Posts by Peter Galbavy

Inside OpenSSL's battle to change its license: Coders' rights, tech giants, patents and more

Theo's come back with a beauty:

https://marc.info/?l=openbsd-tech&m=149032069130072&w=2

Perfect.

UK to block Kodi pirates in real-time: Saturday kick-off

There's a danger of legal "feature creep" here. If the broadcasters convince the establishment that unmanaged media players are the root of all piracy and that only approved / licensed ones should be legal then they get even more lock in and you will have even less access to content you may well already have a license to view (I have ripped almost all my DVD/BluRays to a local server for convenience etc.).

Happy 20th birthday to the RADIUS RFC

20 years my hairy fat arse

We (Demon) were using RADIUS on both Ascend, USRobotics (much less) and custom SunOS with SCSI bases serial ports for authentication well before then. We (again, not me, just we) were also syncing RADIUS databases using UUCP over TCP between multiple servers for PoPs and the like too. Sigh.

Joe Public likes drones and regulations, finds UK.gov 'public dialogue'

They've already decided, this is just window dressing

This whole "consultation" exercise is the usual sham, where the results have already been decided and the 3 month consultation is simply to meet statutory requirements. The document discussed in the article is only one of the three advisory documents to the main consultation which appears to be written by an unsupervised child and has so many flaws and errors as to be laughable. The questions posed, as they ask primarily for specific answers from a list and not a narrative response are of the "how long have you been beating your wife" variety.

I will try to make time to respond, tearing the whole thing apart, but apart from making me feel better it is unlikely to have any effect whatsoever.

Little things, like how do foreign visitors register their devices?, jump out as completely missing and given that the registration process is modelled on the US and Ireland, this is a remarkable ommision - given the problems visitors to the US report with not being able to register until after they arrive and even then have problems. Other more serious things, like completely misrepresenting the existing ANO in the summary tables and not understanding the differences between UAVs and "surveillance" capable UAVs (which is a nonsense too) and then the whole 50m versus 150m and "congested areas". Read it if you want to be wound up.

Personally, after a recent visit, I think the Aussies have it right (I am one by birth). Their rules are simple, straight forward and sensible. You can even fly near airports as long as you follow specific rules. Take a look: https://www.casa.gov.au/modelaircraft

Drone idiots are still endangering real aircraft and breaking the rules

Re: Some numbers...

... except the P4 (which I have) is limited to 500m above point of take-off in firmware - the 6,000m limit in the specs quoted is a little different and is actually the height above sea level that it has the capability to fly from *at all* based on air density. The specs page on the manufacturer's site reads:

Max Service Ceiling Above Sea Level 19685 feet (6000 m)

The Air Navigation Order (2016) came into force in August and supersedes all the previous ANOs and derogations - but sadly most of the old rules are still freely shared on web sites, both amateur and professional - including the CAA's own "Drone Code".

Stupid people will always be stupid. Flying an aircraft, a drone / UAV is, should be done with safety as the primary concern - I actually welcome some level of mandatory training or licensing for non-toy devices - and the A3 grade of the proposed EU rules require this.

Australia's mobile black spot program was a partisan money hole

Re: No Surprises here

A public company taking "Free" money from the government and not providing what the public were led to believe. The horror...

There, I fixed it for you...

A USB stick as a file server? We've done it!

Most of the "MiFi" routers will let you do the same with either a microSD(HC/XC) card or USB stick and they have built-in batteries. Admittedly more expensive, but many will already have one in the "kit".

Also, those sizes - esp the 200MB one - match the Sandisk microSD(...) range so I guess there may just be a card in a slot inside the device, which in turn would make it more interesting if you could hack the case off and have a swappable card. Fancy doing a teardown as a follow-up?

£11bn later: Smart meters project delayed again for Crapita tests

The "Smart Grid" and all the associated gubbins is the biggest trough in recent public spending history with the obvious exceptions of anti-terrorism and general military budgets. This'll make the BT sell off and subsequent non-exec directorships look like small favours for the school fete organising committee.

NRA guns down 38,000 Surge.sh sites in anti-parody spray-and-pray

I sincerely hoped with the wide adoption of Viagra(TM) that the NRA(TM) would slowly fade away as the impotence and sexual inadequacy of it's membership found another solution. Sadly not.

Dr Craig Wright lodges 51 blockchain patents with Blighty IP office

You file patents (that you know will never be granted by any sane reading of the regs) in order to create an atmosphere of risk for other organisations to slow them down because their legal people tell them that one day they might get stung. CYA by proxy.

Lester Haines: RIP

Onto the next project...

RIP Lester

Hackathons aren't just for hipsters

Sounds more like a team-building plus intense training gig, not a hackathon. The latter is about solving problems and producing something that no one who starts the "weekend" (they can be a week long) knows the solutions to in advance. Having a bunch of fixed problems to solve is more the domain of the traditional paint-ball aggression management offsite painted in new livery.

"Get orf my land!"

Google-backed British startup ‘stole our code’, says US marketing firm

One of those rare occasions where I hope the lawyers take all the money.

Let's get GDS to build a public blockchain, UK.gov's top boffin says

But no one has asked what colour it should be and should it be nasally insertable?

Surface Pro 4: Will you go the F**K to SLEEP?

I wanted a Surface Pro 3 but no mobile data support, so I waited. Surface Pro 4 - still none. Lovely idea, but to be properly portable, for me, it needs to be independent of WiFi, MiFi and tethering and ugly dongles. Shame.

IETF's older white men urged to tone it down

I think we should all sit in a circle and discuss what is troubling us while drinking this lovely herbal tea. Because that's how technology moved forward.

So why exactly are IT investors so utterly clueless?

So, no one quite twigged the money laundering aspects yet?

Alumina in glass could stop smartphones cracking up

It usually involves alcohol or other intoxicants, at least amongst those people I know who care to own up to why their phones are smashed - just like them.

Bosch, you suck! Dyson says VW pal cheated in vacuum cleaner tests

Re: Bad tests and worse marketing

@wilseus: Nope, no joke.

PETA monkey selfie lawsuit threatens wildlife photography, warns snapper at heart of row

PETA will of course offer to look after all that money as the monkey has no wallet of it's own. That's what they are hoping, obv.

Transport for London’s new crash map immediately crashes

Well, the data set is incomplete. I suffered a cycle collision in 2008 and spent a night in hospital. Not listed.

Viagra found in Chinese 'Kung Fu rice wine'

Better than the morons who sell tiger-bone infused wine or whatever...

So what exactly sits behind Google’s Nearline storage service?

3 seconds sounds an awfully close to the spin up time of a disk using minimal power and AC.

OnePlus 2: The smartie that's trying to outsmart Google's Android

Re: Nice

"I tried wireless for a year replacing every charger with wireless, after a year I had to admit to myself it was just a gimmick. It takes longer to charge the phone when doing it wireless, you have to get the phone aligned perfectly and it heats up (which won't be good with this snapdragon processor). Lets face it, it takes 2 seconds to plug it in for better results."

I had similar reservations but found this rather nice double charger that has enough (7) coils to make placement pretty arbitrary. Charge both my Note 2 and Nexus 7 next to the bed overnight, works fine - except the Nexus 7 sometimes shuts itself down: ZENS Dual Wireless Charger

Brit school software biz unchains lawyers after crappy security exposed

Perhaps they should consult with Babs Streisand as to how to proceed next?

Mitsubishi Outlander PHEV: The new common-as-muck hybrid

nice timing

Coincidentally I should be picking up my (lower end) GX3h in the next 48 hours. Moving from a 2004 Mondeo Estate that's very much on it's last legs to my first ever "new" car I did take some time reading around and to be honest, given my back-of-a-fag-packet budget and my interest being suitably piqued, I look forward to it. Being of an age when I've paid of the smaller mortgage I have gone for a 3 year lease which I would never have done a few years ago. It drove nicely in the test drive and the EV part fits the majority of my own driving profile.

One the other hand the seemingly abysmal state of the public charging infrastructure and the bureaucracy involved in getting a home charging point (the actual problem is the off street parking and Barnet councils glacial approach) ... I look forward to the fun ahead.

London man arrested over $40 MILLION HFT flash crash allegations

Hmm. So much unrevealed as yet. First one that jumps out at me, having had some experience in trading software platforms, is credit limits. All clients of the major exchange participants have credit limits. Orders, even those immediately pulled, are first credit checked. Placing orders that you don't expect to be filled are still subject to credit limits before being added to the bank's positions on the markets - so that's either broken or someone was extending too much credit here.

Transparency thrust sees Met police buying up to 30,000 bodycams

Unless individual officers are held to account - which at the moment the law does not allow for those on duty, they're protected - and the sanction for interfering with these cameras is at least as high as the potential perjury or crime they hide then they are simply worthless. Except to the corrupt individuals who have handled the multi-million £ procurement exercise, of course.

Labour policy review tells EU where to stuff its geo-blocking ban

Protectionism hurts everyone in the long run. Capitalism works, ipso facto, but giving some sectors and actors (in the non-stage/film sense) special dispensation is a bad thing. This is much the same as blocking the import and sale of branded good in a common market. If it's a true single / common market then it should be just that.

Politicians should rightly be focused on their electorate and not their lobbyists. Protect our choices, not the special-case profits of companies.

Credit card factories given new secure manufacturing rules

tl;dr

Hang on. Card production facilities with WiFi networks? Erm, that's not a bad idea at all. No.

Supposed spy-busting Anonabox insecure, says Cloak Project

Confused, of Finchley

I'm confused. What's wrong with building an OpenBSD box on a cheap bit of well understood hardware? I've obviously missed the positive point in having a Chinese sourced bit of "secure" kit?

Nuclear waste spill: How a pro-organic push sparked $240m blunder

Re: Why not organic kitty litter?

Ditto. While my feline overlords used to poop in the house I used "chick crumb" which is both clumping and flushable. Convenient, cheap, turned into fertiliser at the sewage farm.

Surface Pro 3 update has so much new stuff for sysadmins, we can't fit it all in one headline

"adds an interface that will allow admins to configure UEFI settings remotely"

I can see no possible way in which this will end badly. At all.

O2 notifies data cops 'for courtesy' ... AFTER El Reg intervenes in email phish dustup

ICO - A shower of useless sh**

Anyone want to get the watchdog a pair of dentures?

Why can't a mobile be more like a cordless kettle?

Bought a double charging plate from a French company - name escapes me - for about £50 and a charging coil for my Samsung Note II. Now I place my Note and Nexus 7 on the charger next to my bed at night and, assuming a cat hasn't moved either one, all happy in the morning.

Once they get the standards set for higher current charging then laptops will also get more interesting.

NHS grows a NoSQL backbone and rips out its Oracle Spine

"Basho claimed Riak is up to two times cheaper than Oracle..."

Good news, crap English. "Half the price" surely?

EE fails to apologise for HUGE T-Mobile outage that hit Brits on Friday

SDH rings are obviously not very round...

Just got a text from them "apologising" - I guess this and other bad press has worked.

Not that it helps as they really should not be affected by a single fiber cut, even if it cracks a whole load of them. Poor network planning, poor management and incompetent staff. Nothing to see here.

What happens in Europe, doesn't stay in Europe: US giants accused of breaking EU privacy pact

shocking

"I am shocked... shocked to find gambling going on in this café!"

The internet just BROKE under its own weight – we explain how

Nothing new under the sun

We had the same concerns and problems back at "16K day" - most off the shelf equipment couldn't cope, but Demon's routers did and then "64K day" a number of years ago (I'd moved onto other things by then, so I was only a consumer again) and then AS numbers grew too big and so on and so on.

For those pushing their beloved IPv6 - it's like on of those lovely gated communities where the grass will be cut to exactly the height of the handbook and old cars will not be tolerated in driveways, but then when the houses don't sell the less desirables start moving in and the old guard start to whine. IPv6 never needed multihoming (I was one of those arguing at RIPE meetings about how this would never really work once real world applications and resilience was required) and NAT was seen as a hack and not something ever wanted in IPv6 (la la land called, they have your unicorn). IPv6 is still a solution looking for a problem and no matter how much the proponents keep pointing and laughing at IPv4 they are still selling something that smells suspiciously like snake oil.

Lawyer reviewing terror laws and special powers: Definition of 'terrorism' is too broad

The problem is that the law has been misinterpreted to suggest that the authorities terrorising citizens is the right way around, while the reverse is a criminal offence.

Microsoft: You NEED bad passwords and should re-use them a lot

Re: @moiety: Try downloading the data sheet for a chip

I find [e-mail] with the password of "donald" or sometimes "youpeoplearemorons" is also useful...

Running the Gauntlet: Atari's classic ... now and then

Ah, fond memories, wasted youth.

Judge could bin $325m wage-fixing settlement in Silicon Valley

Lawyers get all the money and that's wrong?

So, the judge is concerned that the majority of the $300m+ will go to the class action lawyers and not the members of the class action? That's a first - that anyone cared.

DON’T add me to your social network, I have NO IDEA who you are

2a - Miserly Recruitment Scum

You missed the raft of morons who want to talk to you about a new role but are too stupid and/or mean to pay for the "InMail" feature so can't email you directly. The few that do it right I send back a polite but firm e-mail to encouraging them to read all the way to the end of my profile where it reads "go away".

French teen fined for illegal drone flight

... and where do Parrot hail from?

The irony here also being that the most successful consumer drone maker is French. I am no longer sure of the figures but the AR.Drone and AR.Drone 2.0 have sold in their hundreds of thousands globally...

BEAK DRONE: 1080p HD Wi-Fi quad-copter by Parrot takes to skies

Meh... Parrot can go f*** off

Parrot pretty much abandoned s/w development for the AR.Drone 2.0 a couple of releases in. They have passively dropped Android by simply not doing anything beyond an advertised edition to support the GPS module - and that arrived 4 months or more late.

The AR.Drone 2.0 is a generally fun bit of kit let down by an attention-deficit led company.

Spain clamps down on drones

This is very similar to my (very amateur) reading of UK law as implemented by the CAA. I read up on most of these in a cursory way when I got my Parrot AR.Drone 2 last year. Flights "for gain" are not allowed unless you have a license - which may be the difference between the UK and Spain of course.

EE dismisses DATA-BURNING glitch with Orange Mail app

I love this standard response...

"There is no reported problem with the Orange Mail app, customers are only charged for data usage."

This is the standard unthinking robot response of most customer "service" nowadays. You report anything to a service provider or even a supermarket and they prattle on that "no one has reported a problem". Well stupid, what do you think I'm doing? My dear old mum occassionally asks in her local Tescos why they stopped stocking A or B and the YTS reject deputy manager typically responds "There's no demand for it" - it's insulting and demeaning.

If they were honest - and that's not going to ever happen in a global brand - they would say "you are the first / one of very few people to have reported this so far" but instead they seek to belittle you by trying to make you as an individual feel odd and unusual compared to their "normal" customers.

GSMA: EU net neutrality reforms are the enemy of business

Back to the (walled) garden...

If you replace the word "innovation" with "profit" then it's would be right. It would be nice if the EU went further and required operators - wired ISPs too - to deliver something defined as "Internet" and perhaps also defining "unlimited" more clearly would be a great job for a regulator. Too many mobile operators block unapproved (read: non-partnered) IM and VOIP services simply 'cause they want the money themselves.

If they want to limit their service they should not be allowed to sell "unlimited" and "Internet".

We dig into the GTech GDrive Mobile ... and watch WORST tear-down vid OF ALL TIME

Benchmarks show it's pointless

Looking at the simplistic benchmark screenshots there is no difference between USB3.0 and Thunderbolt, so in effect the money is wasted. Right?