Posts by nowster

How AI drove Shopify back to clean code

Re: that #0000FF means ‘Blue’ in HTML

HTML already has a defined list of named colours, with "blue" being one of them:

https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/CSS/Reference/Values/named-color

OpenAI admits it was the source of the agent swarm that attacked Hugging Face

Hope you like paperclips.

Digital indigestion: Fizzy Coca-Cola display chokes on full storage

The local Spar shop uses Raspberry Pis for its window displays. One of them was showing a boot crash (filesystem problem) for nearly a year before it was fixed, initially by unplugging it.

Utah tells porn sites to take the P out of VPNs, and it's their fault that they can't

Re: The usual snide jab

"The difference between the US and China is that here in the US I can stand on a street-corner and call Donald Trump the poopy-pants president through a bullhorn, and then go home and sleep soundly in my own bed."

Unless you happen to be a high profile late night TV talk show host, when you're at risk of losing your job.

Linux cryptographic code flaw offers fast route to root

Quick fix

Quick fix if your kernel does not have this functionality compiled in to the kernel itself but has it in modules which automatically load on demand:

echo "blacklist algif_aead" >>/etc/modprobe.d/blacklist.conf

echo "blacklist af_alg" >>/etc/modprobe.d/blacklist.conf

Re: None of my computers are vulnerable

That'll be because that particular code injection is targeting Intel/AMD not ARM. With a little more effort it could.

The most durable tech is boring, old, and everywhere

Re: MIDI

Also MIDI's cousin, DMX, as used in theatre lighting control.

UK police caught slacking off by jamming their keyboards while working from home

Re: Keys and Cops

Keys t'home cops?

Android drops mega patch bomb - 120 fixes, two already exploited

On Pixels it's usually a differential patch against the currently installed system partition. Many patch updates are tiny (<50MB). Android version upgrades tend to be large (~1GB).

There are two system partitions, and an update writes to the one not currently in use, then at the end of a successful update process the bootloader is switched to booting from the one just written to.

End well, this won't: UK commissioner suggests govt stops kids from using VPNs

Apropos Dilbert cartoon

https://www.flubu.com/comics/DilbertHo.906.gif

From Jan 23, 1996, before we knew what Scott Adams was really like.

ALT text:

It's a three panel comic.

First panel: Dilbert sits in front of a desktop PC, typing. Dogbert looks on. Dilbert proclaims, "I'm inventing a new technology to prevent kids from seeing smut on the Internet."

Second panel: Dogbert replies, "So, you're pitting your intelligence against the collective sex drive of all the teenagers who own computers?"

Third panel: Dilbert angrily retorts, "What is your point?" Dogbert, tail wagging, responds, "Did you know that if you put a little hat on a snowball it can last a long time in hell?"

You've got drought: UK gov suggests you save water by deleting old emails

Re: Stupidest. Press. Release. Ever.

Why are American idioms so unambitious compared with their Brit equivalents?

"Drop in a bucket" versus "Drop in the ocean"

"Could care less" (ie. I do care) versus "Couldn't care less" (ie. I already don't care)

IPv6 may already be irrelevant – but so is moving off IPv4, argues APNIC's chief scientist

https://www.havevirginmediaenabledipv6yet.co.uk/

Re: Hmm

Not quite. IP version number 5 was used for something that used exactly the same addressing space as IPv4 but probably could have been a protocol within IPv4 like ICMP, TCP or UDP. It was a protocol which was a precursor to VoIP or video streaming.

Re: Hence, IPv6

Phone numbers are easy? Explain that to Londoners who still think their STD code is 0207 or 0208.

Document Foundation starts charging €8.99 for 'free' LibreOffice

Re: Does that mean there's will be a version with proper accent entry?

Good luck in trying to type Welsh. Neither ŵ or ŷ are available on the standard UK keyboard settings via the "hold down a key" method in MacOS.

On most Linux, it's "Compose ^ w" and "Compose ^ y". I have CapsLk mapped as Compose, but the default is usually Shift-AltGr.

BOFH: It's Friday, it's time to RTFM

Re: Milky bars are on that guy over there.

That's the only irregular bit about Welsh orthography: there are two pronunciations of the letter Y. One's a clear "ee" sound and the other is the unclear schwa. Hence Llynclys could be pronounced one of four ways.

Microsoft patches Y2K-like bug that borked on-prem Exchange Server

Re: Don't worry

No leap second this year: https://hpiers.obspm.fr/iers/bul/bulc/bulletinc.dat

World Intellectual Property Office settles dispute with CIO it previously ousted for 'criminal misconduct'

WIPOut!

Tired: What3Words. Wired: A clone location-tracking service based on FOUR words – and they are all extremely rude

Re: Oddly..

I'm sure it means absolutely Rockall.

Thousands of taxpayers' personal details potentially exposed online through councils' debt-chasing texts

Re: Please click the link to read

With a different sort of meaning of Water Board, perhaps?

Fresh astro-underwear, anyone? Orbital shenanigans as Progress freighter has last-minute ISS docking wobble

Re: Only 3 hours?

Launching towards the east gets you a boost from the earth's rotation. The closer to the equator the better.

Remember that black hole just 1,000 light years from Earth? Scientists queue up to say it may not exist after all

"Move along now. Nothing to see here."

Animal crossing? Nah! Farmyard frolics, courtesy of Novell and pals

Re: Agricultural College

That would be Dr Samuel Gall, inventor of the gall-bladder.

"His educational career began interestingly enough in agricultural school, where he majored in animal husbandry, until they caught him at it one day."

(Intro to "In Old Mexico", An Evening Wasted With Tom Lehrer)

Begone, Demon Internet: Vodafone to shutter old-school pioneer ISP

Re: How is the beard, Andrew? :)

Incidentally, Zetnet did SMTP delivery over dialup too, but with dynamic rather than static IPs.

Re: And another old name is discarded...

Actually Zetnet Ltd was bought by Breathe who themselves put it into administration.

The D in SystemD stands for Dammmit... Security holes found in much-adored Linux toolkit

https://dilbert.com/strip/1995-06-24

You better watch out, you better not cry. Better not pout, I'm telling you why: SQLite vuln fixes are coming to town

There is danger also in that SQLite is the default backing store for Android apps. How many of those apps correctly use parameterized queries rather than folding untrusted external data into SQL statements?

Brits pay £490m extra for mobes they already own – Citizens Advice

HP saucing

I wonder how the mobile network companies have got round the legislation on consumer credit on what is, effectively, a hire purchase agreement.

Sysadmin sank IBM mainframe by going one VM too deep

Except when they called it "square" in their System X voice prompts.

Visa fingers 'very rare' data centre switch glitch for payment meltdown

Re: Cisco Cisco Cisco

"GNU Terry Pratchett"

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

Re: @ AC Manufacturers are spending more kilo & mega...

Kilo mega atto Henrys, even.

Firefox 57: Good news? It's nippy. Bad news? It'll also trash your add-ons

Re: NoScript ?

https://blog.mozilla.org/addons/2017/08/01/noscripts-migration-to-webextensions-apis/

It's in hand.

Look out Silicon Valley, here comes Brit bruiser Amber Rudd to lay down the (cyber) law

Is it ironic that www.amberrudd.co.uk is an HTTPS site?

Now you can 'roam like at home' within the EU, but what's the catch?

Re: Still confusing?

Have just checked a couple of the UK operators' small print. EE and O2 both count EU to EU calls whilst roamed as coming out of the minutes allowance on pay monthly contracts.

Toyota's entertaining the idea of Linux in cars

Re: The REAL benefit

Only for the GPLv2 components. They will also avoid GPLv3 software like the plague.

Tesla's splitting with sensor supplier

Re: Range Anxiety is a myth (from an owners view)

Don't forget that US gallons are smaller than UK gallons and the pound has lost a lot of value recently. £1.10/litre ≅ US$5.50/USgallon.

Sophos' putrid patch snuffs Citrix kit, kills call centre

And how long have they been putting off an upgrade to their call centre's database front end so that it uses protocols newer than SSLv3? Did they even plan one? Are they still using an ancient version of Internet Explorer with Citrix?

Backwaters in rural England getting non-BT gigabit broadband

Sheep may safely browse

"Sheep don't use modems"

– Cliff Stanford (then running Demon Internet) early 1994.

Google hops into bed with Brit red-top: Cooks up 'draw an app' coding compo for kids

F Y CN RD THS Y CN GT A GD JB N CMPTRS

Steelie Neelie accused of killing €0.01-per-megabyte roaming fee cap in Europe

It's actually cheaper on some UK networks to send an SMS from one EU country to another whilst roaming (capped EU rate, approx 10p) than it is to send the same text message from the UK to that same EU country (contract or PAYG rate, usually 20p).

IT bloke publishes comprehensive maps of CALL CENTRE menu HELL

Charlotte Green reads Les Barker's poem "Voicemail"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mi-74wHCeAs

Apple asked me for my BANK statements, says outraged reader

Have Apple UK registered this use and storage of personal information with the Information Commissioner?

Don't like your cell network? Legal unlocking ends TONIGHT in US

Re: After the contract has expired,

Actually, T-Mobile is currently giving me a £4 per month discount for having continued the contract for another 24 months and not requesting an upgrade to my handset.

Ready for ANOTHER patent war? Apple 'invents' wireless charging

Prior art would not be Tesla but Heinrich Hertz using a portable tuned loop, looking for tiny sparks in a darkened room.

Big biz 'struggling' to dump Windows XP

Re: Windows 8

...a minimum 95% of the desktop, leaving just 5% for user applications.

There, fixed that for you.

Turing's rapid Nazi Enigma code-breaking secret revealed

Re: (C) StationX

Crown Copyright on documents only lasts for 50 years.

New ATLAS particle part of 'everyday mass'

Is this the "fat bottom" meson?

Court bans man called Peter from calling himself Peter

Obvious!

It's to stop him being a rePeter offender.

Google infringes copyright by displaying and linking to news site content

Old hat

http://www.lectlaw.com/files/elw10.htm

Shetland Times versus Shetland News. 1996

Fox News outs Beatles as 'Manchester's favorite mopheads'

Wikipedia

As it's now a published "fact", it can be cited on Wikipedia.