited.

Re: The trend is more worrying than the security risks themselves

Removing them is basically admitting that the browser vendor has no idea how to offer these features in a way that allows safe usage and/or user consent.

Permission-based systems for native apps rely on a lot of filtering beforehand by Apple and Google and it still doesn't really work. If Apple have a galleon of slaves to vet app store uploads and Google can't properly vet everything in the Play Store, why offer these options to every website in the world?

Re: But my Calculator App

That's good, mine also needs the Internet, phone ID, and contacts.

London Mayor calls for social networks and sharing economy to stop harming society

Re: The problem it's personal, take people off Twitter and Facebook

What about Tillerson getting fired hours after criticising Russia, eh? Something just a little odd there, don't you think?

Re: increasing social division and nativist populism

Web the leader of the free world flings shit via Twitter, something's gone wrong somewhere.

The problem it's personal, take people off Twitter and Facebook

I doubt any politician really needs a Twitter or Facebook account. If it were just the London Assembly posting dry and faceless policy messages, it'd hugely cut back on personal attacks. Repeat that for every organisation or business.

Finland government buys a slice of Nokia

Re: Are they crazy?

They didn't invest, they took it over. It's a key sector as any you could name and ARM is corporation responsible for the CPUs in most of the devices on the planet. The UK should have blocked the takeover.

Note, not nationalise it or whatever some people here think that means.

Are they crazy?

They should just let Nokia get taken over then let the new owner sell stakes to other funds... Like the UK did with ARM.

Keep Calm and Carillion: Outsourcers seek image rebrand after UK construction firm crash

No ideas what to do?

Launch an advertising campaign!

IBM thinks Notes and Domino can rise again

Re: Interface Hall of Shame

But sites like this have been scrubbed from the web. How soon people forget and make the same mistakes again...

Tim Berners-Lee says regulation of the web may be needed

Re: Don't let the Gummint get involved

"Start Page by ixquick....enhanced by Google"

Just go to ixquick.eu which is not enhanced by Google.

Now about escosia.org where your web search helps plant trees?

He dared to suggest that there could be another way to keep servers up other than advertising (that bit wasn't mentioned in El Reg). There's got to be merit to that.

UK digi minister Hancock suggests Facebook and pals give your kids a time-out

He should just go for an Internet ID card. Works for China, apparently.

Re: PIcking Holes In This Idea

He's not thinking of the children. He's just making COPPA part of UK law, as if any better alternative weren't possible.

A smartphone recession is coming and animated poo emojis can't stop it

Re: Umm.... wtf?

Assuming maths has anything to do with programming, which is a big assumption to make. Logic is more of an IT thing.

Re: "Phone makers had banked they could compensate for slowing volume by pushing up prices"

I have yet to see any evidence that cheap-shit phones are subsidised. They're not sold at a loss, phone manufacturers aren't NGOs.

Defra to MPs: There's no way Brexit IT can be as crap as rural payments

Re: quite the contrary

Yup. Leaving the Eurozone would help with that too. But as you point out the short term pain may be too scary for a long term remedy.

Italy would just do what it always did, devalue and carry on as before, until it's time to devalue again.

The Ataribox lives, as a prototype, supposedly

Re: Problems all around

Make the games' 2 player option work multiplayer over the net and they'd probably end up selling quite a bit.

It's rumoured Nintendo will do this with the Switch.

Slack cuts ties to IRC and XMPP, cos they don't speak Emoji

Re: Slack? IRC?

Our money has already moved to MS Teams / SfB. If you use O365 it's a no brainer.

The no-brainers are the company behind these pair of ridiculous products. I thought nothing could out-crap Lync (SfB), but then I saw Teams.

Got some broken tech? Super Cali's trinket fix-it law brought into focus

Re: "Apple is the only poster child for destructive repair monopolies"

Strange obsession with not having to pay whatever the manufacturer wants, or declare it unfixable and your only solution is a new one, or destroying the environment with an avalanche of landfill? You're right, it's madness.