Posts by Dan 55

Win8 inventory glut? Yep, it's all Microsoft's fault, says HP

Now's the best time to buy HP

"Buy now before we foist Windows 10 on you."

Embracing the life-changing qualities of USB power packs and battery extenders

Re: My phone regularly runs out of electric power.

Holding down power/power + volume up/power + volume down for 10 seconds usually gets you a reboot if it's frozen.

Spotify now officially even worse than the NSA

So...

Use the web version of Spotify so you're not using the desktop version which can get much more information from your computer, in a private window so it can't get to your Facebook profile, deny location information, and log in with a Spotify login instead of a Facebook log in.

Log into Facebook from a non-private window and change your Facebook password. If you use a Spotify account linked to a Facebook account then unlink it, if you log in directly with Facebook and want to carry on using the free service then open a new Spotify account.

In the longer term, look for another service.

And those of us who never linked their Spotify account to Facebook or used a Facebook account to log in can sit back feeling smug.

Oi, Google! Remove links to that removed story, yells forceful ICO

Rewriting history

Isn't this what Orwell warned about?

Trend publishes analysis of yet another Android media handling bug

Posting shill? Post anonymous.

No, the problem is AOSP doesn't have an update framework which updates components not changed by manufacturers or carriers. There's no way to get an update for a single component out to everyone.

Yet another Android app security bug: This time 'everything is affected'

Re: Why not call it a Google?

If we're talking about the corporation then how about an alphabet of flaws?

A moonshot of flaws...

Re: Why not call it a Google?

Something else identified with Google. A beta of flaws, a hipster of flaws?

YouTube bloggers told to slap 'advert' stickers on their vid posts

Re: Numpties

So your anti-scam idea works except for the kids, the old, the mentally ill, the parents who don't have time to keep on top of all the latest scams, and probably a few more I've forgotten. So basically it would be perfect if the world were full of young single people who were mistrustful of everyone and are gifted with the ability to distinguish between a legit advert and an advert which looks legitimate but is full of lies.

In the end, without regulation, what you get is lower consumption not higher consumption because nobody can believe anything.

Re: Numpties

This book has eight old weird tricks that make regulators angry...

Holes found in Pocket Firefox add-on

Re: Phocket

If you want to really want to disable Pocket included with Firefox, then go to about:config set browser.pocket.enabled to false and just to make sure it's dead set these keys to empty strings...

browser.pocket.api

browser.pocket.oAuthConsumerKey

browser.pocket.site

Using complicated electrical devices to curry favour with brats – the new black?

Re: What's wrong with that image?

You weren't aware of the antigravitational properties of freshly awarded diplomas on young ladies? The effect has been documented in the UK press since about five years ago IIRC.

FTFY

Psychologist Emma Kenny recommended: "Do not study psychology. You'll be reduced to eating out of bins and selling soundbites to anyone to make it through the next month. Forget the fucking iPad, if how I'm professionally prostituting myself in this press release doesn't make you want to study, nothing will."

Google reveals OnHub WiFi router, complete with GLOWING RING

Re: Trust Google to intercept and route your net traffic?

Here's a qute from someone on Hackers' News which spells it out...

"Oh, come on. Just connect your Google router to your Google fiber connection and connect to it with your smartphone or laptop running a Google operating system and Google browser. Visit your Google home page (using Google's DNS servers, of course) to read your Google Mail, or perhaps catch up on the news with Google News, or use Google+ to see what your friends are up to, or get a little work done on Google Docs. Should you do some Google searches and end up on some non-Google sites, don't worry - you're still safe under the watchful eye of Google AdSense and Google Analytics. What have you got to be so paranoid about?"

Re: how long until they serve ads through the update?

Rumour has it it's going to be updated with Google Now functionality, which means it also has a microphone in there somewhere.

Do Not Want.

Re: Yeah, yeah...

2. It means they don't do it currently and that may change with the next EULA and update.

That'll be turned on shortly before they turn on the people upload functionality as seen in The Bells of Saint John.

Re: Trust Google to intercept and route your net traffic?

If you place your ear close to the speaker on the top you can hear the sound of bits cheering and whooping as they disappear down into the Intertubes and are transparently routed through Google's data centres.

Vaio returns from the dead wearing sharper suit, bolts in neck

Re: Is there really a market for status-symbol Windows PCs?

It's got BSD, POSIX, and X11 if you install the app. How much more geeky do you need?

OpenOffice project 'all but dead upstream' argues prominent user

Re: That Weird Sound You Hear

That threat should be enough to convince anyone to come off the MS drug, server by server, desktop by desktop.

Parallels Desktop 11 brings Windows 10 and Cortana to Mac

Re: Ransomware

Well I've had my Parallels spam saying that I'll need a new version for El Capitan. I was so surprised, I can tell you, that once again it doesn't work on the new OS X version and I'd need to shell out another 40 euros this year so they can update a kext.

Government embarks on futile mission to censor teen music vid viewing

They don't even need to do that, I imagine most people who know how to furtle the YouTube URL to get round sign in/geo restrictions are aged under 18.

ZTE Nubia Z9 Mini: The able Android smartie the company won't sell you

Re: Capacitive buttons? Oh hell no.

On all five ROMs I've had on my phone, all allow the capacitive buttons to have haptic and/or sound feedback. Not in the keyboard settings though as that's just for the soft keyboard, usually it's in the sound settings.

How you find them in the first place, well, that could be annoying.

Capita: Listen up redundo staff, we know you're leaving but...

Variation order

Those are expensive aren't they? Or doesn't it work like that if you're an underling...

Another root hole in OS X. We know it, you know it, the bad people know it – and no patch exists

The block is smoke and mirrors that works by checking the filename metadata before launching it. It's no protection against a browser, Java, or Flash exploit.

Re: @Dan 55

I've had tonnes of segmentation faults on OS X so I guess the first page is mapped only when it's executing a kernel function, which is a bit of a failure in itself.

I'm not sure why I thought a page on x86 was 64K... Probably a memory access error.

The BSD part of OS X is quite robust, there's probably very few exploits if you stick to POSIX. The open source software they use in userland often takes a while to be updated, or they may stop updating it altogether if they don't like the licence (e.g. SMB when it changed to GPL3). Their own homespun libraries seem to be pretty poor.

In C/C++, NULL is an address like any other, it's 0. What usually happens is that you can't dereference a NULL pointer (read the value at address 0) because that address is not mapped to any RAM so the CPU throws a segmentation fault and the OS stops the program. What most people forget is that this is NOT C/C++ stopping you shooting yourself in the foot, NULL is just a #define for 0.

So as C/C++ doesn't stop you and if that address (or rather, the first 65536 addresses which is the first memory page) IS mapped to an area of RAM then you CAN dereference the NULL pointer. So if a badly-written OS or Kernel routine just merrily dereferences pointers without checking if they're NULL beforehand and you control the value at address 0 or you don't but it's random, then that can be used as part of an exploit.

So what I guess happened is that the NULL pointer got passed to a kernel routine, when running in kernel mode the first page was mapped to an area of RAM, and the routine itself doesn't check for NULL pointers.

Looking at the guy's blog by the way, it seems IOKit is a bit of cowboy job.

Spain triumphs! Fascist anthem hails Spanish badminton champ

I imagine some in the current government would be quite upset... that it was only played once.

Botched Google Stagefright fix won't be resolved until September

It's Google's OS so Google's the CA. No problems there... well, no more than the usual problems with Google.

They could even do it as a Play Store/Play Services update. They're just not trying.

All they need to do is have updates coming straight from Google OTA which are signed with a special certificate which has rights to remount /system as r/w and copy the new library or apk before rebooting.

It wouldn't be suitable for major OS updates but it's needed to patch exploits like this which have the same problem in the same library.

No problem...

Everything's perpetual beta down at the Chocolate Factory.

Lollipop took away keyboard buttons making it confusing to use, contact groups making it impossible to organise them, and shuffled the names of mail clients about making them confusing too. Next version might change it all back again.

That's all part of the fun of Google's development methodology. So it makes complete sense that the security fix is also beta.

'I don't recognise Amazon as a bullying workplace' says Bezos

"a soulless, dystopian workplace were no fun is had and no laughter heard"

The thing is with statements like that you know he knows it's a soulless dystopian workplace where fun is had and laughter is heard... at the expense of others.

Are you a digital leader or a high-maintenance digital dunce?

Re: "batting mobile out of the park"

I just drowned in buzzword bingo. Sometimes a chart is better...

Post-pub nosh neckfiller: Spanish summer soother salmorejo

Re: Why chop then blend?

Cut the skin a little bit, dump them in hot water, then when you take them out they're easier to peel.

Re: So ...

It's nicer than it sounds and looks, especially in summer when there's no cooking required. See how they're not all peering dubiously at it before eating it in the photos?

If you want something that's worse than it sounds and looks, try Callos. A stew made with tripe and blood sausage...

Re: Little addition

Or if you're going to Mercadona, you can just by a litre of Salmorejo...

Microsoft replaces Windows 10 patch update, isn't saying why

There's still good money to be made rolling back accidental Windows 10 updates and then nobbling GWX via uninstalling KBs or changing registry entries. And it's work that will last throughout the year as GWX gets more and more insistent. On day 364 I imagine a scheduled task will just start the computer up and install it anyway.

Hey, folks. Meet the economics 'genius' behind Jeremy Corbyn

Re: It's OK

Toll roads are a throwback back to medieval times, travellers have to pay the fee charged by the Lord of the Manor to cross his land. They just impede the people who are actually working.

Re: You don't need a 150 IQ to have a custom icon as Anonymous Coward

Oh bugger, I've done it wrong. It seems you do need a 150 IQ.

Re: You don't need a 150 IQ to have a custom icon as Anonymous Coward

What are we supposed to do with The Register's system? Agree with dismantling the BBC, deny climate change, and support a no-tax corporate-driven future a la Snow Crash?

PALE, MALE AND STALE: Apple reveals it has just ONE black exec

Eco credentials and ethnic policy

Apple have a pretty similar approach for both, a wall of silence, a document or two produced late after some pressure, and finally unconvincing results.

Mass-produced unrepairable hardware is about as high up in the ecological chart as 1 (one) Hispanic tea lady at boardroom level is in ethnic representation chart.

Facebook hands hackers $100k for breaking browsers

reinterpret_cast always compiles so that means it must be okay, why use anything else?

How many pre-loaded Win 10 PCs did disties have 7 days after release?

I think it's MS's random act of kindness

If you buy one now the chance is you've still got Windows 8. Put a new start menu on it and you've dodged a bullet.

Google flubs patch for Stagefright security bug in 950 million Androids

Re: Does this require updating to Lollipop?

Although people on 4.3 or before won't get anything as fixes in AOSP are applied to the latest three versions.

You're out of luck. It's an OTA update for...

Nexus

Galaxy S5, S6, S6 Edge, and Note Edge

HTC One M7, One M8, One M9

LG Electronics G2, G3, G4

Sony Xperia Z2, Xperia Z3, Xperia Z4, Xperia Z3 Compact

Android One platform

http://arstechnica.co.uk/security/2015/08/google-pushes-update-for-critical-android-bug-but-wont-say-if-its-fixed/

So for most custom ROMs are still the way forward.

Sony PC owners to get Windows 10 upgrade as early Christmas present

Re: Looks like Sony hasn't learnt a thing

Give them time, they need it to rewrite all that bloatware and those strange drivers...

Have an iPhone? Mac? Just about anything else Apple flogs? Patch now

Better late than never...

It's got a fix for that root escalation bug found a couple of weeks ago.

CAUGHT: Lenovo crams unremovable crapware into Windows laptops – by hiding it in the BIOS

Re: Windows only though

It's not for online Windows installation, if your Windows installation is hosed it's never going to get to the stage of executing the file held in the BIOS.