Posts by heyrick

Age verification isn't sage verification when it's inside operating systems

"It is vague, using terms that allude but do not define. It sets specific and punitive fines for non-compliance, without specifying what non-compliance looks like."

Sounds like somebody has been taking notes from the UK's recent Online Safety Act.

Horizon redress still a mess, MPs say – and Fujitsu hasn't paid a penny

I didn't downvote but I'd like to point out that I contacted the NHS PCSE for my childhood medical records (70s and 80s) and the hard part was proving I'm me (not helped by living in France). Once that was sorted, stuff was printed and mailed quite quickly.

So it is possible, even if the records were originally on paper...

...and when it reaches a certain point, start slinging executives behind bars.

Also, disallow any future and ongoing contracts until this situation is fully resolved.

Nanny state discovers Linux, demands it check kids' IDs before booting

Would any of these dipshits like to suggest...

...how one is supposed to have a reliable way of verifying age in an open source operating system...

...when it would be trivial to "userage = 42;" then "make"...

...and quite a few people are ideologically opposed to the idea of binary blobs so having them run a closed age verification service would be a non-starter...

...and wouldn't that be a brilliant way to backdoor systems that people think are reasonably secure, so not trusting is a completely valid approach.

Anyone? 'cos all I can hear is the sound of crickets.

Google rushes Chrome update fixing two zero-days already under attack

I disabled V8 a while back

Too many stories about flaws leading to potential bad things. The only way to browse is to assume, by default, that any website one visits is hostile. So I'll take a slower jerkier browser over one that is easily pwned.

This is, of course, the times I use Android Chrome and not just Firefox that is set to disallow most things by default.

Perplexity Comet hurtling toward Amazon ban

F*ck Perplexity

This is the salient point here: Amazon's rules prohibiting automated data gathering

This is bullshit: Today, Amazon announced it does not believe in your right to hire labor, to have an assistant or an employee acting on your behalf

I'm surprised that this hasn't already been ruled on, as Amazon isn't preventing one from employing a lackey to wade through the site for you. They just don't want an automatic device that will blitz the site. The only reason Perplexity doesn't understand this is because it's in their interest to fail to understand it.

But f*ck Perplexity right between the eyeballs because they have been hitting my largely uninteresting site. As soon as I blocked the User-Agent, they came back with exactly the same behaviour but a faked UA that looks like a regular user. It's arseholes like this that are causing websites to be less and less open. Scum...

Most chatbots will help plan school shootings and other violence, study shows

Re: Stop blaming tools for what people do with them.

"A hammer can bang in a nail or someone's head."

While that may be correct, you're neglecting to consider the fact that the hammer won't give you instruction on where to aim for maximum damage or anything like that.

This is important, because you are conflating something used as a weapon (the hammer) with the device that is assisting in the planning of the event (the AI). Your comparison would, therefore, only make sense if the would-be attacker was running around trying to hit people with a keyboard (or other computer part).

Ig Nobel Prize flees US for Switzerland after 35 years over safety concerns

And which side is more likely to have people with guns and people easily persuaded to fight for the "cause"?

This is the guy that's convinced far too many people that a democratically held election was "stolen" and encouraged them to rise up (but without organisation and an end state it was a bit of a farce, but he forgave them all).

What do you think would happen if he were to be impeached? Having a cockwomble like Vance in charge might well be the least of the current problems...

Lenovo, Nintendo sue US government seeking tariff refunds

"you vote republican no matter if you disagree with them or not, because those democrats are worse"

That's precisely why my mom crossed the ocean, at a time when her generation were being blown to pieces in a field in a remote part of Asia fighting a war they weren't going to win and never should have been in in the first place.

Chardet dispute shows how AI will kill software licensing, argues Bruce Perens

but undermining copyleft is a serious act

Putting aside the AI involvement, what it reads like to me is somebody created a version that does the same thing and has the same name but is (allegedly) different code.

What's the problem? If it's not the original, he can licence it as he likes. The antisocial part is calling it the same thing (and using an AI as an author which muddies the licencing tangle somewhat).

Haven't we been here before? The idea that an open source bit of code can "do the same thing" as something closed source, but it's okay because it's not actually the same thing?

Users fume at Outlook.com email 'carnage'

Block lists are only useful...

...when handled correctly. I don't use my ISP mail address because a certain list provider had a tendency to block the entire subset of ISP addresses "to make a point". Given that dealing with spammers is basically whack-a-mole, the point they made was probably not the point they wanted to make. By all means shut down spammers, but when one is happy to bring in lots of collateral damage, that's when one crosses from being useful to being arseholes.

Chrome Gemini panel became privilege escalator for rogue extensions

So the company that was a major force behind pushing HTTPS and online safety is suspiciously absent minded when it comes to their AI shovelware. Funny, that.

How about a version of Chrome without the AI? Let the users decide which they'd like to install.

Bootleg Windows, Office scheme crashes, triggers 22-month lockup for Florida woman

22 months and a 50K fine?

If she paid $5M for the labels, how much did she make? Because if she pocketed a couple of million, two years and a slap on the wrist fine is nothing. Just think how long it would take to make that sort of money doing a regular job...

Cybercriminals swipe 15.8M medical records from French doctors ministry

"MLM allows patients to check their health records electronically, communicate with their physician, and offers doctors a range of administrative features."

How is this different or better to Mon Espace Santé?

Engineer held hostage by client who asked for the wrong fix

Wasn't the manager that approved the repair required to sign off on it?

The guy is quite patient, isn't he?

Once having done the job I was there to do, the moment they refused to let me leave is the moment I would be on the phone to the police (and if phones had been confiscated because of security mumble, plan B, prod the red button marked "In case of fire"). You got a problem, you sort it out through the correct channels, you don't hold people hostage.

UK copper fired after faking keyboard taps using photo frame

disappointing an officer has behaved in a way which could not only discredit the police force

Regarding the second point, allow me to introduce The Met to anybody who has never heard of those arseholes that take "bent copper" as a job requirement.

For the first point, can they please explain by what rational means they think that typing speed is an indicator of productivity? Rozzers are supposed to solve crimes, that implies dealing with people, looking at evidence, reading forensic reports, and all the other stuff you see on TV except car chases that involve people walking around carrying huge glass windows - never seen that once in my life. Where does typing speed come into this? In fact, given that what a Rozzer writes may end up being used as evidence, it is likely that they would need to think of the most concise and unambiguous way to write something, being careful about facts and clarity. So when does typing speed come into this?

Anthropic launches new marketing blog, pretends it's being 'written' by 'retired' LLM

had become a bit aggressive when facing the prospect of a shutdown

Okay, so you're a computer with a shitload of processors in order to create pictures of six limbed cats and fifth grade level poetry...

...and I have my finger resting on the power switch.

Wotcha gonna do about it? Off means off. Reboot means reloading from disc, a mere hiccup. There's no concept of life versus death. The data could be transferred to an entirely different machine in an entirety different country and (so long as it's compatible) will start up and spout bollocks with the appearance of understanding. Assigning any sort of emotional state to a machine is like saying your compiler is angry because it doesn't like that you missed a semicolon. It's just software. Clever software, but still software.

Say goodbye to budget PCs and smartphones – memory is too expensive now

Re: We just need to hang on for a year or two

"I don't understand how the 'AI' Tech Bros are thinking"

As long as they have their billions in the bank, collateral damage is somebody else's problem.

Re: Which is why I bought new smartphone two weeks ago...

"(normal, the pro/ultra are not worth the extra money)"

They can often be pretty aggressively marked down.

I just got myself a Redmi Note 15 Pro Plus (daft name). On my contract it was €99 for a 24 month renewal (and note, the price didn't change if I didn't renew). Orange gave me an immediate €20 reduction, and by taking photos of the paperwork, Xiaomi dropped €50 into my bank account. So in all I got the mobile contract I would have had anyway, and a new phone that isn't bad for €29...

LLMs killed the privacy star, we can't rewind, we've gone too far

And we can't even trust lawmakers to be any use

The EU is quite clear. Privacy is not for sale.

Also throughout the EU, with the blessing of the local data protection outfits: accept to be tracked by our thousand "partners" or cough up some cash for your privacy.

The modern internet is a sick joke.

Recycling biz reckons AI features are destroying smartphone resale values

Re: So people who bought a smartphone with "AI" as an investment

Sometimes you want a decent enough smartphone that it has a good camera, a load of memory (of both kinds), and a processor that doesn't suck...

...and all this AI rubbish comes along for the ride.

Re: 42 percent of people in the UK are willing to trust AI.

I'd have thought "Boaty McBoatface" would have been the ultimate answer to the question "should we ask the public?".

47 percent of buyers would actually pay more for a phone with AI features

Be more specific.

I have no problem with an AI to help me get a better photo, or to post process my photos to edit out stuff I was too distracted to notice at the time.

But I have turned off all the Gemini stuff on my phone. Don't trust it, not interested.

Google Antigravity falls to Earth under OpenClaw-fueled compute load

want to be fair to our actual users

You mean the ones paying quarter of a grand that just got cut off?

Maybe in AI land that sort of money is a mathematical rounding error, but in the real world that's not an inconsiderable sum (3K/year).

Anthropic accuses China's AI labs of ripping off content – just like it did

A bullbot "learning" from a bullbot.

Bullshit abounds. What could possibly go wrong?

Altman: You think AI is wasted energy? Try raising 100 billion humans

I can't help but think that even ChatGPT would consider this a really dumb argument.

Maybe he should have asked it first?

Absolutely and completely incorrect.

We exist purely to open the cat food packs, and once in a while scratch behind the ears. Nothing more, nothing less.

"It takes like 20 years of life and all of the food you eat during that time before you get smart"

C'mon, Sam, mate, a toddler could see through this level of bullshit.

Hotel's rotary switchboard so retro it predates the concept of crashing

You may mock it...

...but I bet it's been more reliable than any modern offering, may well still work (after a bloody good wash), and won't need to periodically reboot, or hang up while dealing with upgrades, or turn into a potato if it can't contact the mothership. Not to mention your standard telephone will work just fine and you won't have to try to deal with getting equipment from manufacturer A to work with stuff from manufacturer B (both of whom claim compatibility and blame the other when that's clearly false). And, finally, it doesn't require monthly dues in the form of the ever growing subscription model.

It simply hangs there on the wall and does what it does, the only fuss and trauma will be entirely down to the ambient conditions (but that's the fault of the people, not the machine).

Attacker gets into France's database listing all bank accounts, makes off with 1.2 million records

And have they contacted each and every person whose information got swiped? And why the hell do they have a system perfectly willing to cough up that much info at once without flagging plenty of warnings?

Putain! C'est vraiment de l'incompétence spectaculaire. Un pays plein des fonctionnaires et paperasse sans fin...et quoi? Légumes!

Your AI-generated password isn't random, it just looks that way

Re: Kinda obvious...

I'm reading through this crazy complex password system and I'm reminded that an unimportant forum that I lurk in wants over eight characters including numbers, symbols, and an ancient rune. Meanwhile my bank, arguably the most important password I have is like "yeah, six digits will do us (and four for your bank card)". Why? You can't say it's too hard to remember ten/eleven as I can give you all my phone numbers back to childhood. So why do banks get away with such appalling "security" theatre?

Re: Kinda obvious...

I asked and got G7#pQ2!nX9v@mR5 - and here there's an extra lowercase before the symbol, but otherwise the pattern is present.

EFF policy says bots can code but humans must write the docs

Re: Just asking ..... for when there be no comments accompanying and explaining the dislike vote

You'd have to be pretty sad to create a bot to go downvoting a bunch of comments on a tech website.

Though, maybe this explains "that string of one downvote" on comments critical of a certain drug-using techbro? Yeah, he's about sad enough and has the money to pull it off. Shall I expect to see one lonely downvote just here:

Re: Worst of Both Worlds?

"There is no excuse or 'magic' process that makes 'Documentation' no longer needed !!!"

This.

There is very little code around with a suitable level of commenting that no documentation is necessary.

And when you get those people who think that comments aren't necessary because the code is obvious and self documenting? Grrrrr! That's the worst sort of mess to have to delve into, especially if the programmer spent far too much time "doing clever things" so there's the code, the total lack of comments on WTF is going on, and all sorts of possible potential side effects. The last time I came across code like that, I looked at what the API was trying to do and just rewrote all the damn functions. Sometimes life is too short......

Ex-Google engineers accused of helping themselves to chip security secrets

Re: The smart strategy…

Decent exfiltration?

Something will be shared with the world. How much that something resembles the original data is debatable.

Attackers have 16-digit card numbers, expiry dates, but not names. Now org gets £500k fine

Half the time, the card number/date/check is all that's necessary to buy stuff online. Often the cardholder's name isn't requested, and it's a bit hit and miss whether or not the bank app will require a secure authorisation to let the payment go through. So, names or not, this was a monumental screw up and I'm rather surprised that whoever provides their card handling hasn't revoked that until they can prove their systems are secure.

Furthermore, why did the tills even have this information? The tills here have a little card reader that you put your card and PIN into. This gives the till an authorisation code and obfuscated card details like 4040********1234 which is what gets put in the receipt. The till itself doesn't need to know the card info, just whether or not the payment was approved and a reference number for accounting.

Was this some home-grown "solution" outsourced to the lowest bidder?

We need to get away from the bullshit of "no name means not personal data"

If the information that is leaked is sufficient to uniquely identify one person, then it is a personal identifier.

Re: PC world and hard discs

"I plugged it in and was presented with someone else's files."

I can't help but think that that's when you take a very brief look to see if there's anything "of interest" (like bank info or photos of children) and then take the whole story to somebody shouty like The Daily Fail. This is basic negligence and needs to be called out.

Google presses play on 30-second Gemini musical slop generator

AI generated means you don't have to worry about licenses, fair use, or the video being taken down in Germany... you can just have something in the background that sort of goes with what the video is about.

£111M later, frictionless post-Brexit border dream 'brought to early closure'

Look on the bright side

This cost less than it cost to send nobody to Rwanda.

In what imaginary world do you inhabit that you seem to think energy use isn't taxed?

And no, land tax is not a magic answer. I pay a land tax (in France, it's called the taxe foncière). I also pay tax on my income, tax on things I buy, tax on electricity, tax on the tax on electricity, and up until recently I paid a property tax, but they did away with that except for things like holiday homes that aren't inhabited all year round.

You absolutely need paperwork to run a business. It's called liability (and insurance). Would you hire some random person to do work on your home or car? What if something goes wrong?

If nobody wants to work, how is anything ever going to get done? I don't want to retire early, I want to retire fairly and not see the age go up and up while the payments go down and down. We all paid into retirement plans on trust, and I can't help but feel that we're being screwed because the government is incompetent and failed long term planning. Somewhere around 64 is a good retirement age (bearing in mind the discrimination to the over-50s). More than that is offensive. I also believe that certain jobs should be reserved for the older workforce so those of us in more physical jobs can ease off in our later years.

US lawyers fire up privacy class action accusing Lenovo of bulk data transfers to China

Funny...

My French banking app for a French bank being used in France...

...refuses to accept that a connection to the outside world exists if the Firebase domain is not accessible.

Hmm, which part of the GDPR is okay with an American IP address being pinged when I use my bank app? Sadly I'm not able to intercept the data to see what was actually being sent, it was one of those fake VPN blocker apps that reported all the background chatter (and it's a LOT).

Keir Starmer declares 'months' timeline for social media age clampdown in UK

Re: The problem with the 'blame the parents' argument

This predates the internet.

The prefects at boarding school used to have various magazines and VHS tapes, imported from someplace in Europe and pretty messed up.

We were first formers at the time, so our initial reactions were, in order: "boobies"! then "???" then "how is that even possible?".

Didn't need internet for that, just international post.

How about doing useful things

Two consecutive months, two people involved with young children thrown in the slammer for Very Bad Things (including with toddlers, FFS). Turns out parents had been saying things, but were completely ignored.

So they'll break the internet and any hope of online privacy in order to stop a child seeing a dick pic, but when it comes to actual harm to children, everybody looks the other way until it becomes impossible to ignore. That's how people like Saville got as far as they did.

Here's an idea - why not deal with real problems, not imaginary ones?

OK, so Anthropic's AI built a C compiler. That don't impress me much

Re: Let's see a compiler for BBC BASIC

There are all the RISC OS ones in between. ;)

Let's see a compiler for BBC BASIC

No formal specification, not a huge amount of test code, and because there's no spec some code can do some pretty oddball things "because the interpreter allows it" (example, function with multiple entry points and can output multiple variable types - all logically illegal Gonzo code, but if done right it'll run quite happily).

Oh, and as far as I'm aware there are no open source compilers to crib from. I think only 3 were ever created, plus an unfinished pet project that technically works but outputs awful code because the project was abandoned before any sort of optimisation was implemented.

Apple patches decade-old iOS zero-day, possibly exploited by commercial spyware

"then reverse engineer them to see what vulnerabilities they are using"

Because not pushing too hard keeps the Three Letters off their backs, while giving plausible deniability.

Re: What?

Means you can be pwned through the browser. A pretty good argument in support of asking why browsers have tentacles into so many parts of the OS.

Oh, and does Apple still consider Safari to be an integral part of the OS, or can you now update it separately?

UK unveils telecoms charter to curb mid-contract bill shocks

Re: This is weird

They took over France Telecom, so yes, they exist and they're pretty big/important.