Posts by Victor Ludorum

Remembering the time Windows accidentally sent Poland to the bottom of the sea

Geopolitics

Plus ça change...!

Why have just one firewall when you can fire all the walls?

Given the corrent state of the economy, maybe the phrase should be exchanging your labour for cost of living vouchers

You snooze, you lose? It's not quite as simple as that

Non 24 hour sleep cycle

My son's sleep pattern started to deteriorate during 2020, when he was about 14. After several false starts with medical professionals, he was finally diagnosed with delayed phase sleep wake disorder. He usually goes to bed at ~11pm, but is never asleep before 3am*. We have to wake him at 12.30 to try and keep some routine in his life otherwise his sleep could end up all over the place.

One of the treatments suggested by a sleep doctor actually made his sleep patterns worse.

There is a risk that he could fall into a 'Non-24 hour' sleep cycle, there is also a slim chance he will grow out of it.

He's also been diagnosed with ADHD, but it's not clear if the two are related.

* Yes, we've done all the screens off, no blue light etc. His bedroom is as dark as we can make it. He just lies there in bed and can't sleep.

Mozilla's midlife crisis has taken it from web pioneer to Google's weird neighbor

Re: Thunderbird Calendar

Haven't used Thunderbird for a while, but ISTR you need the Lightning plugin for calendar functionality.

The home Wi-Fi upgrade we never asked for is coming. The one we need is not

The majority of non-technical customers just want a router that they can plug in and it just works^TM.

The majority of ISPs want as little as possible (with the minimum of configurable options) connected to their service so they don't have to support an endless combination of devices.

Arm's lawyers want to check assembly expert's book for trademark missteps

Re: Time to walk away.

Open source hardware would be good.

Would that be the hardware that a certain company dissed using riscv-basics.com?

V.

Want tech cred? Learn how to email like a pro

Re: Which question did you answer ?

Going OT for a bit...

It's a bit like certain drivers not using their indicators (blinkers). I think they assume that you are telepathic and automatically know which way they want to go. They think they don't need to use their indicators because they already know where they're going...

RIP Kevin Mitnick: Former most-wanted hacker dies at 59

RIP Kevin

The world would have been a much duller place without you.

Apple pushes first-ever 'rapid' patch – and rapidly screws up

The problem was...

Apple

Rapid

Security

Error

Yes, yes, I'm going...

Thanks for fixing the computer lab. Now tell us why we shouldn’t expel you?

Re: How secure *IS* your system

It was 35 years ago - I just remember it was a BBC network but wasn't Econet.

Re: How secure *IS* your system

That reminds me of the BBC network we had at our school. It wasn't Econet, but very similar.

A friend of mine (yes, really, it wasn't me) reverse engineered the sideways ROM for the network and it turned out that user authentication happened on the client - it looked up a four character (!) password in a special file on the server based on your user number. Cue various students using teacher logins and kicking other users off their machines remotely...

V.

Namecheap admits 'unauthorized emails' pwning its customers

Whose account?

I got the 'DHL' email apparently from Namecheap and ignored it. Headers show it was sent through SendGrid.

Just guessing here, but is it possible Namecheap's SendGrid account was compromised somehow? Weak password, credential stuffing, 2FA fatigue or something else?

Cloudflare engineer broke rules – and a customer's website – with traffic throttle

Poor engineer

The post does not mention what, if anything, happened to the engineer who applied the throttle.

He was throttled?

Here's a list of proxy IPs to help block KillNet's DDoS bots

Use a script carefully

I've just taken a look, it's now up to 17920 entries, BUT some of them are in 0.x.x.x subnet...

And there's at least one in 10.x.x.x.

Sanitise the list before using it.

Twitter tweaks third-party app rules to ban third-party apps

Re: Plummeting sperm whale?

I came to this comment just as it had received 42 upvotes...

KmsdBot botnet is down after operator sends typo in command

I was going to say

Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha...

But you basically beat me to it.

Hot, sweaty builders hosed a server – literally – leaving support with an all-night RAID repair job

Re: around ten meters worth

American ones I expect.

Singapore to phase out checks for businesses by 2025

Re: Just realised I DO care about the US spelling, after-all

the meaning of the comment is made ambiguous

That's kind of my point.

I was giving an example of opposite meaning between English and Americanese phrases.

Re: Just realised I DO care about the US spelling, after-all

As a right-pondian I worry about the US-ification of almost everything. Having been a regular visitor to ElReg since 199x, I am disappointed. My tutting shall become slightly louder, lest I disturb anyone from their Times crossword...

'I realised that this also means El Reg is now likely to visit the horrors of "thru" and "pants" on me, and even worse - may well start using Americanisms that are either unknown to me, or which have referents unknown to me, or which have the opposite meaning to that which I'd expect.'

I expect there are some who could care less...

The one with the Kentish hops, please -->

Loathsome eighties ladder-climber levelled by a custom DOS prompt

Re: Crashed most of the time.

Was that your flying or the game?

Senior engineer reported to management for failing to fix a stapler

Re: But I DO want to know!

I think that was Happy Eater.

Linus Torvalds's faulty memory (RAM, not wetware) slows kernel development

Re: Hang on..

There is a possibility it's not the DIMM, but a component on the motherboard that has failed. Soak testing the new memory will help to eliminate that possibility.

Cisco: Yes, Yanluowang leaked our data. No, it's not serious

Re: Once again, a professional company is hacked

There has to be a trade off between ease of use, convenience and security.

Air-gapped data is secure, but convenient? No.

Time-based 2FA (e.g. Google Authenticator) is probably one of the best compromises, but can be MITM-ed.

SMS-based 2FA can also be MITM-ed.

A hardware (U2F/FIDO) key is probably the most secure, but less convenient to use. And it can be lost...

I think the best option is continuously educating the user, but that is often seen more as a cost than a benefit to the company.

OVH opens less flammable datacenter at site of 2021 fire

Neat cabling

It might not be the neatest cabling in Octave's pic, but I think pretty much everyone here has seen a LOT worse!

Scientists pull hydrogen from thin air in promising clean energy move

Re: Storage ? Transport ?

You, sir, are a genius!

That will use up all those pesky carbon atoms so they don't combine with two (or occasionally just one) oxygen atoms and venting into the atmosphere.

Just one teeny tiny problem. What do we then do with this CH₄ to release the stored energy?

(spoilt for choice on the icon with this one -->)

Google CEO Pichai: We need to up productivity by a fifth

Re: Depressing

Don't leave us guessing, what was the reaction?

Bye bye BoJo: Liz Truss named new UK prime minister

Re: Trussed Up

There's Cheddar, and then there's West Country Farnhouse Cheddar (PDO).

Cloudflare: Someone tried to pull the Twilio phishing tactic on us too

Re: Am I missing something ?

I'm not sure a Google Authenticator style 2FA would have stopped them. According to the article the login credentials are sent instantly from the fake login page via Telegram. Assuming the fake login page also then asks for the 2FA code, the man in the middle has a (max 30 second) window of opportunity to capture and use that 2FA code to login.

Original Acorn Arthur project lead explains RISC OS genesis

Wonderful

So that's where ARTHUR got his name from.

I also remember the '!Lander' demo-type game that showed the Archimedes' graphics capability, which was pretty cool for the time, if somewhat limited in actual gameplay.

Password recovery from beyond the grave

Re: Having read this story

I DON'T NEED A FIRST NAME.

Re: Legal issues

Away.

512 disk drives later, Floppotron computer hardware orchestra hits v3.0

Love it.

I'm an electronics hobbyist and like to do those small projects for learning purposes or just for pure fun.

If that's a small project, what's a big one...?

Definitely deserves one of these -->

Chinese 'Aoqin Dragon' gang runs undetected ten-year espionage spree

Re: Once again

There are all sorts of ways the scammers could have got useful information. My guess is that the travelling friend used compromised wifi. It's not too difficult to intercept emails.

Google keeps legacy G Suite alive and free for personal use

But many orgs (including GMail and Outlook) sinkhole OVH IP addresses for outgoing mail. How do you get round that?

Re: Gmail's spam filtering is really good

I've noticed they are very fussy with SPF records. I've had various issued, including someone complain that I don't reply to their emails (because their SPF record is slightly wrong). I never even get the emails (not even in the Spam folder). They (and I) use Google Workspace...

The sad state of Linux desktop diversity: 21 environments, just 2 designs

Re: RISC OS

I loved the file save method in RISC OS - you just dragged the save file icon to the folder (directory) you wanted it in. Even now, there are many Windows apps where the file save dialog doesn't seem to remember what folder you were using last, and you have to click through multiple levels to get to the folder you want.

What do you do when all your source walks out the door?

Re: sudo shred

Can't find it in my distro

$ sudo apt install thermite

Reading package lists... Done

Building dependency tree

Reading state information... Done

E: Unable to locate package thermite

Any ideas?

Elon Musk buys 9.2% of Twitter, sends share price to the Moon

Re: "Given that Twitter serves as the de facto public town square…"

I think someone needs their morning caffeine shot...

Nvidia releases $1,999, 8K-capable GeForce RTX 3090 Ti GPU

Don't all rush at once...

At the time of writing, Scan have got the ASUS one in stock for only £1,943.99.

Doom comes to the Pi Pico

Top work that man

Have a virtual one ->

Saving a loved one from a document disaster

Re: old kit and wp software

Reminds me of a friend's story:

A colleague of his had just taken delivery of a new digital camera and 'photo' inkjet printer in the early days of said technology. This colleague was showing off the photos he had printed, several of which featured his not unattractive 18 year old daughter's birthday party. One colleague ignores the content of the pics and pipes up 'What photo paper did you use?' Cue much mirth and merriment...

UK internet pioneer Cliff Stanford has died

RIP Cliff

Demon were my first ISP back in 94/95 (memory is now hazy), and I stayed with them pretty much until ADSL and ntl: came along.

I had a 19200 baud modem as that was the fastest the serial port on my Archimedes would run! Then moved to a PC with Trumpet Winsock and a 33k modem, which I eventually upgraded to a 56k that would reliably connect at about 43k. Those were the days!

I don't miss the phone bills though!

Amazon, Visa strike global truce on credit card charges

Re: Still Avoiding Them

I try and use hive.co.uk for book orders, you can choose a local independent book store to support.

AWS to build 32 more small clouds around the world

Re: Wot no London?

There's been a London region since 2016:

https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/aws/now-open-aws-london-region/

He ain't heavy, he's my brother: Bloke gives away SpaceX ticket because he was over weight limit

I know BMI is controversial in some circles

but his BMI works out at about 47. That's quite high.

Even shifting 50kg would still class him as 'morbidly obese'.

Less of these might help --->

Pop quiz: The network team didn't make your change. The server is in a locked room. What do you do?

Re: Dave?!

I get the feeling he was called Bruce, but the Regomiser changed it to Dave.

Privacy is for paedophiles, UK government seems to be saying while spending £500k demonising online chat encryption

Isnt' it wonderful

I'm so happy that there are so many people in Government who understand the necessary hashtags.

Buy 'em by the punnet: Raspberry Pi offers RP2040 chips in bulk

Re: missed a trick

Err, I think you mean 258...

(Cue pedantry about approximations of pi...)

Weed dispensary software company's ambitions pruned after Spotify trademark clash

What a bunch of dopes

See title

Final PCIe 6.0 specs unleashed: 64 GTps link speed incoming... with products to follow in 2023

I think Micros~1 will work their magic to ensure that even PCIe 8.0 equipped devices will still take at least a minute to boot up...