Posts by Pen-y-gors

Mozilla makeover to boost Tor torque, capacity

Hmmm, Tor.....

Isn't that the NSA Messenger app? [Judging my some recent revelations, if you want to send a message to the NSA, just use Tor!]

Italian appeal court clears seismologists of manslaughter

And if I understand it correctly

Italian courts will be allowed to issue European Arrest Warrants.

and people wonder why the nutters in UKIP are becoming so popular.

Feeling safe in your executive hotel suite, Mr CEO? Well, DON'T

Given the geographical area affected,

and the level of expertise, could we perhaps be looking at our old friends the Chinese Government indulging in a spot of quiet industrial espionage?

It's just a hi-tech version of the old KGB-microphones-in-Moscow-Hotels ply.

Kryder's law craps out: Race to uber-cheap storage is voer

What's the difference?

...between a cost of zero and a cost of bugger-all? I'm using Amazon S3 and Glacier to store several months worth of daily backups of about 100 live customer sites - about 300GB at any one time. Monthly cost? about $4. That's a cost I can live with for ever. The VAT on the micro server instance that actually does the backups is more than that!

Yes, local storage would be a bit cheaper, but the nightly bandwidth costs would bankrupt me.

Obviously the price won't get to zero for infinite storage, but some of the cloud providers are getting as near as makes no difference.

Of course, you wouldn't trust them with anything important!

Reg mobile man: National roaming plan? Oh UK.gov, you've GOT to be joking

"No one looked at 4G before there were enough places where there was a signal."

Our rural Wales/Scotland/England correspondant writes: what's 4G?

Brit cops nab six in Silk Road 2.0 drugs sting

I'm impressed

That they managed to run a web-intensive business from the depths of mid-Wales (Aberdyfi). Broadband round here is generally not brilliant, although we're due to get FTTC in a couple of months. Maybe I need to rethink my career options.

Of course mid-Wales has a long (and honourable?) history of being a production centre for mind-altering substances (Operation Julie in the 1970s), and I'm told there are a number of people up in the hills who are allegedly growing more than tomatoes in their greenhouses, allegedly. The local village show even has a category for 'the best grass' (no, not that sort)

Ex-NSA lawyer warns Google, Apple: IMPENETRABLE RIM ruined BlackBerry

Explains a lot

If this is the sort of headcase nutter that the NSA are happy to employ as a lawyer, then you do have to wonder about the mental capacity of their other staff as well.

Murder suspect charged after pics of strangle victim posted on 4chan

Too much effort needed to dig a pit

Why not just use Aussie 1.0? Worked well for many years.

Cheap blow-up baby incubator bags James Dyson award

Good and bad

A big round of applause (and a pint or two) for James - just shows there are clever young people doing practical things to save lives around the world, with damn all public funding.

Interesting to compare James' work, with the potential to save tens of thousands of lives a year, with the annual $2.8 BEEEELION that DARPA get to spend on research in the USA, most of it focussed on projects which ultimately try to come up with 'improved' ways of killing people. It's a crazy world.

BYOD: don't let the dream turn into a nightmare

Simple solution

Of course you let people BYOD - but under no circumstances should they ever be allowed to connect to a company network with it or store company data on it. If they want to browse the company website, no problem.

Can you really run your business on a smartphone?

Can you really run your business on a smartphone?

No.

Odd little bits maybe, but completely? No.

Fujitsu waves 50PB+ monster at hyperscale storage freaks

Time to increase the budget

for NSA, GCHQ etc.

Who else needs that sort of storage?

Google’s dot-com forget-me-not bomb: EU court still aiming at giant

google.co.uk

If your isp location suggests uk, google.com seems to automatically redirect to google.co.uk - they're making an effort. So perfectly reasonable that uk court judgements are reflected on the .co.uk site, but not on the .com.

China set to be buried under mountain of surplus robots, warns biz chap

Water buffalo?

Could they start with a robot to hold the piece of string round the neck of the water buffalo as it stands in a rice paddy? That would free up millions of peasants.

I'll cap internet tax, says Hungarian PM as mob attacks his party HQ

Nothing new here

Governments have always tried to tax knowledge. Uk had a tax on newspapers, which rose to 4d. a copy in 1813, and wasn't abolished until the 1850s. Strangely enough sales of newspapers rocketted after that.

Planning to fly? Pour out your shampoo, toss your scissors, rename terrorist Wi-fi!

Re: letter of the law

"Personally, I think allowing officers to use some judgment is worth those downsides but there is still a very defensible reason for them 'following the letter of the law"

This is a tricky one. On one level it's nice to think of good old PC Dixon on his beat in Dock Green giving a young lad who's stealing a couple of apples a clip round the ear and sending him on his way. Problem is when he sees another young lad doing the same thing, but takes him down to the station and prosecutes for theft, but only because he'd once had an argument with the lad's mum, and they've had a feud ever since. Consistency is of application is fundamental to the law.

And at a second level, even if the law is applied consistently - e.g. every time someone is caught doing 38 in a 30 zone they are prosecuted - then it's only fair and just if the police make a realistic effort to ensure that every time someone does 38 they WILL be nicked. If it's a 1000-1 chance that you'll only be done on any given instance, then it isn't justice, it's randomness. If a law can't reasonably be enforced then it should be repealed, and alternative approaches identified.

Sporty in all but name: Peugeot 308 e-THP 110

Single point of failure

Don't like the idea of controlling almost everything through a touchscreen - dangerous, as noted, but when one fuse goes you lose most of your gadgets in one go.

Amazon's AWS opens data center in Germany – just as we said

Stuff the law

"unless required to comply with the law or requests of governmental entities."

So that means legal requests (court orders etc) or ANY request from a government entity (legal or illegal). And does a 'government entity' include the duly-elected dog-catcher of Little Rock or the Widdicombe-on-the-Moor parish council?

We chat to CloudFlare about its 'EVERYBODY GETS SSL' venture

Re: Cloudflare

I'm running a few sites through Cloudflare as a test. Seems to be going okay, although so far as I can tell it doesn't seem to be forcing https on every request, just if you ask for it specifically.

This is a useful step, but 4 million sites out of a billion leaves a lot to go. If one of the big hosting providers (1&1 etc) could take the step and encrypt every one of their millions of sites automatically, then things would really start moving (until NSA start launching drone strikes against them!)

Would you blow $5.6m to own a dot-word? Meet a bloke who did just that

Re: A two to five year ROI?

only IF they get 50,000 idiots to sign up to each one. And that's a VERY big if...

Microsoft promises Windows 10 will mean two-factor auth for all

2-factor?

2-factor is a very good thing, e.g. when used to authenticate gmail etc. If I'm trying to log in via a previously unknown IP address then it will ask for the 2nd factor. Fine, but a bit of a pain if I don't have my phone with me.

How will this work with Windows? Steal the laptop and plug it in to a strange network and it will quite often end up with 192.168.0.1 (or whatever), or use it normally with WiFi hotspot (or even plug in to corporate LAN) and it gets a different IP every time. I wouldn't want to have to use 2nd factor every time I log in.

So when will it prompt for second token?

Lords take revenge on revenge porn publishers

Typical over-reaction

The offence is really not very nice, but the penalty is completely over the top. Prison should be reserved for violent criminals and incorrigible repeat offenders. Our politicians compete to see who can take revenge on the most criminals, despite our prisons being over-crowded, under-staffed and totally unfit for purpose (unless the purpose is to turn minor criminals into major criminals). To be honest I'm amazed that some MPs haven't started suggesting that Sharia punishments may not be a bad thing.

We need an upheaval in our 'justice' system - change to restitution rather than retribution. Posting revenge porn online is not nice, neither is posting rape threats on Twitter, but they could be addressed far better by a few hundred hours of community service rather than banging up the perps for a couple of years where they'll learn how to take real physical revenge on their targets.

Ex-US Navy fighter pilot MIT prof: Drones beat humans - I should know

Some interesting possibilities here...

but delivering parcels for amazon really isn't one of them.

1) Major weight limitations

2) Where does it land?

3) How does it knock on the door for a signature?

4) How does it know to leave it in the garden shed if I'm out? And even if it does, how does it open the door?

5) How many people live within 10 miles of an amazon distribution centre?

6) And what about people living in blocks of flats? Does it knock on the window?

7) and the whole thing about collisions with trees, birds, power-lines, phone-lines etc...

Drones may one day have many uses, apart from firing missiles at Afghan children, but they won't include amazon deliveries.

</no-more-than-640K-prediction>

The 'fun-nification' of computer education – good idea?

Latin and philosophy

"In terms of logic, teach philosophy."

When I was a student at St Andrews (a few years ago now) all students wanting to graduate with an MA (i.e. all the Arts undergrads) had to pass first year Philosophy. Jolly good idea too - pity it didn't include the scientists as well.

And Latin? I had an interview, again many years ago, for a job as a programmer developing shipboard weapons systems, and they said that their best programmer was someone with a double first in Latin and Greek.

Bring back the good old days - Latin instead of meeja studies!

No sail: NASA spikes Sunjammer

Spacecraft partner?

At least NASA want all the work that's been done so far, so it's not a total loss. Time to call in SpaceX and see if they have a bit of spare capacity?

Want a more fuel efficient car? Then redesign it – here's how

Advanced Motoring

Yep - that's what they teach on the Institute of Advanced Motorists courses - anticipation is very important, looking a long way ahead. Things like adjusting speed gently at roundabouts so that you can just keep going and slot into a gap rather than stopping and starting.

The courses are well worth doing - they may have changed a bit in the last 20 years, but they really improve your driving, even if (like everyone is) you know you're a "Good Driver". You go out in your car with an 'Observer' (experienced, trained member) who doesn't tell you what to do, but just makes comments and suggestions. When you're ready you do the test (two hours with a trained Police driver - seriously stressful!) - I think they now call it the Skill for Life course and the whole thing costs £149 - which is a real bargain.

Re: Depends on assumptions

Fair point - I think the solution is to have a cheap, boring, modern, economical, comfortable car for day-to-day use (e.g. deisel Skoda) and then the classic Porsche/Jag/whatever for a few thousand miles of expensive annual motoring that's fun!

Depends on assumptions

"Suppose you drive 5,000 miles (8,046km) a year in a car that does 30mpg and costs say, £205.00 to tax. Fuel and tax are costing you about £1,160. Swap it for a new car that does 40mpg and costs, say, £145 to tax. Fuel and tax are now costing you about £860, a saving of £300 per annum."

But how many cars these days can only do 30mpg? My 1989 Porsche 944 automatic manages 30mpg! And most new cars should manage a lot more than 40mpg.

With a more realistic set of assumptions: 12000 miles per year, and buy a new car that does 60mpg, with low emissions...

Costs of old car: petrol 2360 + 205 tax = £2565

Costs of new car: fuel 1180 + £20 tax = £1200

Annual saving = £1365.

Cost of new car £10K? so paid for completely in 7-8 years, less if you manage to get any trade-in on the old one.

But of course, if you're talking about a classic car, then you don't buy it based on fuel efficiency - you buy it because you love it, and sod the expense!

Of course, your mileage may vary. Still an interesting article though.

Nobody wants to look at your boobs: Snapchat gets ads 'that interest you'

Fun?

"We want to see if we can deliver an experience that’s fun and informative, the way ads used to be"

Hmm...well, there were the Oxo family ads, and the Gold Blend ads on telly back in the stone age. Offhand I can't think of many 'fun' ads since then, so good luck to them.

Ploppr: The #VultureTRENDING App of the Now

Depressingly plausible

Does the iOS version automatically post 30% of the deposit to Apple via iTunes? I'm tempted to start coding now...

MasterCard adds fingerprint scanner to credit cards for spending sans the PIN

Another weakness

A fundamental issue with biometrics (as with a national ID e.g. S Korea) is that they identify the user as a unique individual, and not simply as an authorised user, which means that many accounts can all be tied together by your friendly local Secret Police.

In many cases all that is needed is a means to authorise access to an account/credit card etc - with a pin or a password I can create an account and access it, but there is no link to other accounts. With a PIN on a credit card people can (in an emergency) lend the card to a friend or relative and let them use it, by telling them the PIN. Perfectly safe if it's someone you trust. I don't think I'd be willing to chop off a finger or pull out an eyeball so that a friend can get £100 out of the hole-in-the-wall for me!

Beers all round as Vulture 2 lands in Blighty

Mug arrived this morning

Really good stuff! Ta.

But I was a bit confused trying to remember what I might have ordered online that I had to "wash before using"

Son of Hudl: Tesco flogs new Atom-powered 8.3-inch Android tablet

Nice, but why...

...does every manufacturer insist on installing bloatware that can't be uninstalled? Okay, as the article says, it's not a problem for space in this case, but it's clutter.

I wouldn't mind them installing their own junk, but why oh why can't we please be allowed to remove it? We can uninstall bloatware in Windows, we can remove garage stickers from car rear windows, why can't we remove the stuff we don't want in Android? Why does Android even have a 'make this uninstallable' option?

[Parrticulary pissed off as my aging Sony Experia Arc with 512MB is now getting VERY full, even though I have very few apps installed - but the updates keep getting bigger, and I'm not allowed to uninstall some crap games and FB to make room - and I can't be arsed to go through the faff of rooting it]

EE TV brings French broadband price war to the UK

Seems very complicated

Another grumpy old fart writes...

At the moment I get Broadband from BT - basically the same people who manage the wires, the street cabinet and the exchange. It seems to work okay. Why add a middleman (EE) with no Broadband delivery experience?

I get TV from Freesat - plug it in and point it at the sky and it works. Why faff around with something more complicated. If I want to record stuff, I can buy a recorder. I don't, so I won't.

My TV already has a remote. Why would I want to faff around using a phone to control the TV?

Why would I be watching a programme on my phone when there's a TV in the room?

Jaguar Sportbrake: The chicken tikka masala of van-sized posh cars

That last photo..

looks rather like a slick and speedy hearse. Maybe a market they hadn't considered? Going to your last rest at 149mph - and send any tickets to the corpse!

Inflatables in SPAAACE! ISS 'nauts to enjoy bouncy castle spaceship

Starbucks, google, amazon...

They'll all be up there and calling the LEO office the corporate HQ, and - surprise, surprise - no-one to pay any taxes to!

EU competition chief goes after Amazon’s delux Lux tax deal

5000 amazons?

I doubt it. Maybe he should have started with the biggest offenders and work down to the smaller ones.

Britain’s snooping powers are 'too weak', says NCA chief

There's a germ of a good idea here...

One of the big problems with Ripa and related legislation is creep - it's introduced to crack down on paedorists, but then the rozzers use the same powers to investigate littering.

But, if there was one agency/police force that could only investigate paedorism, and the normal peelers couldn't investigate that, then it would be easier to introduce special powers (subject to judicial authorisation, of course) that could only be used by the anti-terrophile plods, with reduced danger of mission creep.

Still no justification to store 'meta data' on all emails and phone calls. Get a warrant from a judge and then they can start recording data for specific accounts/phones.

EU's super-commish for tech: Geo-blocks on cat vids, music – NOT FAIR

"Tog Gear"?

Some new prog about really cool 60s clothing?

‘This is 2LO calling’: Marconi transmitter, IBM Simon and more at the Science Museum

I think I missed something...

Cable, Telephone, Broadcast, Cell and Web I recognise - was I asleep during 'the Constellation'? Anyone want to give me a hint what that was? Semaphore? Penny post? Messages in cleft sticks?

Hey Brit taxpayers. You just spent £4m on Central London ‘innovation playground’

Welcome...

to the Vomitorium.

Pity us poor sods who work for a living in the real IT world, and pay taxes to support this crap.

Scrapping the Human Rights Act: What about privacy and freedom of expression?

Re: You don't need rights when you've money

" my god how did this country manage for the 1000 plus years its has existed??"

Well, the poorer members of society tended to get fairly thoroughly shafted...

Re: Just Within The Law

Well, obviously the driver was thinking about accelerating to 34mph, so bang to rights.

Who will rid me of these troublesome fascists?

And just in case anyone interprets the above as some call to violence, I'm hoping that the British electorate will rid me of them via the ballot box. And then ban them as an extremist organisation.

I mean to say, is there any reason at all why these unpleasant people should be allowed to preach their hate-filled bile? Other than the obvious reason that free speech is a fundamental british value, dammit!

Anti-Facebook Ello: Here's why we're still in beta. SPAMGASM!

Limit the followers?

Block button is an obvious start, but perhaps the alternative is to limit the number/rate of 'following's

- if it's a site for real people, then limiting the number of new follows to 10 or 20 a day would help to put the spammers off, ditto having a maximum of say 200 (or 300 or whatever) followees (after all, who really has more than that number of real/worthwhile friends, relations and genuine social contacts ?)

Renault Twingo: Small, sporty(ish), safe ... and it's a BACK-ENDER

Bonnet space?

So, what exactly do they use the space under the flap at the front for, if not as a luggage compartment? Fuel tank? Somewhere to smuggle gold bullion and cocaine? Or just to store very smelly French cheese?

Tearful LOHAN Playmonaut bids adiós to Spain

Playmonaut?

I trust our heroic playmonaut will get his own seat in Business class, and not end up in the hot box?

Ordnance Survey intern plonks houses, trees, rivers and roads on GB Minecraft map

Hmmmm

Out of interest, who owns the copyright on material in Minecraft? (e.g. very detailed OS maps) - Maybe that's what Microsoft are after...

Range Rover to fit trendy new SUV with FRIKKIN' LASER HUDs

Second-hand value?

Pistonheads has a number of used Range-rovers for sale from the 1980s. Will this clever HUD tech still be working (particularly the satnav bit) in 25 years?

Move over, Apple Pay: Tesco trials PayQwiq phone-flash pay app

Or....

you could just pay with the credit card you linked to the app, without having to pre-register the card and faff around with apps and QR codes etc. - PaySlo sounds like a better name..

Someone at Tesco is rather missing the point about quick and easy payment. I wonder what else they're getting wrong?