Posts by Dan 55

Rattled toymaker VTech's data breach case exiting legal pram

Why would you need to prove ID theft?

And was there no fine for Vtech from US authorities after data for 5 million USAns (2.9 million children) was leaked?

I did find this which proves that Vtech are scum.

Frustrated Britons struggle to locate their packages: Royal Mail tracker smacked

Re: Craptastic

You'll be able to check it on GLS' website after it's been scanned the first time by them.

"Hi Royal Mail, where the hell is my expensive 4K TV delivery KK...GB?"

"Well now your name and address has been deduced from social media and someone purporting to be you collected it this morning at 10am with fake ID, I don't know. That'll teach you to publically post stuff you shouldn't."

Video games used to be an escape. Now not even they are safe from ads

You get both. A lot of games use AdMob.

And who can forget Zool (Chupachups).

Re: This is nothing...

The PEGI rating for Warface doesn't include gambling, so these things may be slipping under the radar.

How many times can Microsoft kill Mobile?

Nothing follows

You need hardware to run an OS on, there isn't that hardware and as a result the OS platform is burned.

The only thing they could possibly have a go at is a UWP runner on iOS and Android, and that would fail too.

German Firefox users to test recommendation engine 'a bit like thought-reading'

Re: Missing poll answer

Firefox ESR will catch up with the stupid soon enough. June 2018, Firefox 52 ESR ends, and then you're stuck with 59, with all of the stupid changes they will add for three more versions. It's a stop-gap at best.

Not to worry, by then the planet will be a pile of smouldering rubble.

Re: Screenshot Beta embedded into Firefox, records Audio?

It's apparently been brought across from the developer version of Firefox and tarted up.

I'm not sure why they get rid of Tab Groups saying metrics say nobody uses it, then they put this in which probably even fewer people will use.

Obviously as this is an IT site you can, it's not an xor.

There's not much money in that though.

There might have been if they'd stuck to their guns with Firefox OS for TVs.

Perhaps they could push a tip jar, either teaming up with one (or more) or making their own. They could scrape a small commission, and it would do something about the stranglehold that advertising has on the web.

Missing poll answer

- I've already buggered off to Firefox ESR.

Microsoft's foray into phones was a bumbling, half-hearted fiasco, and Nadella always knew it

Re: I didn't understand the phone market, so I exited it.

Why is he still updating Windows 10 Mobile if he's pulled out of hardware? There's no point having an OS for hardware that doesn't exist.

If he is exiting the mobile business then he should exit it. If he isn't he should announce what he's doing with mobile devices before everyone writes MS off completely.

Blade Runner 2049 review: Scott's vision versus Villeneuve's skill

Re: Another awful reboot like Prometheus...

Ok, spoilers:

The whole Xenomorph race being the product of a demented robot? Engineers who might have perhaps travelled the galaxy seeding and destroying life being reduced to a bunch of villagers getting wiped out by a demented robot? It's bollocks and it ruins both films.

Re: Ruined by fan service and truly awful product placement

Isn't that par for the course now? If you take your kids to a Pixar film, the whole family will leave with their ears bleeding.

I'm not sure who to blame, the film producers or the cinema. Probably both.

Re: Another awful reboot like Prometheus...

Well if you quite enjoyed Prometheus, whatever you do don't watch the sequel.

Online criminal records checks to take a punt on troubled Verify system

Isn't that HMRC's fail? People need to verify their ID, it's up to HMRC to join the dots between them or decide on their roles.

Microsoft silently fixes security holes in Windows 10 – dumps Win 7, 8 out in the cold

Re: Perhaps money will talk louder:

That was Ballmer's promise, not Satnad's.

In the brave new cloudy agile world, if it's older than last week then it's out of date.

Avast urges devs to secure toolchains after hacked build box led to CCleaner disaster

Re: XcodeGhost again, cmon people!

There's a difference, Piriform was hacked and their official download was compromised and end users had no reason to suspect, XCodeGhost was an obviously unofficial version which end users (app developers) downloaded knowingly ignoring possible malware issues because it downloaded faster than from Apple's server.

Microsoft Edge shock: Browser opts for Apple WebKit, Google Blink

Re: "Microsoft said it hasn't ported its EdgeHTML engine"

Far fewer headaches!

In this case it doesn't, as it's just a WebKit wrapper.

And who the hell would prefer Edge's UI either? The entire thing, rendering engine and user interface, is an abomination.

Dumb bug of the week: Apple's macOS reveals your encrypted drive's password in the hint box

Problem's with DiskUtility, not ADFS

They seem to have given DiskUtility to a succession of work experience kids. After all, it doesn't do anything important.

The other problem is their QA is bordering on nonexistent.

Facebook, Google, Twitter are the shady bouncers of the web. They should be fired

Re: Good observation, wrong selection of facts

The great British Brexit robbery: how our democracy was hijacked

Re: Double-talk

If the first thing that happens after Las Vegas on YouTube is conspiracy theories and fake news and the algorithms in YouTube Kids select the sketchiest videos imaginable, their algorithms are shit.

Google needs to drop the "because algorithms" defence, and realise that publishing is actually quite an expensive business. The can't have it both ways. If they reap billions from adverts then they can cough up the money to moderate them.

They automatically generate subtitles for each video uploaded. People flagging one video usually means the rest of the channel is probably dodgy too. It's not beyond the wit of man to get rid of most of the harmful stuff instead of letting it fester there.

Newspaper/website comment sections aren't real social media. They don't have half the features that a true social media site has.

That's what I keep telling myself.

I wonder if US Customs agrees with that.

Here's a gentle guide to building JavaScript AI in web browsers. Totally not a scary thing

Re: This being Google, how much data does it send back to them?

It's a good question. After all, Google Voice was only made so Google could get voice recognition samples for later services. They don't give this stuff away for free.

Mozilla extends, and ends, Firefox support for Windows XP and Vista

Re: Dead as a doorhinge

Why not run Linux which is updated?

But if it's going to XP, you can google "xp lockdown" just as well as I can.

Here lies Firefox ESR 52.x.x: Sep 2002-Jun 2018

The last true Firefox, the one with NPAPI, XUL extensions, and CTR.

We shall remember it always and never see its like again.

Oh for a gravestone icon.

HP Inc exec: Yes, we'll put a bullet in the X3 device

Re: HP... A mere shadow

I'm sure HP of the past would have managed to update it to Android.

All it needs is an RDP app to use their cloudy desktop. We're not even talking Samsung's version of Continuum, although that would be nice too.

Samsung's better at software than HP. That's pretty bad.

Hollywood has savaged enough sci-fi classics – let's hope Dick would dig Blade Runner 2049

One of the short films is set in the wrong year or the published timeline is wrong.

link

Can't get the staff these days.

DeepMind now has an ethics unit – which may have helped when it ate 1.6m NHS patient details

Re: climate change campaigner Christiana Figueres

Must be one of Trump's latest additions to the team.

Legacy clearout? Not all at once, surely. Keeping tech up to snuff in an SMB

Re: One model of PC or laptop?

A short while ago Dell had docks you knew would be supported for years that worked across a load of different models. Not any more.

FreeBSD gains eMMC support so … errr … watch out, Android

Re: Gadget?

Or a Playstation 3 or 4...

Developers' timezone fail woke half of New Zealand

Re: *Would have been* valuable to residents

What's wrong with cell broadcast? Why reinvent the wheel when there's something that already works, can be targeted to the areas that need it, and has practically no cost to battery life.

Bah, humbug.

Dropbox thinks outside the … we can't go there, not when a box becomes a 'collection of surfaces'

This is the pre-October 2015 logo an the post-October 2015 logo together:

link

Now contrast that with the new logo.

I mean, I'd need an electron microscope to find the differences between all three.

White House plan to nuke social security numbers is backed by Equifax's ex-top boss

Re: Confused identification with authentication.

1. ID cards un Europe are not as compulsory as you think they are.

2. It's not all sorted out either. In Spain the SSN is only used by Social Security, so that's a step forward. On the other hand your ID number is used by everyone else, state or private company or credit reference agency, so that's pretty idiotic. There is no way to get a new number if the old one is compromised, it follows you around for life.

Schrems busts Privacy Shield wide open

They've got to sit down and think about it again

What would be a good name after Safe Harbour and Privacy Shield?

If they can just get the name right...

Home Sec Amber Rudd: Yeah, I don't understand encryption. So what?

Re: From the BBC article

Basically what the leaked statutory instrument already says - she wants companies to build in near real-time backdoors. That's what working with the government means.

Forget the 'simulated universe', say boffins, no simulator could hit the required scale

I don't know if we're in a simulation

But lately it seems like someone's overclocking it.

We went to Nadella's launch of Hit Refresh so you didn't have to

Re: comes from a scholarly background – his dad was a Marxist economist

The word salad is strong in this one.

Re: Precise questions

TIFKAM needed to be shot down with extreme prejudice.

Re: Hit Refresh

It's difficult to be certain if he's talking about a web browser or if Windows Explorer has no idea what's going on with network drives.

Apple Mac fans told: Something smells EFI in your firmware

Obviously downvoted because Apple's patching doesn't work.

Guess what. I downloaded the manual EFI patch and it needs 10.9.5. Just that version, nothing else.

Apple dropped the ball with EFI updates.

Combo updates are there precisely if you skip one or more point updates but it looks like they don't carry the EFI updates.

I just checked my 2012 MBP. An EFI update which came out two years ago is missing, yet I'm running Sierra.

EFI updates are delivered alongside OS updates... The problem I've noticed is if you skip a point update, it may not get installed when you later install a combo update.

I've had to manually download the point update with the EFI update in question, extract the EFI update, and manually run it.

¡Dios mío! Spain blocks DNS to hush Catalonian independence vote sites

They've tried requesting a change and they get told no.

The nation might be defined indivisible but that doesn't stop a referendum taking place, as I posted above. One of the people who wrote the constitution said it wouldn't prevent referendums. Spain won't be torn asunder the moment the result is called.

Surely the best way to do it would be to have a referendum, then decide what to do based on the result. The result based on polling data shows it would be about 41% for independence. The central government can say "okay, we've heard you, let's see what we can do about your devolved powers". Just allowing the same tax-rasing powers that the Basque Country has would probably kill the independence movement overnight.

This cycle of "We're not listening to you till you have a legal referendum - no, we won't allow you to have a legal referendum" is beyond stupid.

Still a lot of open wounds 1939 to 1975. General Franco will be turning in his massive mausoleum.

Spain just swept it under the carpet, completely different from Germany's approach.

One of the people who drafted the Spanish constitution says it does not ban independence referendums - link (in English).

Now you can either answer this in two ways:

1. You don't like the news agency... but it's only reporting what he's saying.

2. He's Catalan so he would say that... but he helped write the constitution.

Ouch: Brit council still staggering weeks after ransomware bit its PCs

"Weeks"?

If they've taken everything down then weeks is plenty of time to wipe and reimage systems.

At the very worst you pay the ransomware, get the documents back, and rebuild everything.

What's going on?

Bless their hearts: Democrats want $40bn to spruce up America's bumpkin broadband

Re: IT'S FRICKIN EASY

Eight hours if you ignore speed limits and are driving KITT, yes.

NatWest customer services: We're aware of security glitch

Re: Next time, screenshot it and post it on Twitter with a link to the story

I bet it'd get allocated more time and a higher priority if PR so ordained because things were getting embarasskng on Twitter.

The UK isn't ditching Boeing defence kit any time soon

Another empty threat

Brexit: All UK ports should be a building sites by now.

Boeing: The government couldn't give up even if it wanted to.

Not working out too well...