Posts by The obvious

Reg reader returns Samsung TV after finding giant ads splattered everywhere

Re: Optimistically....Sony Bravia does not work

> BT Smart

Now THERE is an oxymoron if ever I saw one!

Re: "query a locally run DNS server"

I don't think you've quite grasped the point of DoH and DoT have you?

(Hint: they're so advertisers can bypass adblocking in your DNS infrastructure, not privacy as they are usually set to query exactly the people you want privacy from.)

Re: Can you opt out of the data collection on smart TVs?

Some already don't start up without being able to do an E.T.

Re: Don't connect it to the internet and you're opted out.

Except for the TV's that don't start up if they can't phone home...

Internet Archive's 2046 Wayforward Machine says Google will cease to exist

Re: Interesting thought....

Honestly the one thing I can tell you about the internet in 50 years time, is that IP4 will still exist and there will still be people who think IP6 is too newfangled and some kind of dark art.

It's time to decentralize the internet, again: What was distributed is now centralized by Google, Facebook, etc

Re: Bullshit article premise

I think that's where so many fall down. They just don't see the indirect reliance, even on services they pay for, that's where they really get you.

Look again at the things you *have* to do and the things that those suppliers rely on. For example, need to book a PCR test, or file your taxes? They rely on google services and they simply won't work if you have google blocked.

Re: Bullshit article premise

> If they all stopped working today, I seriously doubt I'd notice

Put your money where your mouth is Jake... Block their ASNs at your firewall and on your mobile devices, and tell us all how long you last.

> People centralize on Google and Facebook but that is their choice.

I'd agree for Facebook, but not for Google.

If I really was interested in cutting off FB then no problem, one firewall rule blocking their ASN, and mission accomplished.

Try doing that with the all-seeing googly-eye... your life will become difficult, fast.

Need to pay HMRC? You can't

Need to book a PCR test? Nope

Want to donate to your favoured political party? It'll have to be offline.

Want to just use the web and go about your daily business? Computer says 'no'.

University duo thought it would be cool to sneak bad code into Linux as an experiment. Of course, it absolutely backfired

Re: Bad Actor/Good actor.

But... but... but... bad code will never get in because it's open source so everyone can see the... ah.

Only if they're looking, and if we learned nothing from OpenSSL a few years ago, it's that people probably aren't looking.

Beyond video to interactive, personalised content: BBC is experimenting with rebuilding its iPlayer in WebAssembly

Chalk up another client for ActiveX 2.0...

...everything old is new again.

Broadband plumber Openreach yanks legacy copper phone lines in Suffolk town of Mildenhall en route to getting the UK on VoIP

Re: Lack of mains

OFCOM revised their requirements something like 10 years ago, IIRC.

Analogue PSTN providers are only required to cover the first 60 minutes of an outage (though obviously many will far exceed this to ensure that they're compliant). For full-fibre they are required to provide 60 minutes battery backup for 'vulnerable' customers in their CPE and the rest of us are on our own.

Google's plan to make User-Agent string even less useful breaks our device detection tech, says NetMarketShare

Re: Trouble is which version of the standards

Obligatory XKCD

https://xkcd.com/927/

Alphabet thanks ads and AI for its $124m-a-day quarterly profit, and comes out swinging against antitrust action

Re: WTF is up with Bing?

I do use Bing and I think people do rag on it without really giving it a chance, but the value in google is not in search, the value is in the Orwellian level of data hoovering that informs the search.

Analytics, DNS, Safebrowsing, apis, fonts etc that almost all sites use, most of them we can’t really avoid without major degradation or loss of functionality, and which most users, even techies wouldn’t even think to look for.

Kick Google all you like, Mozilla tells US government, so long as we keep getting our Google-bucks

It's almost as if...

google had a massive monopoly in search so Mozilla couldn't get any meaningful amounts of cash from other companies.

Guess I'm living up to the name again...

What does everyone make of today's Google antitrust action? Only the stock market is happy with the status quo

Re: How to disrupt a monopoly

"Offer something better than they do."

I knew googlebot would turn up at some point.

Google have been abusing their monopoly for over a decade and it is impossible not to give them data, data that makes it impossible for a new entrant to provide something better. The only company vaguely capable of giving it a run for it's money is Microsoft. But without access to the data from google analytics, as well as the analytics from google's SafeSearch, DNS, APIs, Fonts, Maps, YouTube and so on, that's pretty much impossible even for them.

If you don't believe me regarding choice... block google's ASN at your firewall, stop feeding them data, then try to go about your usual online activities. Trust me, we can wait while you do it, because you won't be long.

When you tell Chrome to wipe private data about you, it spares two websites from the purge: Google.com, YouTube

Re: Facebook is just as bad

Except you actually can choose not to use Facebook - just block their ASN at the firewall, job done.

Try that with google. See how long you can last, it won’t be long.

Odds are it’s in chromium too, so it’s netsc^h^h^h Firefox or nothing on most platforms.

Re: no consequences

Sounds like SOP for google.

It was never really “don’t be evil” and more “don’t get caught, if you do then pretend it was a mistake”

Google screwed rivals to protect monopoly, says Uncle Sam in antitrust lawsuit: We go inside the Sherman parked on a Silicon Valley lawn

People have a choice?

“ People use Google because they choose to, not because they're forced to.”

Yeah, ok. We can test that.

Block Google’s ASN at the firewall, and attempt to go about your normal use of the web for a day and tell us how long you last.

2010 was far too late, the damage was long done. It shouldn’t have taken Microsoft to get on board... the government should have got on with it without needing prompting.

To stop web giants abusing privacy, they must be prevented from respawning. Ever

Re: Not going to happen

I’d definitely argue that google are far worse than fb or Twitter. Unlike the others they only affect their members, the googly-eye is all-seeing irrespective of if you consume their services directly or not.

Re: I've seen the movie just few days ago

Shunning Facebook is easy, just wallop their ASN at the firewall. Easy-peasy, job done, pub o’clock.

Try it with google... it is impossible to use the web in any meaningful way without giving them some amount of data.

Brexit travel permits designed to avoid 7,000-lorry jams come January depend on software that won't be finished till April

Re: What's in a name...

Dr Bunsen & Beaker would probably knock it out in an afternoon!

Future airliners will run on hydrogen, vows Airbus as it teases world-plus-dog with concept designs

Re: Looks good to me

Unless it leaks into the cabin. My understanding is that, mixed with oxygen, it doesn’t so much burn as go off with a BANG!!!!

Adtech's bogeymen are tracking everything - even your web visits to mental health charities, claim campaigners

Re: Oh, I've got a better one than that...

This also applies to all the political parties too.

If you’re google and you want to lobby the government, that seems like a useful bit of information...

Teen charged after allegedly taking food delivery biz for a ride: $10k of 'fraudulent refunds for stuff not delivered'

Re: Subway & Uber Eats

If you want to know who’s responsible, follow the money... The company responsible is always the one you paid.

Chromium devs want the browser to talk to devices, computers directly via TCP, UDP. Obviously, nothing can go wrong

Re: What happened to Do no evil?

It was only ever really “don’t get caught”.

Meet the new IE4...

...same as the old IE4 but with Google.

Geneticists throw hands in the air, change gene naming rules to finally stop Microsoft Excel eating their data

Re: I must be missing something...

About half uses “;”, so not comma-separated at all?

Re: Wrong tool for the job

If scientists can’t manage to find/use the import wizard where you can tell it that that A specific column data is text then I’m not sure there’s hope for the human race.

USA decides to cleanse local networks of anything Chinese under new five-point national data security plan

Re: don't want to be sued for slander either...

You won’t be - slander only applies to speech. Libel however...

It's been five years since Windows 10 hit: So... how's that working out for you all?

Re: I would LOVE to be able to use Linux

As far as I’m concerned you aren’t missing anything, the best place for Linux is /dev/null - the ecosystem is pretty toxic and really needs to go have a good think after the likes of the debacle that is systemd...

We're suing Google for harvesting our personal info even though we opted out of Chrome sync – netizens

Re: Strange People...

When go ogle controls 90% of search, how are people supposed to find anything else/better. It’s almost as if they are abusing their monopoly and need to be split up.

It was never really "don't be evil"

It is (and remains) “don’t get caught”.

What evil lurks within the data centre, and why is it DDoS-ing the ever-loving pants off us?

Re: TomTom Updates (2025 update)

“ the days when things were written specifically for Chrome.”

Chrome: the new Internet Explorer.

Meet the new boss, same as the old boss.

Dutch national broadcaster saw ad revenue rise when it stopped tracking users. It's meant to work like that, right?

Re: You Don't Love Retargeting?

There’s a significant difference between facebook and google though. You can choose not to give facebook your data, quite easily. Whereas with google it is impossible to just (for example) sinkhole their ASN and have done with it.

Macs, iPhones, iPads to get encrypted DNS – how'd you like them Apples?

Re: Big G

By privacy they meant private from everyone else, not from them apparently...

Huawei's EMUI 10.1 update shows Chinese mobile giant hunkering down for the long haul without Google wares

Re: So...

There will be plenty of value in providing those services or the all-seeing googly eye would not be interested in sharing theirs with other companies.

When open source isn't enough: Fancy a de-Googled Chromium? How about some Microsoft-free VS Code?

Re: Vivaldi?

Google “safe browsing“ is enabled by default in Vivaldi. I mentioned it in the forums but a lot of people seem to think that google respect their privacy...

Kinda goes without saying, but shore up your admin passwords or be borged by this brute-forcing botnet

Re: It is appalling

Because “It is open source and runs on Linux so it’s secure.”

I’ve been told that in those exact words.

No more installing Microsoft's Chromium-centered Edge by hand: Windows 10 will do it for you automatically

Re: Déja Vu

Now people only write pages to work in new IE4 - Chrome.

Google+ replacement ‘Currents’ to end beta and debut in G Suite on July 6th

Another product for google to burn

I give it 500 days...

Re: Oh, you can opt out. Trust me.

Oh really? Block Google’s ASN at your router for a week, then tell us if you can really opt out...

Google: You know we said that Chrome tracker contained no personally identifiable info? Yeah, about that...

Re: GnuTzu - Proxy

Why do you think google invented hsts and hpkp?

House of Lords push internet legend on greater openness and transparency from Google. Nope, says Vint Cerf

Re: We're Google ...

“We’re Google and if you want anyone to hear about your party next election then you had better be awed at our technobabble...”

'An issue of survival': Why Mozilla welcomes EU attempts to regulate the internet giants

Vivaldi the chromeskin. I use it too but it’s worth remembering as there lies the problem. Browser engine diversity protects standards and we as a community seems to have forgotten the browser wars.

Google burns down more than 500 private-data-stealing, ad-defrauding Chrome extensions installed by 1.7m netizens

Hey!

private-data-stealing and ad-defrauding is OUR job.

signed,

the all-seeing googly eye.

RIP FTP? File Transfer Protocol switched off by default in Chrome 80

Re: Guess I'm a fossil, then

Google’s rationale is “can we virtually wipe every implementation off the planet?” or “can we harvest loads of juicy data to make a profit?”

If both of those are “no” then in the bin it goes. If they manage the first, and the second is still “no” *then* they bin it...

Sketchy behavior? Wacom tablet drivers phone home with names, times of every app opened on your computer

Re: Pi-Hole

They’re feeding google analytics... given that google are the absolute worst bunch of data thieving bastards known to mankind outside of the TLA’s, any pi-hole list worth using should be blackholing them into oblivion already.

Microsoft's on Edge and you could be, too: Chromium-based browser exits beta – with teething problems

Woop-de-do, another chromeskin...

If we wanted/needed another crappy chrome-skin then there are a bunch of options. Checking code against multiple render engines was a useful thing to be able to do. I guess we learned nothing from the browser wars after all...