Posts by Adam 52

On Kaspersky’s 'transparency tour' the truth was clear as mud

Re: "perhaps they'd like to offer some evidence of this."

"Even journos will not reveal their sources if they believe there's an actual risk."

You just cling onto that happy fantasy!

"Do I believe that the UK government would murder your family if you say no? No, I really don't."

I think it unlikely but not impossible. Blackmail is more the UK government's style. Would they plant child porn - absolutely.

Qualcomm still serious about Windows 10 on Arm: Engineers work on '12W' Snapdragon 1000

Re: Microsoft! Please get modern!

"It is also very easy ... just set the /arch: flag in the C compiler"

Says someone who's clearly never done multiple architecture development! (Sorry if you have, but it really isn't as simple as setting a compilation flag, not in C anyway).

Ubuntu reports 67% of users opt in to on-by-default PC specs slurp

Re: Over the Top Much?

What El Reg missed from the article but is in the screenshot:

"What software is installed"

At that point I'm out.

The strife of Brian: Why doomed Intel boss's ex86 may not be the real reason for his hasty exit

Re: They could have used the "He said Jehova" excuse instead

Back in the mid 90s, we in the UK couldn't understand why the Americans wouldn't say the word [banned – mod edit]

GDPR forgive us, it's been one month since you were enforced…

Re: How can they require consent for location info

GDPR is mostly about processing. Where storage is a subset of processing.

Automated decision making is another subset.

Accepting an IP address is lawful for a number of reason, necessity and legitimate interest are the two most robust, but it is not the ephemeral nature that makes it legal.

Re: disappointed...

" I have an email address at that client's domain"

Is your client a limited company?

If so they can still email you under the corporate exemption from PECR. GDPR consent doesn't come into play because it's legitimate interests, not consent.

"There is of course an unsubscribe link ... shouldn't be receiving the emails ..."

So if it bothers you, click on the unsubscribe link. Until you do that you haven't got a legal leg to stand on.

He might be wrong about the reason, but he might still be right.

All those sites that accepted EU customers before May 25th? They're likely still storing (and therefore processing) EU citizens data. So still need to be compliant.

Senior judge: Put AI in charge of reviewing social media evidence

"that most if not all were never going to proceed beyond a report on the medical samples."

Well these days pretty much everything has to have an initial case file for CPS to review. It can't be done on a conversation between police and CPS any more. And if "your day" was prior to CPS charging decisions I can't help.

" Are the police and/or CPS being set targets as to the number of cases to go to court regardless of merit?"

There are targets for outcomes. As far as possible everything either has to go to CPS or proved not to be a crime. And yes, there are targets and those targets affect pay rises.

I've commented here many times before; the grey area in the middle "probably not a crime", "not enough evidence" or "not in the public interest" has been made really hard. There is an Inspector whose sole job is to reject those cases and force a referral to CPS.

Custody sergeants still can, and do, decide that charging isn't in the public interest; and peculiarly the case Inspector - as a more senior officer - will give the Custody Sergeant a bollocking but can't lawfully override their decision.

That was, of course, the position taken before Liam. However policy makers are often driven by the press and public opinion rather than common sense.

In Liam's case the judge ordered a review, various lawyers slung abuse and he's sueing the Police.

So whilst you are absolutely correct, it isn't going to happen.

Sifting through the evidence is a big thing. Think how many text messages, emails and Twitter messages are on your phone. Since Liam Allan every single one of them has to be reviewed and analysed for relevance. That can take a detective days. Detectives were already overstretched to the point where even some murders are being handled by shift not CID and fitted in around their response duties.

In effect there's been a complete halt to new investigations while CID process their backlog.

Quality justice is expensive.

"Why not just give the evidence to the defence in the first place?"

Two reasons:

1. Would you want the entire contents of your phone to be given to the defense if you accuse someone of a crime?

2. You don't really want the accused rapist knowing the names and addresses of the victim, her sister, her daughter, her mother and the refuge she went to.

By gum, that's chewy: Samsung's NF1 fattens M.2 card capacity with wider gumstick format

"measures 11cm x 3.05cm, compared to M.2's 11cm x 2.2cm"

I don't understand. According to Wikipedia (so subject to the usual caveats, but the spec they use as a reference requires a login) you can have m.2 at 3cm by 11cm.

So what does this bring, other than an extra half millimetre?

Re: Another standard?

Is it only me that finds Ruler disturbingly similar to a Pentium 2 for Slot 1?

Brit reseller Aria PC's appeal against HMRC VAT fraud finding gets under way

“You can't just rely on the demeanour of the witness... that’s a conclusion, not a reason.”

"It is common for judges to say they are not impressed by the witness’s evidence.”

Seems to me that they're both right. Judges often say that they are unimpressed by a witness, but that's usually because the witness contradicts themselves, lies, has an incredible story or appears to be making it up as they go along.

Judges dismissing evidence because the witness slumped, looked a bit shifty, eyes were too close together etc. seems wrong.

Intel CEO Brian Krzanich quits biz after fling with coworker rumbled

Re: Staff flings are frowned upon in US corporate tech world

"it's primarily to avoid the appearance of favoritism."

Would much prefer that they avoid actual favouritism.

It will forever be my shame that, when a director, I once voted for a policy to avoid the appearance of conflict of interest.

Shared, not stirred: GCHQ chief says Europe needs British spies

Re: Pooh to intelligence sharing

You're not suggesting that you actually believe Tim Martin's promises are you? I think you'll find that they're about as reliable as the bus was.

UK footie fans furious as Sky Broadband goes TITSUP: Total inability to stream unfair penalties

Re: "I hope to god we are getting compensation for this"

Doesn't make much difference. I used to spend much of my life on hold to Sprint. Much to the annoyance of the IT director who imposed the £1,500/month frame relay link on us it managed about 98.5% uptime, whereas the "business" ADSL line for £50/month got 99.95%.

And the ADSL people would answer the phone and fix things, until they got bought by Pipex.

Yubico snatched my login token vulnerability to claim a $5k Google bug bounty, says bloke

Re: Donate

"While WHC promote the industry to females they don’t exclude males specifically from their efforts. "

Yes they do. "Applaud Her" for example.

Re: Donate

That's easy. It doesn't need to exist.

No more than "black programmer club" or "proofs for Python" or "white 100m sprinters" or "straight male hairdresser club".

Whenever society splits itself into factions that fight for resources - whether that's sunloungers on the beach, jobs, oil or food - then we all lose.

You can argue that IT teaching in schools is poor and disenfranchises girls, but that's a reason to improve the school system so that girls and non-nerdy boys don't feel left out, not to discriminate in favour of the girls to the detriment of everyone else. Do we do special Rugby for Weedy Kids, no?

Sexual, racial, religious or gender discrimination is bad. The ends do not justify the means.

Re: Donate

How about donating to Code Club or similar, rather than an organisation that is explicitly sexist.

Microsoft shoves US govt IT contract where ICE throws kids: Out of sight in a chain-link cage

Re: Separating kids from parents ? Us Brits can shut up, oh, so can the French!

The UK policy seems slightly different, in that we will attempt to keep at least one parent and children together. That seems to lead to us deporting children who, in themselves, are UK citizens. It also seems to lead to us splitting up families in order to deport one parent and the children together if the children do not have leave to remain.

Would be amusing to see Meghan and any future Wales kids refused entry... should drive home the stupidity to the flag waving racists (although she was reportedly intending to do the family history test to get citizenship though).

Theresa May, who instigated all these policies and fought for them through the Courts, really is a nasty piece of work.

Re: Who stole America?

Same as Britain then.

Audi chief exec arrested over Dieselgate car emissions scandal

"Quite frankly, this is a pathetic argument - that obeying the law would put jobs at risk,"

I'm fairly sure that there's not a single trading company that follows all laws. It's just too hard and there are too many grey areas.

AWS seeks ‘startup launch’ experience for end-user services

' ads mention a “startup experience” for the successful candidate, the chance to do foundational product positioning and a requirement for “Experience with launching new and disruptive services”'

Doesn't every job advert as say that?

Well, apart from the COBOL ones.

Google cloud VMs given same IP addresses ... and down they went

Re: More Google CloudFog

I can see why you'd do that; obviously getting out of bed and driving to the data center is so much cheaper than logging into a console from bed.

Ex-Rolls-Royce engineer nicked on suspicion of giving F-35 info to China

Re: Counter-terrorism police?

The description "Scotland Yard’s SO15 counter-terrorism command" comes from The Sun, where this story originated.

SO15 is the Scotland Yard team that deals with Official Secrets Act breaches (as well as counter terrorism and a whole load of other things). So this is The Sun and The Register sexing up a story.

Cardiff chap chucks challenge at chops*-checking cops

Re: Good Luck

"Given the scale of the surveillance and storing the resulting data, it's probably cheaper than back door surveillance."

Unlikely. AWS Rekognition is $6/hour. A trained Police officer is much more expensive than that.

Dixons Carphone 'fesses to mega-breach: Probes 'attempt to compromise' 5.9m payment cards

Re: Perhaps I need a forwarding email address for every shop

Should definitely work at Gmail, it's explicitly mentioned in the documentation.

Not foolproof though, we had to scrub the plus suffix from a load of addresses when migrating them to a new CRM that had broken email address parsing.

Re: Refunds

"By law"

It's not by law. By contractual arrangement probably.

No reason why a refund couldn't be associated with a transaction rather than a card, after all chargebacks are, but, yes, it does seem to need the card.

Re: Why do businesses store credit cards

"Instead, you store an authentication token from whichever payment gateway provider you use"

And then, unfortunately, you're locked in to that payment provider forever.

Re: There's another weasel clause right there

"So which is relevant"

Neither. Because your question is based on a fundamental misunderstanding of breach notification rules.

Computer Misuse Act charge against British judge thrown out

Re: Interesting precedent

Judges directing juries to return not guilty verdicts is quite common.

Re: I for one..

I'm waiting for the inevitable "right to be forgotten" letter.

Every bloody gadget in the house is ringing. Thanks, EE

"We've had customers (patients) giving us these numbers to contact them on - they cost a fortune to use"

Oh the irony. Presumably phone numbers left on the premium rate contact system after navigating a maze of "Press 5 now" options for 20 minutes only to be told nobody is available to take the call right now because they only answer phones from 10am to 10.30am.

Android users: Are you ready for the great unbundling?

"GDPR compliant shit or even more fines. Compliance here means"

...A big long list of things that aren't necessary for compliance. There are five other lawful bases other than consent.

Worst. Birthday. Ever. IPv6's party falls flat

Re: Sad isn't it.

Except it's not 19 years old. It's 11 months old. The intervening period has been filled with tweaks and changes, the net result being a hodgepodge of mostly compatible but slightly broken implementations.

WannaCry reverse-engineer Marcus Hutchins hit with fresh charges

Re: Who do you trust?

" for the UK at least. I could be wrong but"

You're correct. In England and Wales the police charge, either on their own or after having taken advice from the CPS.

The scenario outlined here could easily have happened in England too if further evidence had come to light.

Britain's new F-35s arrive in UK as US.gov auditor sounds reliability warning klaxon

Re: What will happen during a war?

"There is no imaginable situation in which an F-35, or any number of them, would do us the slightest good."

The optimistic scenario is that they'd stop an invading army for long enough that there's enough time to get on the phone and avert a nuclear holocaust.

Realistically though these are a tool for bullying much weaker countries.

Re: What will happen during a war?

You could have said the same about Springfield Rifles or Spitfires.

These days if we get to that point then everything will be turning to glass anyway.

Stern Vint Cerf blasts techies for lackluster worldwide IPv6 adoption

Standard for how long?

Vint:

"It's certainly been a long time since the standards were put in place"

Internet Society:

"On 14/07/2017, the IETF with the publication of RFC8200 announced that the Internet Protocol Version 6 (IPv6) had become the latest Internet Standard."

Less than a year doesn't seem a long time to me.

NHS England fingered over failure to forward patient correspondence

Re: True story.

"Did that story mention the doctor was at the end of a TWENTY FOUR hour shift?"

Maximum shift length in the NHS is 14 hours with breaks and the NHS adheres to the European 48 hour week. Plenty of other occupations do much longer shifts.

That's not to say that a doctor will be fine after a 13 hour shift with no breaks, but it's a lot different to 24 hours.

Also has very little relevance to failings in an administrative process, which is what the OP was referring to. Always annoys me when people defend NHS inefficiency by saying that the staff are working hard - we don't deny that, staff having to work hard is one symptom of a broken process.

Re: True story.

"Late 2001, my optician wasn't happy about my field tests, and wrote to my GP requesting a specialist consultation."

This is your problem right there. Why is the optician contacting your GP? Your optician should let YOU know and YOU should contact whatever healthcare provider you want to provide the service.

Patients should be in control of their treatment, not some archaic old boys club.

Hear that? Of course it's Indiegogo's deadline for a Vega+ whooshing by

Re: It's almost as though crowdfunding is a terrible idea

"Isn't that what venture capitalists do on a much grander scale"

No. Elon Musk owns about 20% of Tesla Inc. in return for his investment. He doesn't (just) own a Tesla Roadster.

If the Vega+ backers owned 60% of RCL between them then they wouldn't be in this mess.

Re: Well, we're all learning about crowdfunding, as it develops ...

Shockwiz, as an example, was a successful crowd funded project. A relatively small number of people paying £130 or more. But they had a working prototype and were pretty much production ready.

Elite Dangerous on the other hand; relatively cheap, vapourware at the start, lots of disappointed punters.

Vega+... well had all the hallmarks of a scam from day 1.

Ask yourself what would the Dragons do? Invest in a vague idea with no product, no IP and no delivery plans? Of course they wouldn't, so why would you?

Lack of governance on new police tech leaves 'worrying vacuum' – Brit biometrics commish

Re: retention ... for general crime

Police bail is limited to 28 days, so not really a very useful way of extending a retention period.

Schadenfreude for UK mobile networks over the tumult at Carphone

Re: Soon?

'Amazon on the "I inspected it and decided I don't like it" grounds without any hassle. As far as I can see they have to do that, it's not Amazon being nice.'

If you do this a lot Amazon will decline to have you as a customer. Whether that's legal or not is a discussion point.

Other retailers, for example Chain Reaction Cycles for protective gear where fit is important, encourage it and is a market differentiation point in a sea of online sellers.

Just a third of Brit cops are equipped to fight crime that is 'cyber'

Re: Is this the right level to work at?

"playground bullying?"

It's all about passing the blame around. Teachers don't want to be accused of a cover up. Parents want someone to take responsibility for parenting from them.

So it all comes down to a PC who, technically, should be arresting the ten year old to decide between the devil (arrest the child and seize their phone for forensic analysis and get lambasted for over-reacting and traumatising children) and the deep blue sea (do nothing, take the black mark on the clean up statistics all the while knowing that if anything happens and it escalates then they're going to prison for misconduct in a public office).

Re: Yes, we're equipped, they quipped!

Yes. Police feel hamstrung by the courts; if they chase anyone on a motorbike and that person injures themselves or anyone else then the Police are liable. That's led to many forces prohibiting any pursuit involving a motorbike (and it's almost impossible to get a car pursuit authorised too).

Even if someone is caught the court hands out a small fine, which doesn't get paid. Most of the moped thefts aren't robbery. Where there genuinely is a robbery and the criminal is caught and charged they'll find themselves before a proper judge and then we do get proper sentencing. But that's a very rare event.

UK's first transatlantic F-35 delivery flight delayed by weather

Re: "the jet (which is easily replaced)"

The National Audit Office says that it costs £5.7 million to train an operational fast jet pilot. Of course an F35 pilot will be more expensive on account of the rarer and more expensive aeroplane.