Posts by DJV

What's holding you back from Google Cloud? Oh, OK... it was hoping you'd say 'lack of hardware security modules'

What's holding you back from Google Cloud?

Holding me back? Two words: Google and Cloud.

Internet overseer continues wall-punching legal campaign

Re: Sigh

I'm surprised no one has yet added ICANN on the United States examples on that page!

SuperProf gets schooled after assigning weak passwords to tutors

Re: At Superprof we take security seriously and know how key it is to the running of our business

It makes more sense if you replace "security" with "bullshit".

Gartner's Great Vanishing: Some of 2017's emerging techs just disappeared

Reality

"The Hype Cycle has been criticised for bearing only a tenuous relationship with reality"

Gartner have never ever troubled themselves with reality.

So phar, so FUD: PHP flaw puts WordPress sites at risk of hacks

Does anybody use phar://?

Not me. I program in PHP but prefer never to touch the creaking behemoth that is WordPress.

Self-driving cars will be safe, we're testing them in a massive AI Sim

Not quite all of elsewhere, apparently...

As shown on this map, there are several other places that do it "our" way as well:

https://www.aceable.com/blog/countries-that-drive-on-the-left-side-of-the-road/

I wish I could quit you, but cookies find a way: How to sidestep browser tracking protections

Re: Edge

They probably could have just abbreviated that sentence to "Microsoft's Edge browser simply didn't work" - which would have been more accurate.

Boffins build the smallest transistor, controlled by an atom

Excellent news

But, they'd better watch out they don't attract the bullshitters and new-age nutters by mentioning "quantum" twice in the abstract...

Apple pulls iOS 12 beta 7 after less than 24 hrs

Re: You contacted Apple for comment

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9SK0QyHcCIw

Hello darkness my old friend, what happened last week in Redmond?

@big_D

"there isn't much point using it on Android or iOS"

In my experience, there's very little point using on Windows, too...

Boffins blame meteorites for creating Earth's oldest rocks

Time for another bath then!

Devon County Council techies: WE KNOW IT WASN'T YOU!

Re: Surely...

Well, I do keep an old plastic Personal Banker card from when I had an account with a branch of Barclays. I kept mainly because I refer to it as my "Bastardcard" as the Personal Banker's name was Rosemary Bastard (with no apostophes). While Barclays is still with us, the branch in question has long gone.

Ah, a MacBook Pro then...

Clap, damn you, clap! Samsung's Bixby 2.0 AI reveal is met with apathy

...that''s been disconnected from the mains...

Spec-exec CPU bugs sweep hacking Oscars – and John McAfee’s in there like a bullet

Re: Well done all!

Probably waiting for someone called Legg to join the team first.

Brain brainiacs figure out what turns folks into El Reg journos, readers

Keyword: may

Yep, hard not to be pessimistic with a "May" (thinking she is) in charge of this country...

Internet overseer ICANN loses a THIRD time in Whois GDPR legal war

Re: Where's the crowd funded 'take them to the cleaners'?

I keep getting that Deja Vu feeling - it's all rather like SCO vs Linux a few years ago (and possibly still continuing as the damned undead thing refuses to completely die).

The age of hard drives is over as Samsung cranks out consumer QLC SSDs

Re: Luxury

The first computer I worked on that was graced with a hard drive was a Burroughs B21. It had 256K RAM and a massive 5MB drive which contained the OS (BTOS), the Pascal compiler (the C compiler was still a year or two away) and all the programs and data that I was developing. One summer, which wasn't quite as hot as this one has been, it spent several weeks with the case off as the heat was making the hard drive power down!

Rights groups challenge UK cops over refusal to hand over info on IMSI catchers

Accountability...

British police neither confirm nor deny they've heard of it..

This is your four-minute warning: Boffins train ImageNet-based AI classifier in just 240s

Are you talking about the article or the post above from amanfromMars1?

Oooooh! Fashion! Yes, 1m-plus accounts on clothes, trinket websites exposed by lax security

I think...

...I may be safe in this instance as I neither understand nor "do" fashion.

I feel a plead... a plead for speed: FastMail naps amid network blunder

"we need updates every 5 minutes on your progress"

Ah, the old "demanding more and more progress reports" on why things are taking longer and longer to fix. I wonder if Charl Botha meant to have <sarcasm> tags in there somewhere...

Facebook deletes 17 accounts, dusts off hands, beams: We've saved the 2018 elections

Re: Eduacation

Didn't they make a documentary about all this a few years back? Oh yes, here it is: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BBvIweCIgwk

Beam me up, UK.gov: 'Extra-terrestrial markup language' booted off G-Cloud

@Benchops

Upvote for the Goodies reference - my favourite episode!

Early experiment in mass email ends with mad dash across office to unplug mail gateway

Here in Norfolk (UK) we have tourist-confusing names like Wymondham (pronounced Win-dum), Happisburgh (Haze-brer) and Costessey (Cossey or if you're broad Norfolk, then Caaar-sea). A friend of mine was once asked by a tourist if he could direct them to "Ack-lee" - took him a few seconds to realise they meant Acle (pronounced A-cull).

BT boosted by punters and sport – as it preps to squeeze subs harder

A year?

Way too long - be a bungee boss and get it down to a few seconds!

http://dilbert.com/strip/1994-09-07

Oracle puts release of new freebie mini-database on ice to work out kinks

"Sadly, the pretend horses aren't ready to "run" yet."

That's because they tried to design a unicorn but the horn was placed in the middle of the back pointing straight upwards. Ouch!

Oh boy: MPs prepare to probe UK.gov's digital prowess and tech savvy

House of Commons Science and Technology Committee

Did anyone else first read that as "House of Common Sense and Technology Committee"?

Common Sense in the House of Commons would be a first!

Saving the internet, fake news warts and all

Re: It was never a thing of beauty, it's a Fireship.

"the Internet became a way to get rich by selling useless crap (including politicians) to the innocent"

You'd have to be pretty innocent to buy a polician off the Internet! Now, a "politician removal spray" - that would be worth buying if it could be proven to work!

Windows 10 Insiders see double as new builds hit the deck – with promises to end Update Rage

Re: Predictive Fuckups

I think it needs a (possibly hard to find unless you're a techie) option to return to the pre-Windows 10 way of doing things for those of us who know what we're doing.

Enterprise Windows 10 users, Microsoft has some 'quality' patches coming your way

Quality Patches?

You mean they are going to BSOD in a more vibrant and spectacular manner?

Core blimey! Apple macOS update lifts boot from MacBook Pro neck

Does the update come with a fire extinguisher?

See icon...

Sorry, Neil Armstrong. Boffins say you may not have been first life-form to set foot on the Moon

"Do pseudopodia count?"

I asked one once, he formed a middle finger at me. So I suppose the answer is: "at least as far as one."

Sysadmin sank IBM mainframe by going one VM too deep

Re: If you're in the bizz long enough, you'll crash a production machine.

Back in the 1980s I was working in a company that was using Unisys kit (actually rebadged Convergent Technology systems) running CTOS. These could be "clustered" together into small networks. Downstairs, the boss and admin staff used a system that consisted of a network consisting of a master computer, with the hard disks attached, and two or three networked slave machines. Upstairs, each developer had a single computer but one developer (let's call him Derek, mainly because that was his name) had quite a powerful system.

When the downstairs master computer had a problem the boss decided that Derek's computer would have to act as the master computer for a while. Derek did warn them that, in the process of developing software, it was possible that we would often crash the computers, but the boss wasn't deterred. Derek had also discovered (via the CTOS API manuals) that there was a system call the forced a deliberate crash. He wrote a small program to call that API and every so often, when he was bored or whatever, would whisper to the rest of the developers (who were safely isolated on their own systems) something like, "Listen for the shouts downstairs." Then he'd run the program to crash the network resulting in cries of anguish below. He's then shout out something like, "Sorry, but I did warn you that we often cause crashes."

It didn't take too long before a new spare computer was made available and Derek's system became disconnected from downstairs again.

Google Cloud Platform reins in its trigger-happy account-axing AI cops

"Why you should not use Google Cloud"

I suspect mainly because it contains 2 particular words:

* Google

* Cloud

Well, that's certainly enough to put me off, anyway!

@MonkeyCee

Re: "Paypal being utterly useless with fraud"

In my experience of PayPal from a developers angle, I think you can safely abbreviate that to just "Paypal being utterly useless".

TalkTalk shrugs off moaning customers to claim 80,000 more

Re: Why? Just Why?

Indeed, but there are probably still people out there who don't have friends who are either in IT or who have been previous TalkTalk victims customers. So these people end up being conned by the rose-tinted adverts until they learn the truth about how "good" TalkTalk's service is. Safe bet that most of them won't be back after their contract runs out...

Capita strikes again: Bug in UK-wide school info management system risks huge data breach

Crapita

Testing - we've heard of it (possibly).

Microsoft bids adieu to inky fingers with whiteboard app

"You’ll need a Microsoft account to use the app"

Absolutely nope, then...

Do you really want your kids' future in the hands of Capita? Well, too bad

Capita will manage "end-to-end" services of the NCA tests

"Mismanage", Shirley?

Microsoft adds subscriptions for SQL and Windows Servers

Re: How long...?

Or pushing people onto PostgreSQL/MariaDB...

Spidey sense is literally tingling! Arachnids detect Earth's electric field, use it to fly away

Interesting timing...

...considering that Steve Ditko has recently passed away.

RIP SD - no one drew Spidey or Dr Strange quite like you did.

Imagine a patent on organizing computer files being used against online shopping sites. Oh, it's still happening

Antiquity

Me clam prior art! Sort rocks into big n litel! Big rocks for throw at Mamoht, lital rox for hit rabitz! Tastee - ug?

Re: Isn't this just another CAFS?

Please don't restrict it to just the trolls in East Texas! The buggers are known to exist elsewhere as well.

UK.gov: New London courthouse will focus on crimes of a cyber nature

So...

What's the betting they will construct a fancy big hi-tech state-of-the-art building that will only hit the news in a major way when it's discovered that the electronic access doors can be regularly opened by kiddies using nothing more than a toothpick and a mobile phone with bluetooth...

Hoping for Microsoft's mythical Andromeda in your Xmas stocking? Don't hold your breath

"Experiences and Devices Group"

Is that akin to the "Experience of Fscking Up Devices Group" that seems to have been hiding in the background at Microsoft for years making sure the fail rate always remained high?

They grow up so fast: Spam magnet Hotmail turned 22 today

Re: Overloaded Servers

Yep, Hotmail was notorious for that sort of thing. I always tried to steer people away from it. Here are some links that show the problems it had:

* Loses 81% of all emails with attachments (2011): https://hubpages.com/technology/Hotmail_Fails_To_Deliver_Up_To_81_Of_All_Attachment_Emails

* Emails not arriving: https://www.astutium.com/knowledgebase/268/Why-does-my-email-not-arrive-at-hotmail--Missing-or-Lost-emails-to-xyzathotmailcom-.html

Google Chrome update to label HTTP-only sites insecure within WEEKS

@Roger Greenwood

That's for Cloudfare ONLY! Doesn't help anyone using anything else! Sigh...

The Notch contagion is spreading slower than phone experts thought

And I think they should extend the display to the sides, the back, the phone cover, the charging lead and the box it came in. But what do I know?

Foot lose: Idiot perv's shoe-mounted upskirt vid camera explodes

"notch above Darwin Award territory"

As it was at shoe height, it was probably more like about 30 inches below Darwin Award territory! Unfortunately, as far as this individual is concerned, doing your best to blow your foot off doesn't actually stop you from procreating.