Posts by lglethal

I discovered the world's last video rental kiosk and it would make a great spaceship

Re: Recycling

Work? After Brexit? That's a good one...

Privacy pop-up exhibit shows people in The Glass Room shouldn't throw phones – though they may well want to

Where exactly can i get that Zuck Rolodex? It might come in handy the next time there's a cock-up on one of my projects...

Hundreds charged in internet's biggest child-abuse swap-shop site bust: IP addy leak led cops to sys-op's home

Between June 2015 and March last year, the site is thought to have pocketed more than $370,000 in Bitcoin.

Am i the only one that looks at that and is a bit shocked about how LOW that figure is? In 3,5 years they only earned $370k. $100k a year? For running a site, that is heavily going to attract law enforcement scrutiny, and if you're caught, is going to see you locked up for the rest of your life (and have an extremely bad time of it in jail when the other prisoners find out what you were up to - no one likes a paedophile). For a $100k a year? There are soooooo many other criminal schemes you could run which would net you the same (and more) and run far less risk - scams, spam, malware, fake banking sites, etc.

Idiot must have been as into his product as his customers, in which case I hope they throw the book at him... (maybe not just the book. Throw the entire library at him as well...)

Re: Fair play to the authorities

What I always find funny when some American official goes on an anti-TOR rant, is that the American government both created (through DARPA and the Navy intelligence branch), funded (and continue to do so), and encouraged the take up of TOR. The reason - it makes communication for undercover intelligence agents significantly easier. but only if lots of other people are using it to. they knew all along it would also be used by criminals, but decided that was unimportant.

So going after TOR is basically going after US Intelligence. That should end well...

Some assembly required as Dream Chaser mini-shuttle's empty husk arrives in Colorado

Windows are a pain in the a$$

And no I'm not talking about the Microsoft version.

They add significant weight, problems with sealing (doubly so in the space environment), significantly weaken your structure, and are an utter shite to install.

Stick a couple of cameras embedded in the structure on the outside and some monitors in place of the windows and let people look out the "windows" that way.

*grumble*grumble*old aerospace engineer*dang kids get off my lawn*grumble*grumble*

A spot of after-hours business email does you good, apparently

Wouldnt that have meant that on the times you checked and saw things were really bad, that you would spend the rest of the evening worried about it and then have an incredibly shite night, and so have an even worse morning?

That doesnt sound particularly healthy...

Telstra chairman: If those darn kids can earn $5m playing Fortnite, why can't execs?

Re: All that we learn from history...

"Unlike 18th century France most of these companies are ultimately answerable to shareholders so there is a glimmer of hope that change can be effected without the help of Madame Guillotine."

Aww cant we please get out Madame Guillotine.... Please? I can think of a few very worthy recipients of her attention...

Lies, damn lies, and KPIs: Let's not fix the formula until we have someone else to blame

Re: Spectrum is green

No, No, No. You have to have at least a couple of yellows, and maybe an orange thrown in as well. Otherwise the customer knows you're bullsh%tting!

hmmm

The bigwigs had spent the last year working on what Alban delicately described as "numbers totally unrelated to reality".

Since when have managements numbers ever been related to reality????

See you in Hull: First UK city to be hooked up to full-fibre broadband

Re: Deceptive marketing

ow is a consumer supposed to know what is true fibre vs. fake?

One is provided for in your cereal, and one is provided for by OpenReach.

Well done KCom

but I hate the terminology "gigabit-capable connections". It sounds far too much like advertising doublespeak. Your car is a 300km/h-capable Car. i.e it has 4 wheels and an engine and thats pretty much the same as a Bugatti Veyron. You might need a few tweaks to it before your specific car can do 300km/h, but as some cars can do 300km/h, and you've got all the basic ingredients that make up a car, then there's nothing wrong with saying your car is 300km/h capable, right?

Advertisers will be the first against the wall when the revolution comes... Ok maybe the politicians first... but advertisers definitely second...

Finfisher malware authors fire off legal threats to silence German journos

Should be a quick court case

"Your honour Finfisher say we never contacted them for a reponse. Here are our emails to the finfisher address listed on their contact details dated here and here.

The defendent rests your honour."

China and Russia join to battle 'illegal internet content,' which means what you fear it does

Re: Sharing is caring

Man, I wish you were joking...

'We go back to the Moon to stay': Apollo vets not too chuffed with NASA's new rush to the regolith

Re: ..to stay

Just curious, if there's bodies in a graveyard can you say the graveyards permanently staffed?

Umm... Asking for a friend... Hey hey, dont push, I'll get my coat...

US games company Blizzard kowtows to Beijing by banning gamer who dared to bring up Hong Kong

Re: Blizzard Streisand

Haha. I never considered that. Did the chinese person who spotted the tweet and reported it, get punished for using a banned service???

That would be the ultimate in hilarious hypocrisy...

AC, here's some info from a 2 min Wiki search

"After the Tiananmen Square protests of 1989, the Executive Councillors and the Legislative Councillors of Hong Kong unexpectedly held an urgent meeting, in which they agreed unanimously that the British Government should give the people of Hong Kong the right of abode in the United Kingdom.[33]

More than 10,000 Hong Kong residents rushed to Central in order to get an application form for residency in the United Kingdom. On the eve of the deadline, over 100,000 lined up overnight for a British National (Overseas) application form. While mass migration began well before 1989, the event led to the peak migration year in 1992 with 66,000 leaving.[34] "

So yes, right to relocate was allowed.

As for the executive law implemented, yes that was british but it hadnt been used for over 60 years. It should have been repealed definitely, but I guess it had been forgotten since it hadnt been used for so long.

Re: Blizzard Streisand

The NBA has turned around and basically told China to p%ss off though.

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-china-49979057

Their initial response might have been weak, but they have at least realised that there core market (the US) was about to turn on them massively.

Blizzard on the other hand will, based on past experiences, continue blythly on, lose massive amounts of support from the West, and then in a couple of years get kicked out of China when China shuts its markets to support local developers.

Remember the FBI's promise it wasn’t abusing the NSA’s data on US peeps? Well, guess what…

Re: Makes sense

The problem here is that you need a prosecutor to bring a case against the people who lied to the court (i.e. the FBI). But the Prosecutors are on the side of the FBI. I mean the FBI brings criminal cases to the prosecutors to try in court. So there is zero chance of a Prosecutor bringing perjury charges against a member of the FBI (especially in a leadership position), because that will absolutely hurt them later when the FBI brings sub-standard evidence to them out of revenge. Failed/No convictions means Prosecutor out of a job.

The best we can hope for is that Congress are able to bring the axe down on the entire FBI leadership who lied before congress and to judges and cost them there jobs. The chances of anyone going to jail for lying to the courts or congress is about the same as a snowballs chance in hell...

Tough luck, Jupiter, you've lost your crown for now: Boffins show Saturn has more moons

Getafix!

Game over: Atari VCS architect quits project, claims he hasn’t been paid for six months

Big Flag, Giant Flag, Flag so big you cant see what you're supposed to be looking at anymore

Revenues of $20million, CEO salary $1million. If that's not the sort of warning flag that sends you running away screaming, I dont know what is...

Diggerland comes to Mars as boffins battle to save InSight's mole

Unfortunately, it's not quite that simple, the tether that connects the Mole to the lander comes out of the rear side of the Mole and is a thin flat cable made of Kapton (and wires). So you have to be very careful not to press down on that with the end of the arm. You're also doing this based on camera images taken from the Lander or high up on the arm. So you need to be very precise with what your doing.

In the end the team have decided to go with "pinning" the Mole to the side of the hole, so that at least part of the Mole has good solid contact with the hole wall (and the arm will provide some friction on the other side). If you want full details check out the HP³ Blog (https://www.dlr.de/blogs/en/all-blog-posts/The-InSight-mission-logbook.aspx). The Hammering will restart soon, so fingers crossed!

(from an ex HP³ Team member..)

Re: Mole?

Hey we tried putting a Mole into a space suit, but the bloody thing kept scratching up the suit, and putting holes in. It just couldnt seem to get the hang of using the claw holes provided. And boy let me tell you dont want to be cleaning out the space suit of a pissed off Mole. We had to shut the facility down just because of the smell!

Astronaut Tim Peake reminds everyone about the time Excel mangled his contact list on stage at Microsoft AI event

Obligatory XKCD

https://xkcd.com/1955/

Seems appropriate somehow... especially with Tim peake's statement "We need to start building up the trust in AI so that we can work together."

Nominet continues milking .uk registry cash cow with 4 per cent price rise for... what exactly?

Re: 5 members agreeing on prices via a quasi trade body?

It does very much sound like cartel behaviour doesnt it. A group of companies with voting control over the organisation that sets prices. Would someone like to be the one to report them to the Competition and Markets Authority? I cant unfortunately, as I dont live in the UK, and am not affected by the price rises. But a quick missive would go along way...

Chinese sleazeball's 17-year game of hide-and-seek ends after drone finds him on mountain

I cant understand the mentality...

OK without knowing his actual sentence (maybe it was a life sentence, or maybe it was "only" 10 years), but he's effectively sentenced himself to 17 years of self imposed jail under far more stringent conditions than in the prison camp. 2m² cave, no electricity, no heating, no running water, cast off's for everything, and living in constant fear of being caught again. Prison will probably feel like a vactaion resort after that!

Now assuming, he didnt actually have a sentence that was life without parole, then he's basically added 17 years of jail to his previous sentence plus whatever they add on for escaping the first place. Probably would have been out by now already, but he wont be for along, long time now...

Imagine if Facebook could read your mind: Er, I have some bad news for you...

Re: Cards for other events

I did a card for my brother-in-law with the words "Thanks for taking her off our hands!"

Not sure if he ever showed it to my sister or not...

US government sues ex-IT guy for breaking his NDA (Yes, we mean Edward Snowden)

Re: Passport

Yes, they stripped her UK citzineship, but that was because she also had Bangladeshi citizenship. So they stripped her of her UK citizenship and left her as a pure Bangladeshi citizen.

So No, they didnt break the convention at all.

Re: Passport

Yes it is possible, but long standing UN convention says you cant make people stateless by doing so. So if they're dual nationals then by all means you can strip them of their citzienship/nationailty to your nation. But if they hold only your nationality, then you're not supposed to be able to remove it and leave them stateless...

We asked for your Fitbit horror stories and, oh wow, did you deliver: Readers sync their teeth into 'junk' gizmos

Re: Updates Reset

It's a nice idea, but that would simply mean you would get no FW/SW updates from the moment you purchased the device. No security updates, no fixes for problems that existed at release, nothing.

So whilst I really do like your idea, we all know what the practical response from firms would be. It's already a nightmare to get security updates for any piece of equipment thats more then 6 months old, add in your requirement and we wouldnt even get 1 months worth....

Stallman's final interview as FSF president: Last week we quizzed him over Microsoft visit. Now he quits top roles amid rape remarks outcry

That's an interesting article is about all i can say.

Stallman makes some interesting points, and then he makes some other points which are off the bat shit crazy end of the paranoid spectrum.

It's maybe a shame for him that he's being effectively booted into retirement for his comments, but it also seems like thats probably not a bad thing for the health of the Free Software foundation. But more then anything, what I'm picking up is that Stallman seems like someone who thinks that his opinion is important, and obviously right, and anyone who doesnt "get it" is obviously just misunderstanding what he said. So in other words a bit of a self entitled prick. It seems like he's finally being called out on that and its costing him pretty big.

Whether he deserves it or not, depends I guess on where you stand on various issues...

Au my bog: Bloke, 66, on bail after 'solid-gold' crapper called 'America' stolen from stately home

A man's home is his castle

and you cant have a castle without a golden throne!

Re: Opulent Crap(per)

I think you missed this part

Police said a gang of thieves using two vehicles broke into the palace and pinched the lav.

2 vans does not equal 1 guy...

Australia didn't blame China for parliament hack in case it upset trade relations – report

Re: absorbing around a third of China's total exports every year.

I also find that hard to believe. China taking a third of our (Aussie) exports I could easily imagine, but the other way round, I doubt it...

Malwarebytes back to square one as appeals court rules blocking rival antivirus maker isn't on

Re: Potentially Useless Program?

"I'm wondering what in Enigma's design or operation would convince Malwarebytes to flag it as "Useless""

I'm guessing you missed this part in the article

"Enigma argued that its software isn’t "objectionable" and that Malwarebytes was just trying to get back at the company after it sued a tech support blog affiliated with Malwarebytes that published a bad review of Spyhunter’s program.

Which if true is pretty despicable behaviour from both sides (suing a blogger for a bad review in the case of Enigma and seeking revenge within your program by Malwarebytes). Both of them sound like they need a good kick up the a$$...

Cloud, internet biz will take a Yellowhammer to the head in 'worst case' no-deal Brexit

Re: How?

The people of Uxbridge and South Ruislip elected him to parliament, and the approximately 180,000 conservative party members elected him to lead the Conservatives after May resigned/was pushed out. The entire UK elected enough Conservatives MP's to give them the majority and hence make BoJo prime minister. So yes under the laws of the UK, you did elect BoJo. Even if you didnt vote for him directly...

Re: How?

It wasn't always like this....

Actually it was. It's never been any different. It's just rose tinted spectacles to say it was better in the past.

Every generation supports stupid, it's just gotten to such a level that people think the stupid is normal now and so are willing to elect the likes of BoJo and Trump and accept the bullshit they get fed. But thats not any different to the bullshit they used to get fed by the likes of Thatcher, Reagen or Nixon ("I am not a crook"), it's more that they now know they can get away with outright lying now and not have to worry about massaging a thing called truth.

To quote Sir Terry: "'The intelligence of that creature known as a crowd is the square root of the number of people in it." This also applies to populations...

Mystery database left open turns out to be at heart of a huge Groupon ticket fraud ring

To explain...

They used the voucher to purchase discount tickets in large quantities and then scalped them for a higher price.

They werent selling the vouchers themselves.

"The moral of the story is, as always, keep track of your cloud database instances and always make sure public access is disabled. "

Unless of course your a criminal, in which case, by all means leave it open for the world to see. And dont follow any of the suggestions listed in this document. Just continue on as before. Thanks very much...

Fairphone 3 stripped to the modular essentials: Glue? What glue?

OK fair enough. Sounds like it is a thing. You learn something new every day...

I'm actually curious - has anyone ever broken anything on their phone about from the screen and the case?

The comments about replacing a broken USB-C port or the like just got me wondering, as I cant say I've ever heard of people breaking such things. Displays cracking - check. Batteries dying - check. Case cracking - check. Individual components breaking or getting damaged - ????

I very much like the idea of the Fairphone, but I do struggle to see exactly how I would use the upgrade/change capabilities...

CEOs beg for America-wide privacy law... to protect their businesses from state privacy laws

Re: "it being almost completely ineffective."

I agree with LDS. The firm I work for and all those for which friends and family work for (at least that I've spoken to on this topic) have gone out of their way to try and make sure they're complying with the law. Yes there are still some (the facebooks and googles) who are going out of there way to flout the laws, but the vast majority of firms in Europe or with major dealings with Europe are massively improving their data handling and privacy aspects.

It's already 1000 times better than it was before. Once the law starts really coming down on the obvious big boys, then you'll see the last outliers brought to heel..

Facebook: Remember how we promised we weren’t tracking your location? Psych! Can't believe you fell for that

Re: Samsung phones

Hello Silent_count,

Here let me explain that for you, it's really quite simple. There's this thing called Money, which we like. Facebook, Twitter and co. give us a tonne of it, which makes us very happy, and as such we make their apps "system" apps. If we didnt do that, they wouldnt give us all of the money and that would make us unhappy. So now you know the reason. I hope that helps...

Yours Sincerely

Samsung (and all the rest)

Alright! Ma time to meet that shag quota! Alibaba chairman steps down at 55 with $38.6bn fortune

Contradiction, much?

I'm not sure how he correlates his statement about having sex 6 times in 6 days, with one of his previous comment

"I personally think that being able to work 996 is a huge blessing" (https://www.theregister.co.uk/2019/04/23/microsoft_github_china/)

I doubt I'd be able to get up the energy to have sex even once a week if I was working a 72 hour week...

That Telegram feature that let you delete your private messages on recipients' phones? It didn't work properly

Re: In the folder

"A spoken word has fled like a bird and cannot be caught again",

Unless its caught on camera or a microphone, in which casse you're just as screwed!

What a bunch of DoSers: Wikipedia says it was walloped by 'bad faith' actors over weekend

Skiddies gonna skid...

hopefully into the back of a waiting police van...

in full Benny Hill style...

Now on Amazon Prime: The Amazing Shrinking UK Tax Burden

<i<Of course, there is more to the story: Amazon UK noted the tax bill for 2018 was actually a hair under £14m, but was able to drop £13m of that into a bucket marked "deferred tax". It did the same trick last year, tossing £3m into the same bucket.

...Not that it seemingly matters, but Amazon also noted that the UK rate of corporation tax will be dropping from 19 per cent to 17 per cent for the year beginning 1 April 2020, and that "any deferred tax assets and liabilities existing at 31 December 2018 reflect this rate change".

</i>

I'm aware of Depreciation and the like, but being able to defer 13 out of 14 million tax, as well as 3 million last year seems excessive for a retailer.

The additional statement that they are taking into account a reduced tax rate as part of this is what inspired my comment.

Wait. What? You can choose to not pay taxes this year (or last year) so that you can pay them a couple of years later when the tax rate reduces???

"Right, Gov, I would like to defer my tax to the year 2100. I will pay all of the tax I incur between now and then in one lump sum at that point. Unless of course taxes are due to go down in 2101. Then I'll pay you in 2101. Unless of course..."

Please at least tell me that there are interest rates (at above inflation!) incurred on the unpaid taxes. Please?

What's that? One rule for us and one rule for them? Oh right, yes well carry on then i guess...

Like a grotty data addict desperately jonesing for its next fix, Google just can't stop misbehaving

I'm interested to know Mr Summers if you would be happy with the police and government having the ability to read your every email, track your web browsing habits, track your phones location at all times, etc.? Even if the reading/tracking was being done by some "algorithm" that worked for the government?

I can only assume your answer is yes, because you seem to be very trusting of a firm that has no external checks and balances to make sure its not abusing that data. At least the police and the government would have the external check of the Courts of Law and the various Ombudsman's to try and make sure that the government is obeying the laws as they are written.

The few times that things have leaked out of google, it has almost always been found to be breaking and abusing laws in its quest to suck up more data. Which I would argue makes it a firm which has proven it is untrustworthy. And yet you seem happy to trust it... hmmm...

Auditors bemoan time it takes for privatised RAF pilot training to produce combat-ready aviators

Re: "Auditors bemoan time it takes"

I guess you missed the point where it explains that they went from 219 training aircraft to 33!

(I'm not counting the Hawks because the article says that the MOD still provides them, but I somewhat doubt they provide all 100 of them, so the numbers are probably even worse!)

is it any wonder they cant get enough people trained...

Mozilla says Firefox won't defang ad blockers – unlike a certain ad-giant browser

Re: Ads

Umm I wasnt arguing against Adblockers, I'm a big fan of them myself. i was merely pointing out unicornpiss's actions of boycotting a company who's ads he finds annoying wont have any effect.

And No, Advertisers WANT to show you Ads. They want their Product in front of your eyeballs. They may not like the Google/Facebook duopoly, but thats what they want, you seeing their Product, even for just 5 seconds. Why do you think companies pay a fortune for product placement in films? There's no specific ad in the film, but you see the Product, you become aware of it, and maybe then next time you think, oh I could use a new product, maybe i should get the Product that was in that film. Job done.

So No, its not just google/facebook who want to serve you ads, the advertisers do. Google and facebook probably are not that worried if you look at the ads or not. Just so long as they get paid, but these days they have to show that a person actually looked at the ad to get paid. Hence why they fight ad blockers so much...