Posts by cd

We give up, Progressive Web Apps can track you, says W3C: After 5 years, it decides privacy is too much bother

Could a browser extension salt/scramble the id on the way out?

No Google Play, no problem: Huawei pinches global phone sales crown off Samsung

Go all the Huawei

No Play store or services running, so for so good, now sell a rooted phone with replaceable battery, physical switches for GPS, cameras, mics, etc.

Reply-All storm flares as email announcing privacy policy puts 500 addresses in the 'To' field, not 'BCC'

Re: Elementary, my dear Watson

What needs to happen is that out in pebkac -land when a user selects To, they really get Bcc.

Obviously there needs to be a way to select all To for my intended group emails, but it needs to be the buried choice.

Incredible artifact – or vital component after civilization ends? Rare Nazi Enigma M4 box sells for £350,000

Re: Right up to Nuremberg

Imagine if today's "leadership" were in charge in a similar conflict. Compromising items would be blithely tweeted without consulting any advisors.

GCHQ's cyber arm report on Huawei said to be burning hole through UK.gov desks

Re: WTF ....... Is the service demented and infiltrated?

Isn't it supposed to be a gang of four?

It’s happened again: AT&T sued for allegedly transferring victim's number to thieves in $1.9m cryptocoin heist

I just transferred my number off VZW; they did everything to prevent me from generating the transfer PIN that they require. That generator has been moved around the customer portal, it's now at the bottom of a seemingly-unrelated page and requires scrolling to find., so my MVNO's navigation instructions were no help

When found it is easy to run out of attempts and be given a 24 hour hiatus before further attempts. None of the 2FA texts arrived, use the email option if you need to do this. Texts suddenly worked perfectly minutes later when I called CS and they wanted me to use their digital assistant instead, was practically bombarded with imprecations to talk with their AI.

Perhaps incidentally, after I made it known that I wanted to transfer, my calls to CS were routed to a long queue. yet when I put in another SIM and called their CS I was answered promptly until they associated that number with me. Eventually, after days of trying, I got a transfer PIN that worked, unlike the one given to me verbally by VZW CS that turned out to be "invalid".

Point being that things might be in place to prevent transfer, but they also might be used to prevent valid transfer if it so benefits the carrier.

If I had one of those currency accounts I'd use an MVNO SIM and keep that phone number generally out of circulation and not associated with me anywhere official. There are plenty of MVNO's, easy to have several and rotate every so often. If thieves went after my regular number it would have no effect on my accounts. Those prepay SIMs are cheap to buy and keep.

But I'm not a technology consultant, except to friends and family.

After six months of stonewalling by Apple, app dev goes public with macOS privacy protection bypass

There are no longer any good commercial OS's

Assuming that Cook is Apple's Ballmer, may be a while until there are, given the financial success.

Things that happen every four years: Olympic Games, Presidential elections, and now new Mac ransomware

LS is expensive, also intrusive with its modal pop-ups. Hard to stomach paying that much for something that's such a PITA, keep hoping someone will come up with something that doesn't interrupt everything to fret about a connection issue that can wait.

Radio Silence is okay but not granular and not as useful as a tool. If only there were something in between...

Maybe there is hope for 2020: AI that 'predicts criminality' from faces with '80% accuracy, no bias' gets in the sea

Having lived in Pennsylvania, I commend the researchers attention to the nearby state legistlature, long known as a repository of grifters, the kind who hold unannounced Saturday evening sessions to annoint themselves with a pay raise.

Another advantage for the veracity of the project is their photos should be publicly and voluntarily available. The disadvantage being the high percentage of positives.

Faxing hell: The cops say they would very much like us to stop calling them all the time

Worked for a large company in the 90's, now gone, they used fax a lot, 24/7, for mission-critical stufff. Happened to overhear a comment about how when someone would accidentally call the fax number for our location with a voice phone, the older machine in the manager's office would emit lots of screeching trying to connect, then go quiet. Quite possible to hear it from outside, the newly built field office had thin, cost-saving walls.

On one particular night, I stood out in the lot with my trusty StarTAC and dialed the fax machine, let it rest a bit, then did it again. Soon I heard the bumptious manager cursing in the office. He went to get up and complain to someone, so I dialed his office number, let it ring until he ran back and answered, then hung up.

Repeated until he almost went mad. He would be holding the phone saying "Hello? What!' plaintively and with futile surrender-diminuendo. No caller ID at this company, costs too much.

Went out to do some work, in the morning a company truck was there with a new fax machine, which was quieter. That particular brief treatment worked; the manager was far from perfect going forward, but now had a small reserve of empathy occasionally used, and newly acquired slight hesitation when winding up to blame someone.

Worked for the successor company briefly, they had a position in corporate whose primary function was to read the instructions to any fax machine on company property to any field worker who called him. I called him a few times, i would read off the model number and he merely read from the manual for that machine, which were not supplied with the machines, perhaps to prevent the kind of thing I did in the first part.

VMware and Office for Mac need patching, Microsoft can scan your firmware, and Anonymous takes credit for Atlanta police hacks

CCP

Republicans are complaining about propagnada on social media?

Living up to its 'un-carrier' slogan, T-Mobile US stops carrying incoming calls, data in nationwide outage

Re: Strange Curves

In the morning on Mint (T-Mo MVNO) on the 15th I had text messages not send, then things began to work within an hour, then early afternoon phone calling kept being interrupted. One person said they hit a blank when trying to call, nothing at all.

Swapped in a VZW SIM mid-afternoon and calling was fine, texting was fine.

Now back on Mint because better speed, VZW is getting lazy on my connection, I think it's because I'm a long-time customer, although that is about to end.

Anyone have a recommendation for a prepay VZW MVNO? I'd like a backup to rarely use when I need remote coverage.

GitHub to replace master with main across its services

Every vehicle with hydraulic brakes and/or clutch has a master cylinder or two and slave cylinders.

IBM quits facial recognition because Black Lives Matter

Ginny probably got rid of all the people who knew how it worked.

BoJo looks to jumpstart UK economy with £6k taxpayer-funded incentive for Brits to buy electric cars – report

Try looking at this from the other end, given that we're talking about pointlessly cheap and greedy people who lack any compassion being in power, people who spend more energy making up manipulative lies to save themselves pennies than actually fixing any issues.

The main point of this scheme is that the poor who pay taxes can chip in to help wealthy people buy a new electric car. And of course keep their friends who own dealerships busy.

Smart fridges are cool, but after a few short years you could be stuck with a big frosty brick in the kitchen

Re: Never understood this

May I commend your attention to the Staber company in Ohio USA. Their washers come with a warranty which essentially is free replacement parts because they are so easy to work on, some households would have the needed tools in a kitchen drawer. Heavy gauge steel, very simple, and top-loading but horizontal drum.

They sell them to fire departments to wash their gear and also to off-gridders because they run on that level of power and use only 17 gallons of water for an entire cycle.

A different kind of smart, I think.

Snapping at Canonical's Snap: Linux Mint team says no to Ubuntu store 'backdoor'

It is spring...

Sounds like the garden needs weeding.

Huawei gets misty-eyed for the good old days (of a year ago) with maudlin P30 Pro remaster

Re: One more reason...

I'd prefer no GAPPS. Surprised none of those pariah outfits has released a rooted phone, would be a way to distress everyone official and incidentally official like Google.

The hotspot on my 4G phone is named 5G_COVID_Spreader, which is almost as good as having 5G.

What do you call megabucks Microsoft? No really, it's not a joke. El Reg needs you

Get back to Gates

School lunch money absconders

Moby or not Moby. That is the question: Docker devs debate fate of unloved rebranding

Quai?

Imagine if Facebook could read your mind: Er, I have some bad news for you...

Sir, there is a Linky in my rim.

Hands off Brock! EFF pleads with Google not to kill its Privacy Badger with its Manifest destiny

If this isn't implemented in the OSS version, could EFF simply offer their own browser?

We went through a phase where there weren't blockers, then the various plugins came along, now they are blocking those from working which is their right as owners of the code... so what's the next phase look like? Will it be like radar detector detectors and laser jammers for cars?

Or could someone make something that obviates the current escalation?

Uncle Sam charges Julian Assange with conspiracy to commit computer intrusion

Too bad he isn't sitting on a copy of the Mueller Report.

Here's what Lynch, Hussain and HPE are saying about Autonomy pre-buyout due diligence

HP feel the same way I felt after buying one of their printers.

Back to drawing board as Google cans AI ethics council amid complaints over right-wing member

Why not let AI choose the members?

Or use AI members, since it's obvious they didn't get representation on the board.

Unless you count the amoral founders.

'Safety will always come first,' insist Arizona biz org in response to Uber self-driving car death

We'll help you get your next fix... maybe, we'll think about it, says FTC: 'Right to repair' mulled

Re: Why is voiding of warranty a problem?

I've swapped batteries in my MacBook Pro several times without a special driver. A flat blade of the correct size held firmly will fit and work nicely. Two batteries came with special correct drivers that did not work as well as the flat blade.

Biker sues Google Fiber: I broke my leg, borked my ankle in trench dug to lay ad giant's pipe

Re: Micro trenches

There is a diff between software people and hardware people.

Similar with educated versus practically-experienced.

That Google tried it is one of the funniest things I've read in a while. I need to find something to sell them.

Uber won't face criminal charges after its robo-car killed woman crossing street

Yavapai is a large and relatively backward county of retirees, mostly conservative. They likely do not have the facilities to audit the code. Maricopa County might, but the got off the hook from doing so because of the flimsy conflict of interest charade.

Correction: Last month, we called Zuckerberg a moron. We apologize. In fact, he and Facebook are a fscking disgrace

Facebook is the next Catholic Church.

Long phone is loooong: Sony swipes at flagship fatigue with 21:9 tall boy

Re: 21:9 ratio, you say

I'm holding out for 42:18.

Google: Hmm, this government regulation stuff looks important. Let's stick some more lobbyists on that

Re: We own all of your data.

There are people who don't run Noscript? I never allow any Google stuff to run... well, I select for that and hope it doesn't.

So Google only have data on clueless people.

And there is a way to topple them, quite easy, if I had the money to get started.

Are you aware of the gravity of the situation on Mars? Why yes, say boffins: We rejigged Curiosity to measure it

Perhaps a read of The Janitor On Mars is in order...

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/1998/10/26/the-janitor-on-mars

Furious Apple revokes Facebook's enty app cert after Zuck's crew abused it to slurp private data

Apple needs to ban the FB app altogether and to put a privacy warning pop-up in Safari when the site is accessed.

Canadians moot methods to embiggen moose monument and make Mac great again

This time for sure!

The Iceman cometh, his smartwatch told the cops: Hitman jailed after gizmo links him to Brit gangland slayings

I reckon that he misread disposal of lead as dispersal.

Dear humans, We thought it was time we looked through YOUR source code. We found a mystery ancestor. Signed, the computers

Stop calling me todya.

Ho ho ho! Washington DC sends Zuckerberg a sueball-shaped present

Re: The trouble with convicting dishonest CEOs ...

That's why the Republican enthusiasm for prison reform recently, they wonder if they might be headed there themselves.

IBM: Co-Op Insurance talking direct to coding subcontractor helped collapse of £55m IT revamp project

IBM vs Insurance Company

Not much to choose from. IBM likely doesn't have anyone left who knows what Agile is.

Houston, we've had a problem: NASA fears internal server hacked, staff personal info swiped by miscreants

Can't we jut show Trump some old Thunderbirds episodes? Probably where he got the idea so it'll look just right.

Cloudflare speaks out amid allegations it safeguards banned terror gangs' websites

Re: Cloudflare are also a spam support company

It would help if they'd embed the original IP somehow, so that techy people could access it and report if needed. Or perhaps have a lookup page for same.

ZipRecruiter has been flying low: User email addresses exposed to unauthorised accounts

Re: Small issue

I let Zip have an ancient junkmail address to try their listings, it chose a query I didn't do on purpose, one it tried to get me to choose which had nothing to do with what I was actually looking to browse. Several other spammy recruiters sent me "offers" for that query immediately and constantly. I did get Zip to kill my "account" and it went away after a while.

Their offerings appear to me mostly atmosphere with some BTU's added.

"Small" only if you have extra email addresses and extra resources, which many unemployed do not.

Windows 10 can carry on slurping even when you're sure you yelled STOP!

so... TINT

Cambridge Analytica's administrators misled judge, High Court told

Re: Er, what?

Pretend you are Lewis Carroll making a sequel to Alice in Wonderland while reading it.

Awkward... Revealed Facebook emails show plans for data slurping, selling access to addicts' info, crafty PR spinning

Re: Users should pay to use Facebook

"So much for the core mission simply being to 'connect people'."

It is merely incomplete, the full phrase is "connect people to our databases"

Facebook's CEO on his latest almighty Zuck-up: OK, we did try to smear critics, but I was too out-of-the-loop to know

An article about how Fb sucks is not news. Even if the suck in a "new" way.

Hands up who isn't p!*$ed off about Amazon's new HQ in New York and Virginia?

I saw them for the bag of dicks they are back when free shipping was purposely delayed by waiting a week to ship. Since then rarely use them. I do maybe one order a year, stuff unavailable elsewhere and with no deadline, so they aren't twisting my arm with their delay game.

Corporate subsidies should be abolished. "Let the market decide" is like saying "let the drunk guy drive" but if that's what they want let's give it to them, especially when it hurts.

Michael Howard: Embrace of open source is destroying 'artificial definitions' of legacy vendors

Re: Did he catch a bad case of biz-speak?

"Jump off a cliff onto new ground" - a fine mixed metaphor indeed.

There's a fault occurring in there somewhere. By then it might not be a cliff any longer.

Another 3D printer? Oh, stop it, you're killing us. Perhaps literally: Fears over ultrafine dust

Re: n before g

Or in Psmith.

Google's secret to a healthy phone? Remote-controlling your apps

The best way to be safe is to disable Play Services altogether and not use Google services or a login. Photos gripes about not working without Play Services but it does on the phone. Firefox and assorted blockers can be loaded via APK.