Posts by Dan 55

Assange™ offered 'plans for escape by flying fox to Harrods'

He didn't say he banned them from the embassy, he said they are banned from the embassy. However from time-to-time the robo-journalists at El Reg can't parse quotes and end up writing something completely different in the article text.

Worker drones don't need PCs says Microsoft, give 'em phones instead

Re: Snapdragon ?

Because Windows 10 for desktop/tablet is only x86 and Windows 10 for mobiles is only ARM.

It's Windows 8.2 with a bit of marketing to make it look like it's everywhere.

Re: What about a keyboard and mouse?

TIFKAM apps only on the phone. 32-bit Win32 vía remote desktop. This isn't the Windows-in-your-pocket that you're looking for.

If they'd used Atom they might have got something close to how Ubuntu does it.

Surface Book: Microsoft to turn unsuccessful tab into unsuccessful laptop

Re: I wonder how well this would run Linux?

I doubt MS would allow you to disable secure boot. Why would they want to let people install alternative operating aystens?

GCHQ's exploding doughnut threatens to ooze into innocent field

Re: "in keeping with its surroundings and help minimise the visual impact"

The housing estate isn't known as Raccoon City, is it?

"in keeping with its surroundings and help minimise the visual impact"

New big building in the middle of the countryside looks like the big building in the middle of the countryside it's being built next to.

GCHQ's SMURF ARMY can hack smartphones, says Snowden. Again.

Re: Seems a bit far-fetched

I've no doubt they can be taken over by text message, if you set a flag when sending the text message, it's routed by the baseband to the SIM. If you couple that with an exploit, you've got 'em. I'm sure they've got plenty enough people dedicated to screwing about with Qualcomm SoCs and SIMs from a variety of operators (never knowingly known for security anyway).

Flash SMSes are still used for sending banking codes and are still understood by Android (they pop up a dialog box).

Invisible SMSes go to the baseband which pass it onto the SIM, there's probably a ton of exploits for the baseband and there definitely is for the SIM. Symbian 8 phones didn't have a baseband because they did everything with the phone OS but I'm pretty sure binary texts still worked, who could forget Orange's relentless barrage of SIM updates?

Re: "...he says can turn a phone on or off"

I'd also like to know the feature they abuse to get a phone to turn on or off because at the moment it sounds as credible as CSI. Maybe some kind of false off program has to be installed beforehand.

Linux kernel dev who asked Linus Torvalds to stop verbal abuse quits over verbal abuse

Re: YoLotD

Crowbarring a Linux or Windows kernel into a mobile phone doesn't really cut the mustard though. Battery usage is still quite atrocious.

Ah for the days of Symbian...

If you wanted Windows 10, it looks like you've already installed it

Set up Windows Update to only automatically install recommended updates and leave out the optional ones. Also tell it not to install Microsoft updates in the same way as recommended updates.

It appears bad publicity has deterred them from putting Windows 10 stuff in recommended updates, at least lately. They might change their mind again.

GENUINE STARSHIP as used by PRINCESS LEIA sold for just $450k

So, does it include the poster and Playboy centrefold?

If it doesn't, then he'd better get his money back.

Digital Services to be killed off early next year, Gov.uk confirms

Re: Is it just me?

What they mean is they still have ancient systems which haven't been updated to Windows 7.

iOS malware YiSpecter: iPhones menaced by software nasty

Re: Heavy on doom and sensation, light on detail

Also worth adding that this gets on the iDevice by "third party app stores" which abuse enterprise certificates and sideload via USB. So, yes, YiSpecter bypasses App Store reviews by bypassing the App Store.

I imagine quite a few iPhones are safe. Practically all of them outside those countries where people routinely use dodgy app stores.

Re: Remember that film Elysium (2013)?

Well I did try to make a link between Elysium and Apple.

Re: Remember that film Elysium (2013)?

It's all gone to crap ever since Macs went over to x86. If only they'd stayed on POWER PC, they'd have been safer.

The Steve Jobs of supercomputers: We remember Seymour Cray

entire computing experience... one company doing one thing... who else bothers to do this?

At the time, Commodore, Atari, Acorn...

What is money? A rabid free marketeer puts his foot in lots of notes

Re: Moral dimension

The entire reason all these bank bailouts, the FSCS, etc., were set up is because bank runs are horrible things, and entirely impossible to avoid for a bank as the only thing that can be 100% backed up by cash is a safety deposit box.

Presumably, in a transparent market economy where the consumer is able to find out enough information about the products they purchase, money would naturally flow to the least-exposed banks?

Isn't that what the Government did? You might argue about the price paid, or whatever, but what you suggest was exactly what happened. Most people who go all swivel-eyed about banks also like the idea of government ownership of companies, so surely you would be happy about this outcome?

Not if that means that the state has taken on more debt. There is always profit to be had in a mortgage, so someone, somewhere in the private sector would buy them up anyway.

So the collapse of a few banks and the others vastly reducing and tightening their lending, causing a 5-10% recession, would have meant the Government would have had more money to spend and wouldn't have to choose between austerity and a sovereign debt crisis? Have you seen Greece?

Isn't a sovereign debt crisis what happens when a state cannot pay out what it has to pay out when the bonds it has sold mature? If a state doesn't gratuitously take on debt, it won't have that problem.

Re: Moral dimension

I thought NR was nationalised and then privatised at a loss to the taxpayer.

Sorry, was thinking of another country's scheme, but the end result is same.

After a state takes on bank debt, the state needs to make cutbacks or raise taxes or both. The government decides where to do that based on their economic policy/dogma.

Whilst I agree that benefits system needs trimming back a bit in many areas there are many areas where it doesn't. If the government didn't have austerity as an excuse they would have to use another one, so instead of "we're cutting back and taxing those areas which target the weakest in society because austerity" maybe it'd have to be "because we're a gang of sociopaths".

They could instead, for example, forget about HS2 and just invest on improving track signalling and mobile connectivity on Britain's railways which would be much more cheaper and effective. Now that everyone's got mobiles, a few trains arriving 15 minutes earlier per day barely adds any measurable improvement to the economy. Many more trains arriving on time and people having better mobile connectivity while they arrive would be much better.

Re: Moral dimension

What would have happened if NR were allowed to fold like any other business?

1. Some other bank or other banks would have bought up the mortgages.

2. The other banks would have been legally obliged to cough up and pay according to Savings Guarantee rules.

3. Other banks would have realised they're not going to get bailed out* at any cost so they'd better start being responsible.

4. Society wouldn't have ended.

5. The country would have been a better place. Instead of disabled people with one extra bedroom in their house than deemed necessary (the bedroom where the carer sleeps) and people at a similar level in society paying for austerity, the ball would have been in the banks' court, where it belongs.

* Or however you describe the debt-generating money merry-go-round which transfers bank debt to state debt and requires more bonds to be paid out at some future time than would otherwise have been.

Doctor Who's Under the Lake splits Reg scribes: This Alien homage thing – good or bad?

Re: Base under siege

And Doctor Who had the Alien story four years before Alien...

Re: Science happens to other people

He said it was WiFi. Putting aside whether there'll be WiFi 100 years from now, soundwaves don't magically convert into radio waves when they leave a Faraday cage. They should have brought her down to look through the window.

No pass from me. Bah, humbug.

Re: The Abyssmal

He's been running up and down corridors since Troughton hasn't he? Bit late to complain now.

Re: I quite

They're all two partners in this series.

I'm quite liking the slow burner thing. Not quite so much the sudden cliffhanger at the end of part one though, but I suppose they have to have one.

But broadcasting over WiFi with sonic glasses live from a Faraday cage? Let's just say that could have been safely dropped.

Sensitive Virgin Media web pages still stuck on weak crypto software

Re: Another one for the hall of shame

C? That's a pass, isn't it.

Only a CNUT would hold back the waves of the sharing economy

Re: Very good article, would read again

But some are more wrong than others.

Very good article, would read again

I am however somewhat concerned that if you put Worstall and anti-Worstall in the same room the universe might explode.

Apple gobbles Brit AI outfit VocalIQ

Why AI?

I'm pretty sure if you fished out the source code for a halfway-competent text adventure parser from the 80s/90s (Level 9, Magnetic Scrolls, or LOTR) then that could cope with most things.

Eeeh, they've got more money than sense.

Is the world ready for a Raspberry Pi-powered Lego Babbage Engine?

Re: 7 digit display...

Two calculators side-by-side? You were lucky to have two calculators side-by-side. In my day, we'd've been glad to have half a calculator. The half without the display.

Re: Sorry but..

Wordwise? Luxury. In my day we had to write a BASIC program with VDU 2 and carefully choosing PRINT statements.

How to evade Apple's anti-malware Gatekeeper in OS X and really ruin a fanboy's week

Re: Ah bless - he drew a little picture!

I'd be more inclined for a symbol in the library which contains the data that Gatekeeper needs, maybe in plist format. It would be self-contained and specific to that library version.

Re: Ah bless - he drew a little picture!

I don't believe there's currently a way to sign dynamic libraries (basically the same as a UNIX .so).

It's an interesting one to fix because .apps have a directory structure with a manifest, resources, certificate, and so on which Gatekeeper needs whereas a dynamic library is just a single file.

Ofcom: Ahem, about that 28GHz spectrum. Let's talk fees

Re: How much?

Per restaurant invitation.

Five things that doomed the big and brilliant BlackBerry 10

BB10 - not dead, worth a lot

Blackberry have done all the heavy lifting of making QNX a mobile OS. If they do tank then someone will buy it. Hopefully not Apple or Google or MS.

They should have and should be making more of their Android compatibility on QNX. They could have cheaper consumer Android phones with some BB services on and more expensive enterprise QNX phones with some Play Services compatibility. Perhaps that's still possible.

On the other hand, Windows Phone 10 is already buried. Microsoft have demonstrated time and again and are demonstrating now that they don't have any idea what to do with a mobile phone or a mobile OS.

Meego was killed by executive decision, nothing more. The N9 was received well in the few markets where it launched.

Three mobile data network GOES TITSUP across Blighty

We would like to remind customers that we are transitioning O2's data network to Three's network...

... and that O2 customers don't complain, they're grateful for a signal.

Apple CEO Tim Cook: Email keyword sniffing? We'd NEVER do that!

Re: If I paid £600 for a handset

Have you seen the non-subsidised price of a Samsung S6/Edge/+/whatever? It's the worst of all worlds - way too expensive, Samsung's software, and everything slurped up by the Chocolate Factory.

Are Samsung TVs doing a Volkswagen in energy tests? Koreans hit back

Re: Unrealistic in the real world

They're all set bright for store display, a tested TV won't have the brightness set like that. Hopefully.

Apple fixes iOS 9.0.2 passcode loophole, kills 101 OS X security bugs

Re: App Store is broken for me

It sounds like there's a problem with RSS feeds. Would RCDefaultApp help?

Re: El Capitan upgrade nukes the recovery partition..

It's there in the release version, but you have to use diskutil list from a terminal to see it. Disk Utility has had a Fisher Price makeover.

Re: El Capitan upgrade nukes the recovery partition..

Impact: The "Secure Empty Trash" feature may not securely delete files placed in the Trash

Description: An issue existed in guaranteeing secure deletion of Trash files on some systems, such as those with flash storage. This issue was addressed by removing the "Secure Empty Trash" option.

https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT205267

So Apple's response is fuck you if you've got a HDD.

Try saving inside an encrypted disk image and deleting that when you've finished, unless they've removed that from Disk Utility too.

Re: El Capitan upgrade nukes the recovery partition..

That's a shame, I set it off updating about 10 minutes before reading your post.

But wasn't that a problem with a beta version of El Capitan that was addressed with something called "El Capitan Recovery Update" that appeared in the App Store? (By "El Capitan Recovery Update" I assume they mean "Oops, fuck, we blew away your recovery partition, this makes it again update".)

Elon Musk unmasks Tesla's Model X – the $132k anti-bioweapon SUV for the 1%

Re: Bioweapon mode sounds useful around feedlots

He's so going to get sued if (when) turns out it actually doesn't help for a Syria-like scenario.

Verisign opens up its DNS

Re: OpenDNS

OpenDNS now belongs to Cisco, so I wouldn't get your hopes up.

Tear teardown down, roars Apple: iFixit app yanked from store

Take it apart, violate their developer terms, and get rid of that annoying app of theirs which indicates that there's something other than fairy dust and Sir Jony's juice inside?

Re: Hurr durr

Unless they published the teardown before the product was released, I don't think it should matter.

Patreon patrons: It's password-reset time

"via a debug version of our website that was visible to the public"

I know it's cool to work from home but put it behind a VPN, nobody wants to see it hanging out in public.

Lies from VW: 'Our staff acted criminally but board didn't know'

Re: "planet-killer dieselware"

That's next week, last week we had the story about VW gaming pollution tests all being the hippies' fault.

"We only found out about the problems in the last board meeting, shortly before the media"

So their last board meeting was in 2011 just before the alarm was raised by a VW employee or in 2007 when Bosch sent the e-mail?

Re: Implications

The tax is CO2 based, so probably not. Unless the fix raises CO2 emissions?

Re: Olaf Lies!?

Congratulations on the headline to El Reg!