* Posts by spot

27 publicly visible posts • joined 17 Jul 2010

Microsoft emergency update: Malware Engine needs, erm, malware protection

spot

Is suppose users could replace Microsoft Defender with the rather more trustworthy Kaspersky product?

Hyperloop One teases idea of 50-minute London-Edinburgh ride

spot

Missing links

The Northern loop should obviously terminate at Dublin after the Liverpool stop.

The Dublin to Marrakesh Holiday Line Special calling at St Ives, Brest and Marbella isn't listed either.

10,000th Airbus takes off

spot

missing link

It didn't take Airbus long to pull that link once you posted it. Maybe it autochanges.

www.airbus.com/company/market/orders-deliveries/ is stable

Going underground: The Royal Mail's great London train squeeze

spot

Fifty trains shifted 30,000 items each 22-hour day?

That item count seems unlikely at first glance, it's of the order of just 100 items per trip.

These diabetes pumps obey unencrypted radio commands – which is, frankly, f*%king stupid

spot

Sophisticated equipment and proximity

They left out the words cheap and from a car pulled up outside.

ZX Spectrum Vega+ will ship on time, developer claims amid doubts

spot

I chipped in £100 yesterday as a vote of confidence.Watching the shareholders tear their own company apart is distressing but the Vega+ reverts to playable children's games without Internet access and I'm all for that. And programming too, with a USB keyboard. I'd not be surprised if it sells like hot cakes once they're delivering.

London-based Yahoo! hacker gets 11 years for SQLi mischief

spot

Only 2 years in the clink?

Only one. The two is a maximum, the half is the norm.

The sentence is cheaper than getting a degree and it guarantees a high-paid infosec job on release, I don't see how it's supposed to deter anyone.

Air gap breached by disk drive noise

spot

Line printers

NCR 315 prior to decommissioning in 1973, A Walk in the Black Forest played on the line printer which managed to survive the abuse despite being audible rooms away.

Furious English villagers force council climbdown over Satan's stone booty

spot

No council would move Ayers Rock if someone ran into it. If The Soulbury Boot is declared sacred by the villagers that ought to ensure it stays put. Maybe they should apply for World Heritage recognition to be on the safe side.

Cisco probes self for Juniper-style backdoors, silently mouths: 'We're doing this for yooou'

spot

and the binaries too?

Just checking the source code is a bit inadequate, Cisco might make the effort to decompile the key areas in their binaries too, which is where the Juniper stuff was detected. I've not seen anyone yet claim the Juniper problem was apparent in the source code.

TalkTalk hush-hush on compo for up to 4 million customers after mega cyber attack

spot

What a pack.

Well there was Dido, Fido, Bonzo and Rex, Rover and Lassie and Spot. There was Butch, there was Candy, there was Patch and there was Sandy, these were the Talk-Talk executive officers what I had got.

Pluto flashes its unusual pits

spot

pits?

They're not pits and troughs, they're trees.

James Woods demands $10m from Twitter troll for 'coke addict' claim

spot

The malice seems self-evident from the previous tweet content quoted in the article. I'm delighted Mr Woods - of whom I have never before heard - has slapped back, I hope he reaches the originator of the abuse.

How much of one year's Californian energy use would wipe out the drought?

spot

Kickstarter?

It's easy to test for interest. One year deadline, target enough to build the plant, and all those little kickstarters would own the New World Water Utility Company. Do 1% of Internet users have a spare $200 in exchange for a foot in the door?

Or maybe the French would like to own it. They already have England's, after all.

That's New World as in Dvořák, not Order.

So just WHO ARE the 15 per cent of Americans still not online?

spot

2,217,000

That's a snapshot figure of those in US jails within the Homeland. No Internet in jail. It might even be enough to skew the racial difference so much.

NASA briefing in HOURS: 'We are upon the CUSP of finding ANOTHER EARTH'

spot

A meteorite would fit the bill

- if they've found a vertebrate fossil in it, and worked out where it came from.

5 minutes to go.

'I'm COMING for you, DIRTBAG!': Ex-Sony chief Smedley to Kid Lizard hacker

spot

Fish fingers

I thought googling Smedley would get me fish fingers, or peas, or something. Knitwear? What?

I'm delighted "the former head of Sony Online Entertainment" is having a bad day. Dreadful oik.

And his damned staff, if it comes to that.

Bloody Americans.

Bloke called Rod struck by lightning for second time

spot

Those numbers are pretty suspect, they imply people live an average 233 years. And I don't believe the 1 in 700,000 a year in the first place.

Wake up, sheeple! If you ask Siri about 9/11 it will rat you out to the police!

spot

Misplaced responsibility

""Please, choose to be a good citizen and DON’T ask Siri about 9/11"? It's nothing about the user. Apple should be up in court for wasting police time.

JavaScript creator Eich's latest project: KILL JAVASCRIPT

spot

Source?

"the specification will include a text format" - I bet the binary will still run even if the source isn't provided, though.

ICANN speak clearly now .gay has gone – Council of Europe

spot

Hot cake domains

There's going to be a is.gay domain? And a are.gay domain? They'd sell at a premium I expect.

RAF radar station crew begs public for cash to buy gaming LAN kit

spot

The inestimable pleasure of a good deed in a naughty world, Joey.

Boffins: How to generate crypto-keys using a smartphone – and quantum physics

spot

And how exactly does one lock down a phone these days?

The one device I trust least to hold sensitive data is my cellphone. What am I meant to do if it's my key generator? Never put a SIM into it?

Can you trust 'NSA-proof' TrueCrypt? Cough up some dough and find out

spot

Can we please not call it an extra 64K block of data, it's padding to the next 64K boundary.

An encrypted block of zeros will be can be verified to be zeros by the key owner and it carries no information despite being pseudo-random in appearance. Finding out whether the Windows version incorporates information there will only come from disassembling the compiled code, just looking at the source is irrelevant.

Who should play the next Doctor? Nominations needed!

spot

I don't see Sir Ian listed. It would leave the part in a "follow that" condition when he left. or if the children need scaring back behind the sofa where they belong there's Ray Winstone.

Death to Office or to Windows - choose wisely, Microsoft

spot

Sheer fantasy

What tosh - "Office is a kingmaker in the enterprise, and the iPad is already king there. If Microsoft wants to make money from Office, it has no choice but to support the iPad"? Seriously? "iPad is already king there"? What utter cobblers, what planet did this chap just land from?

Futurologist warns of malevolent dust menace

spot

Ultrasound alternative to radio

- in that ultrasound doesn't need an antenna.

Nobody's yet mentioned "The Diamond Age: Or, A Young Lady's Illustrated Primer" by Neal Stephenson as a source for communicative nanotechnology.