Posts by monty75

GCHQ was rebuked for ignoring spy law safeguards as pandemic hit Britain

Foreign Secretary unaware

Given that Raab was unaware that Dover-Calais was a significant trade route it's no surprise he didn't know what was happening at GCHQ

UK health secretary confirms end for NHS Digital, architect of the GP data grab debacle

Here we go again

From past experience this will result in the same people doing the same jobs at the same desks only with different headed notepaper. Half the staff will quit and come back as contractors on five times the salary. Expensive branding will be undertaken. Capita and co will make a fortune. NHS digital efforts will be same or worse.

Not only MSPs: All cloudy firms are in line for UK security law crackdown

If you tolerate this, your children will be next

If it's going to rain within the next 90 mins, this very British AI system can warn you

Re: Other Options

Apple bought Dark Sky. Presumably for this use case.

Re: the standard trick of hanging up an old pine cone

Like a scrotum in a cold swimming pool

Indian broadband connections top 800 million … sort of

Last time I was out there in those sepia-toned pre-pandemic days, the mobile broadband was pretty incredible. Couple of gigabytes allowance per day for pennies, decent download and upload speeds and reliable connections. But only if you have a friendly local who'll front up a sim for you as they insist on photo ID and generally are wary of anything other than an Indian-issued ID.

Wired broadband, on the other hand, is shockingly bad. Frequently cuts out for anything between a few seconds and a few hours.

RIP Sir Clive Sinclair: British home computer trailblazer dies aged 81

Re: Wobbley rampacks

Same here. Sometimes I'm not sure if I thank him for that but here we are.

Where on Gartner's Hype Cycle is Gartner's Hype Cycle?

Re: It's the quantum computing

Yes and no

Seems to be something young people are into https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WAP_(song)

It's the quantum computing

All the predictions are held in a superposition of simultaneous plausible and implausible states. Every time they predict quantum computing will go mainstream it collapses the Gartner Probability Wave (TM) and randomly allocates their predictions to either a true or false state.

Brit firm fined £200k for banging on about missold PPI in 11.4 million nuisance calls

Maybe people are just aware of the pitifully tiny fine likely to be imposed and the minimal likelihood of it being paid versus the company shutting up shop and starting again under a new name.

PrivacyMic looks to keep your home smart without Google, Alexa, Siri and pals listening in

Re: Roll Yur Own

Pretty straightforward with either Rhasspy or Mycroft (the latter wasn’t totally offline last time I checked but they were working on it)

Global Fastly outage takes down many on the wibbly web – but El Reg remains standing

Re: implications and questions

Second appearance in this comment thread https://xkcd.com/908/

Train operator phlunks phishing test by teasing employees with non-existent COVID bonus

Re: Lessons learned

If you're a phisher, offer anything that's related to money.

FTFY

UK Home Office tenders £5m for a supplier to help it greenlight IT projects. Yes, you read that correctly

Re: Best choice of adviser?

> What's really needed is a non-supplier

Call Chris Grayling. His experience of finding ferry non-suppliers is tailor made for this role.

Ex-asylum seeker with infosec degree loses discrimination claim against UK cyber range provider after storming out

Re: Allegations without consequences

Yeah let’s make it more difficult and risky for people to raise legitimate problems. We could make people pay a deposit any time they report a crime to the police too.

The 40-Year-Old Version: ZX81's sleek plastic case shows no sign of middle-aged spread

Re: Computers vs girls

The girls might have been more interesting but the computers were far easier to get your hands on (and to understand, for that matter)

UK's National Cyber Security Centre sidles in to help firm behind hacked NurseryCam product secure itself

Re: "The company needs NCSC's help"

I’d prosecute them for the grievous brain damage they caused me banging my head on the table when I read their BS excuse.

Showering malware-laced laptops on UK schools is the wrong way to teach them about cybersecurity

Prancing about in a tutu. She still doesn't know where her future lies.

Laptops given to British schools came preloaded with remote-access worm

> Since the laptops are going to the kind of people not privileged enough to know what tcpdump is

Poor kids aren't allowed to know about computers?

Negative Trustpilot review of law firm Summerfield Browne cost aggrieved Briton £28k

Re: The man who seeks Summerfield Browne for advice has a bunch of fools...

“Allegedly”

Extreme Networks misses death-of-Flash deadline, suggests winding back PC clocks to keep its GUI alive

Re: I'm not at all surprised

Have you ever tried to explain IT to a marketing droid?

Decades-old UK government papers show that they tried to roll out a 'Cab-E-Net' system in the '90s. It was crap

Re: Joined up thinking

I'm sure there should be something more important lodged in that corner of my brain than 1980s kids TV shows set on the premise of mixing up measuring systems but we are where we are.

Re: Joined up thinking

“Jimbo!”

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jimbo_and_the_Jet-Set

I’d expected Cab-e-net to be a prototype Uber and was momentarily impressed with the government’s foresight.

Italian competition watchdog slaps Apple with €10m fine over allegedly misleading iPhone waterproofing claims

Re: Well

At a molecular level, water is a mixture of two things.

UK coronavirus tier postcode-searching tool yanked offline as desperate Britons hunt for latest lockdown details

Re: This is easy to scale... or should be

Probably only needs the first half of the postcode so an even smaller list

NCSC's London HQ was chosen because GCHQ spies panicked at the prospect of grubby Shoreditch offices

If they made Osborne pay for all the things he ballsed up in office he’d really need all those jobs he got when he left politics.

After Cummings' Barnard Castle trip, cheeky Britons started using the word 'vision' in their passwords

Another good reason not to reuse passwords for different services. Unless you enjoy having your office BOFH ordering dildos from your Amazon account and having them sent gift-wrapped to your boss.

Voyager 2 is back online after eight months of radio silence

Re: Chat logs

And the reply "Not much. On a completely unrelated topic, did you pass any nice inhabitable worlds?"

Software engineer leaked UK missile system secrets and refused to hand cops his passwords, Old Bailey told

Sounds like this guy needs to be receiving psychiatric care rather than being dragged through the courts

UK test-and-trace coronavirus data may be handed to police to nab those who aren't self-isolating as required

Re: And who is surprised?

"to covid regs killing freedom of movement"

I think it was Brexit that did that.

UK govt advert encouraging re-skilling for cyber jobs implodes spectacularly

Re: Those raising issue at the outrage.

I suspect it's the F word on the included satirical versions of the advert.

Re: You mean "faux outrage"?

It's brought to you by the same people who will sell you a degree to make you a better worker. They can't get into their heads that anything could be worth doing just for the joy of it rather than to make more money.

Apple's T2 custom secure boot chip is not only insecure, it cannot be fixed without replacing the silicon

Re: Surprised?

And to look cool while doing it

Re: Surprised?

Everyone knows 'The Internet' is that yellow, red, green and blue circle icon. Or the blue E if you answer to the name 'Grandad'

NHS England awards £1.6m deal to build digital staff 'passports' in fight against coronavirus second wave

Re: Blackpool, that well-known software security hotbed

At least it's not Crapita

Remember Entatech? UK liquidators are still trying to seize founder Jason Tsai's assets

Having seen the estate agent photos...

I'd lock them up just for their taste in carpets and other soft furnishings.

UK ICO fines biz profiteering from COVID-19 crisis by sending unsolicited marketing texts to Joe Public

A pedant writes...

Since when has "feather its own pockets" been an expression? It's "feather its own nest" or "line its own pockets".

Apple takes another swing at Epic, says Unreal Engine could be a 'trojan horse' threatening security

Re: "Apple would face incalculable harm"

And even if you want to pay for apps you can do so by buying iTunes gift cards in any of about a million shops.

'Mindset reset' contributes to £1bn extra costs and another delay – 2 years this time – for Emergency Services Network

Re: Dildo

She has lots of experience of managing projects that are going wrong and making them shite again.

FTFY

This'll upset the Apple cart: 1,200 iOS apps downloaded 300 million times a month include 'ad fraud' code

Re: That 30% well worth it

No it doesn't. That's why I asked the question.

Re: That 30% well worth it

Why would you assume that?

Dido 'Queen of Carnage' Harding to lead UK's Institute for Health Protection because Test and Trace went so well

Re: Am I the only one

She does seem to be popular with c**ts

Arcuri. Now there’s a name I’ve not heard in a long time. Wasn’t there supposed to be an inquiry? Maybe Dido can run that too

UK.gov to propose new rules for online political campaigns after last election marred by an avalanche of fake news

Re: So that's Cummings out of a Job then.

When has the law ever stopped Cummings doing whatever he pleases?

Pen Test Partners: Boeing 747s receive critical software updates over 3.5" floppy disks

Re: Cloud

Be glad it's not Apple compatible. I don't think I'd enjoy an Airdrop on a plane.

Alibaba Cloud reduces RAM, disk size and price of some cloud servers

Lower specs, higher prices and the opportunity to have all my data inspected by the Chinese government. Where do I sign?

Microsoft to Cortana: You’re not going out dressed in iOS or Android, young lady!

Re: "Cortana’s incarnation in a Harman Kardon smart speaker will end"

My LG TV's main "smart" function now is popping up alerts to tell me which in-built app will no longer be working.

No wonder Brit universities report hacks so often: Half of staff have had zero infosec training, apparently

Chop one hand off each time they click on the phishing test. If they manage a third time they're probably beyond help