Posts by heyrick

I've gone from writing about SD-WAN to depending on it

No plans for fibre?

I live in rural France. Rural enough that my ADSL struggled to get above 3.7Mbit, and after a tractor ran over one of the poles, it struggled to pass 2.1Mbit.

Now it's all fibre as the copper is slowly being removed throughout the country. Seems to be a pretty solid 2Gbit (artificially limited to 1Gbit per device unless I pay extra, but that's faster than the WiFi goes). And since there's no large urban area around here, I haven't noticed any contention, and I'd notice glitches because I often stream radio (right now I'm listening to the final days of 100.7 The Bay (Baltimore)).

Anyway, is there plan for fibre in this person's area?

Open source project fools AI scrapers with poisoned font

On my site, you have to write certain characters into some text boxes and do not tick the I am a human checkbox. Doing this sets a cookie. Having the cookie lets you in. Without the cookie, you'll just be asked for the magic incantation, unless you're a whitelisted search engine bot.

It is custom code (just a little dollop of PHP) and my site traffic plummeted massively. While some scrapers can be devious, most are thicker than a dozen short planks.

Note: two part s of the design criteria were "works on anything from NetSurf to Lynx" and "doesn't require any third party anything".

UK wants datacenters to pay a fee for grid connection requests

Refundable?

Why?

It costs money to connect. It costs a fair chunk of money to connect something like that.

Stop spreading costs amongst the normal consumers - we're not an open wallet. If big business wants a billion watts, they can cough up for it.

AI digs through 3,700 accounts of dreams and waking life, finds method in the madness

Re: Hmm...

Never played one.

Hmm...

I'm not me in my dreams. And it seems that there is a shared location that they all happen in. Quite expansive, in fact. Every so often I get to see how one location is related to another. It's like an entire dream world, and I seem to jump into random characters doing random things.

Wonder what this says about me...?

Leading AI models (even Grok) are all a bunch of leftist punks

Re: Depends on where you define "The Center"

"has been moving steadily to the right for at least the last 40 years"

Yes, I feel the same. Starmer's Labour is arguably to the right of Thatcher. And the Tories are arguably to the right of where the BNP used to be (in particular, Suella Braverman).

Wait, hang on...

...haven't we had stories about chatbots that have gone full Third Reich? Maybe this is a hyper correction to assure that such a thing doesn't recur, because on the balance of probabilities you're going to upset less people by being "woke" than by being......

America bans imported robots due to supply chain and security risks

It makes sense...

...that no country should accept potentially critical infrastructure from a country considered unreliable or potentially hostile, especially if they have the ability to killswitch things in a heartbeat in order to try to get their own way over something.

Europe got the memo. We're slowly (very slowly) untangling ourselves from American tech.

Burnham wants Big Ecommerce to bankroll Britain's pubs

"and all restaurants are Taco Bell!"

Aren't they currently in the process of trying to reduce their clientele count?

Researchers replace downloaded macOS apps with evil twins, Apple shrugs

Well, it *is* called "Gatekeeper"

It is designed to keep bad things out. Once whatever is inside, not their problem...

GNOME can look like Windows – and Flashback can do it without extensions

It's in the middle?!?

Well, that would be the first thing I'd turn off if I had a machine that did that sort of stupidity...

AI music platform Suno hits bum note as 55M users exposed in data breach, claims infosec expert

And when do they plan to notify those affected?

I have used Suno, only free, and logged in with a Google link to a backup account. I haven't heard a peep. Am I not concerned or have they just not bothered?

Microsoft flips Windows Backup to on by default unless you're in the EU

Re: Every week...

As a Linux newbie, I'm aware of systemd (mostly through this site!) and that people have opinions about it. From my point of view, however, I'm less concerned with how it works, only that it does.

Re: Every week...

I did it about a year ago. Got a little machine to play with that had Win10. Hated it. So on a whim a booted Linux Mint Cinnamon off a USB key. It didn't last long because USB keys as main storage, not a great idea. But it lasted long enough to assure me that formatting C:\ and installing Linux there would only improve the machine.

Linux does what it does in about half the space and arguably faster.

UN warns of need for global governance to avoid an AI-pocalypse

Take a look at Trump threatening Europe because we'd like tech companies to pay a mite more tax rather than having cash flow out of the countries. His response? Shut up or I'll (unlawfully, like last time) slap punitive tariffs on you.

Now ask yourself if any so-called rules would be worth a damn in such a situation. If, say, we wanted to regulate AI faking real people and what they said (like Trump's weird TDS video) but the other country just wants money money money...

It's looking like a hot, messy summer for security teams as AI finds countless previously hidden vulns

Re: Closed source

Leak your codebase just once and the bad people will have loads of bug fodder and you'll be in the blind because the good people learned the hard way not to touch you with a bargepole because you'd rather scream legal than say "good find, we'll fix that".

UK firm bombarded debt-ridden people with 5.5M texts

Pointless

Because they faked being a bailiff to extort people into paying, this ought to have at least a fine of £250 per instance, with the company director held personally liable (so they don't just claim bankruptcy and do it again).

£300K is a joke. It's basically saying that if you think you can make more than that (and if they were paid 10p per text they did), then go right ahead and do it as you'll get a minor slap on the wrist and come out ahead...

Cloudflare teams up with big browsers to help websites tell welcome from unwelcome visitors

Re: Yet another ID grab.

"click on the squares showing only good things about your mother"

* She gave birth to me

* She's my best friend

* She got what was coming

* She's dead

All are potential "good things" depending on one's relationship with their creator...

shareable, privacy-preserving

Yeah, I think I spot a very large contradiction right there.

Microsoft accidentally kills epic Outlook email threads

Vibe coding for the win!

The post is required, and must contain letters: So, this post was brought to you by the letters Q and Z and the number 4.

Health board apologizes for phishing staff with with bogus vacation day

What I don't get...

...is why the onus is on the stressed overworked underpaid pissed-off underappreciated employee to "be vigilant".

Why doesn't the company maintain a whitelist of accessible sites, and everything else is blocked. If that's inconvenient for "X" then fill out a request form giving the domain you want and why you want to access it.

Doing it like this would be a lot safer all around as fat finger moments would end up with an error message, not a pwn.

Small island nation tries bold tech education strategy

Reading between the lines

To boot kids off socials, it'll require a way to determine who is and isn't eligible.

Which will mean some sort of ID check.

And what better way than by a government approved "citizen's digital ID"? Because clearly all the people hostile to the idea are painfully misguided, right? We can absolutely trust the government to be responsible with such information (and not just willingly hand it over to a foreign spy outfit and/or lose it on a USB key on a train), right?

This, like the OSA, will be worded in such a way that it can mean whatever they need it to mean when they need it to mean that.

And there I was thinking this sort of crap only happened in places like North Korea or countries with "Democratic" in the name...

Google told researcher 'Nice catch!' Then denied bug bounty for flaw it still hasn't fixed

Re: I think all researchers

Yup. If being nice doesn't get them to treat things with the proper amount of seriousness, just dump the relevant code on the 'net, along with screenshots of the company's response when proper disclosure was attempted.

Maybe then they'll stop treating bug hunters as unpaid fanboys.

Transport for London keeps Capita behind wheel of road charging ops in £912M extension

Easy to piss away other people's money, isn't it?

A company that carried on like this would go bust. But since TfL is a part of local government, the money can keep coming.

Suppliers that behave in such ways ought to be blacklisted from all future government contracts. Instead everybody takes taxpayers for suckers...

Brit competition cops order Google to make search rankings less mysterious

If Google offers the best results...

...why, when I type in some obscure chip number, do I get:

1, an endless set of Chinese sites claiming they can sell me the part, but they can't even agree on what that part is

And:

2, a number of sites (which often seem to be Italian) that show a snippet of a datasheet or blog post that seems relevant, but when you follow the link it's actually a bait and switch through several chained URLs until you end up staring at badly drawn oversized boobies and a promise that you can see more by unlocking with your credit card.

There's a reason I do my "what's this obscure chip in obsolete hardware" searches using Bing.

Developers build the best tools for developers – and are now defanging the AI menace

Re: Two reasons

And the third reason - they've looked at the output and realised that no matter what the hype of the machine, a human that knows what they're doing can see the bigger picture.

Wasn't all the hooha about Rust because we're trying to make software better, safer, more secure, and reliable? Because vibe coding isn't that.

Capita is about to sail past deadline to fix civil service pensions scheme

And what will the penalty be?

Let's start with full reimbursement of money paid, plus additional compensation for failure to deliver the goods.

I mean, a basic failure clause was written into the contract, right?

Don't answer. It's a rhetorical question. The "penalty" will be the usual - throw more taxpayer money at it, which is hardly an incentive to get the job done...

Brit workers waste nearly six hours a week 'botsitting'

finding 90 percent are now required to use AI in their roles

Required?

There's your problem.

AI should be used if it's a tool that actually helps. But it shouldn't be required.

GitHub nukes 70+ Microsoft repos, breaks CI/CD pipelines, following suspected worm infections

Re: Ugh

I clicked the article because "ooh, spaghetti!". Now I go back and discover it was worms. I guess it's time for lunch...

(icon, because duh)

Chrome's zero-day Whac-A-Mole continues with fifth exploited bug of the year

For Chrome users, the advice remains much the same as it was after the first four zero-days this year: restart the browser, install the update, and avoid giving attackers an unnecessary head start install a different browser.

There. Fixed that for you.

Council in UK's City of York outs hundreds of disabled residents with a single email blunder

Re: One affected resident told local media

Mental health crisis? What mental health crisis? Everything is fine, nothing to see here. Put the kettle on and calm down.

Re: Mass email using BCC

Ah, but you're literally handing a third party a list of valid email addresses. Do you have informed (as in you've clearly said you'll be doing this) consent?

UK lawmakers call on government to ditch Palantir NHS contract

I don't know about now, having been out of the UK for over twenty years, but back around Y2K when I was working in nursing homes, the "immigrants" were the employees doing crappy jobs few other people wanted to do for pay few other people would accept.

There are good immigrants and there are bad immigrants, a distinction lost on the likes of Farage. (And me? Here in France? I'm the immigrant...)

It should be illegal...

...to transfer private information of UK citizens outside of the UK.

NHS, census, DWP, etc etc all ought to be handled within the UK by a UK based company.

Trump's AI E-(I)-O could let feds pick winners and losers

Blatantly corrupt man is corrupt...

(see title)

Remote work – not AI – is killing job prospects for the youth

Re: Time to Sack Managers

"People don't answer those questions honestly"

This.

We had an "anonymous" poll at work. People didn't trust that and most didn't say anything too controversial.

When it came time for the results, management picked all the positives and completely ignored the negatives.

I'm sure some box was ticked but otherwise it was a complete waste of time. But, then, that's par for the course when you're dealing with people who will take a 45m meeting to discuss a three line email.

Re: Time to Sack Managers

"is one who gets done what his/her boss requires"

Whereas average managers simply spend far too long ensuring that the finger of blame points elsewhere, including throwing the people they're supposed to be managing under the bus if need be.

ICE to keep an eye on your eyes under $25M biometric scanner deal

The sad thing is I once would have liked to visit Maryland to see where my mom grew up.

But when she was alive she had no desire whatsoever to return.

And now? Well, it's no longer a "thing I'd like to do". Too much hassle and I get the feeling that something is fundamentally broken. So, sorry, there are better places to go do the tourist thing.

As a now third world citizen in France (thanks Brexit) I had fingerprints taken and likely biometrics from photographs. But retinal scans? Is that sort of thing normal in civilised countries?

That an app 'Fits on a Floppy' is still a useful measure in 2026

Re: every byte matters

This was done on a Beeb game, sticking some code into a blank bit in the middle of the screen and when the screen scanning reached that part, fiddling the palette so all the colours were the same. It's kind of insane, but it's the right sort of insane that got something like seven colours in a four colour screen mode...

Re: Obviously too old

Upvote because every so often my underpowered Linux machine freezes for a while (fiddling with memory paging no doubt), but there's no HD light, there's no chk-chk-fvs-chk, there's nothing. I kind of miss the reassuring "I'm busy, hang on a mo" noises that Windows did far too frequently.

I'm old enough I remember eight inch

Drives that rattled as they started, and positively chugged in a way that power metal can only dream of. Plus all sorts of fun like "this disc has one hole but this disc has loads" or "inserting this the wrong way up is a world ending scenario" (apparently there was some sort of felt stuff inside and it wouldn't stand being rubbed the wrong way and would cause bad things to happen). Oh, and that drive that would align itself by slamming the head into the end stop with more gusto than a DeskJet 500 (that did much the same thing).

Three and a half inch was absolutely tame and civilised in comparison.

Experts pour cold borscht on Farage's Russian hack claim

Putin's little puppet lied?

Say it ain't so...

Re: Blatant attempt to distract from the fact that...

Nah, he'll just tell Putin "they all think you're the boogeyman, so we'll just go along with that until this blows over".

Threat hunters find Google API keys still usable 23 minutes after deletion

VMs further from the US picked up the deletion faster,

You mean countries where legal judgements are less likely to go in their favour over crap like automatically upgrading a reasonable spending limit to something truly eye watering based upon tenuous logic that very clearly works in their favour?

Google Cloud suspended major customer Railway.com without cause, causing outage

Google Cloud suspended major customer Railway.com without cause, causing outrage

There, fixed that for you.

Mozilla warns UK: Breaking VPNs will not magically fix Britain's age-check mess

Re: Won't someone think of the politicians?

Won't they just do like the Online Safety Act and grant themselves an exemption?

UK government prescribes Single Patient Record for NHS data chaos

and knowing where Palantir fits in

It doesn't, fuck off.

Well technically Scotland is a different country...

Google users fight for refunds as unauthorized API usage bills soar

according to Google those caps can be automatically upgraded to $100,000 – without user input

They need to meet a class action with a ruinous penalty (and not a slap on the wrist). Two fifty to a hundred grand is not even in the realms of logical. I can afford $250. A hundred grand, on the other hand, is years of work with not paying anything else (like all the other bills and food etc). To do this silently without specific user action is nothing short of exploitative and a blatant scam.