Posts by Grikath

Newspaper kills 'what was fake' column as pointless in internet age

There's the problem....

"But there have been many, many other fake news stories, and Dewey reckons it's because they have become profitable."

It's all about generating traffic, and exposing people to ad imprints on their driveby's. With the way internet advertising works Traffic = KaChing! , for relatively little work, given the fact that most of those sites work on the same template as the old porn lists/aggregators.

The Ad Men don't care. Their business is to sell FakeBelieve, and they'll get their percentage either way.

The Firewall Awakens: ICANN's exiting CEO takes internet governance to the dark side

China hugs back...

yes.. and a panda still has functioning claws...

Press Backspace 28 times to own unlucky Grub-by Linux boxes

I amazed..

The sheer level of OCD to figure this one out must be...crippling.. in real life.

Microsoft Trusted Root Certificate program getting a lot less trusting

you forgot the U.S. and UK....

Congress strips out privacy protections from CISA 'security' bill

Re: What fucked up approach to democracy

Heinlein actually outlined the "tacking on" process ( and other stuff we get riled up about nowadays) in the novella "Magic Inc. " (1940 (!) )

One of his lesser known works, but as with a lot of his work very much on target, in a "sure this doesn't/wouldn't ever happen, right?" kind of way.

Re: "There is a problem with this approach"

"The periodic revolutions/civil wars throughout history have always baffled me;"

And now you're seeing how they get started, front-row.

Let's shut down the internet: Republicans vacate their mind bowels

Re: Carly's comments

It's been proven time and time again that being the CEO of a tech company has nothing to do with having any clue about any technology whatshowever. Worse, any expertise in that direction seems to be generally seen as Getting In The Way of Business..

Re: None of you morons

I'll take the bait and point out that then they'd have had no article to write...

Big Brother is born. And we find out 15 years too late to stop him

Re: Curious

"They have this vast quantity of data, yet they still struggle to catch one terrorist."

That may be because the object of the excercise itself is not Catching Terrorists, despite all the propaganda, but control over the people who aren't (yet).

Lettuce-nibbling veggies menace Mother Earth

Re: CH4 >> CO2

Well.... funny you should mention that, given that cows and other ruminants do not actually produce the methane they expel. The bacteria in their stomachs that convert the Green Stuff they ingest into actual food for the ruminant in question do that, in a localised process which is more or less exactly what would happen if you'd leave the Green Stuff out in a compost heap, or out in nature, for that matter.

Given that grazing prevents the buildup of enough material to create the circumstances where methanogens actually get a chance, you're really only concentrating methane production that would happen anyway to the inside of an animal, which, in case of cows, is producing steak, cheese, hamburgers, and proper shoes and jackets.

Old jet bits, Vader's motorbike gear, sonic oddness: Hats off to Star Wars' creative heroes

not the only ones..

For instance, the bobs and bits on the classic Cylon fighters were from a plastic model tank kit ( one of Revell's Tigers, if I remember correctly) up to and including the tracks, wheels and ... the shovel... ;)

Windows XP spotted on Royal Navy's spanking new aircraft carrier

umm yeah...

And what they show on the screens *publicly* would bear any connection to Reality™ of course.

Car parking mobile apps are vulnerable to hacking, say infosec folk

So... In reality..

The things are pretty safe to use, if the best a couple of..."security researchers" ... can come up with is " Could, Would, If , Possibly, Maybe."

Hell... even H&S drones still need to present at least plausible scenarios when trying to validate their existence..

Still running IE10? Not for long, says Microsoft

Re: How many corporate pages will break

If they're properly coded? Including all the esoteric shyte some "people" insist be put on/in a bloody webpage? None.

Because if between shifting/developing standards, rise and fall of popularity/idiosyncracies of browser [x], and several flavours of Hype du Jour over, say, the past decade or so, people still haven't learned to allow for ( the rather inevitable) EOL of a bit of software, you have to wonder what they're being paid for.

Everyone wants a piece of software maker Atlassian's ass

The company is quite unique in that it

makes an actual ..profit?!!

What is the world coming to?!!

National Crime Agency: Your kid could be a nasty interwebs hacker

Re: Porn

it would most certainly explain the Evasion bit..

Before you know it your old dad wants to exchange bookmarks... ;)

Netherlands votes to splash cash on encryption projects

@ christoph

Yeah.. sea level rise...

If even our most completely risk-averse and completely greenie-politically-correct no-spine politicians are not in the least worried about that one, you can probably tell how likely that particular doom scenario is...

NHS IT projects worth £5bn at 'high risk' of failure, warns HSCIC

BritGov + IT = ExpensiveFailure

In other news: Whodathunkit?

Rounded corners on Android phones cost Samsung $548m: It will pay up to Apple after all

Re: Idiocy!

Leverage. Taxes. Long-term strategy.

Samsungs' lawyers aren't stupid. You don't get to play in that field if you are. Or not for long anyway. The stipulation regarding the payment is ...intriguing.. in that respect.

I've a feeling Apple is not going to like this particular payment one bit in the future.

Sysadmin's £100,000 revenge after sudden sacking

a very well known company supplying fantasy wargaming products

in which Edition? :P

Per-core licences coming to Windows Server and System Center 2016

still amounts to the same: They'll try to bleed you for every penny they think they can get away with.

Edit: And the more complicated the scheme used to "calculate" a fee, the more assurance you have you're going to be shafted somewhere along the way. Obfuscation is the First Element of every scam.

Brit hardware hacker turns Raspberry Pi Zeros into selfie slayers

Re: Hmm @ Eddy

It's the selfie-bastards who ruin that, because they always tend to include *other people* in their antics. Murphy states that Aunt Edna, or great-cousin Jeeves *will* find those pics at the most importune moments and *will* spread the pain. Because Family.

Europe launches search for Einstein's space-time ripples

Re: Give us a wave

" in the desert (or the dessert, I never know). "

The answer to that one is: can you put cream on top and eat it? if Yes, you add the s.. ;)

Re: Blasts Off

Mostly data about the system itself.

Does it perform as expected? Do al parts function reliably, or are there any glitches only real life testing over an extended period can turn up? Do the cubes, in fact, stay at their (expected) positions or do they drift, and if so, because of what? Plenty of things only exposure to the real environment they're supposed to be working in can answer.

It's not as if this is your average kitchen scales, or even a properly balanced and calibrated lab scales. This thing is supposed to measure right up on the edge of Quantum, so you'd need a good set of data from one before you can start setting up the needed triangle and compare the data from the three.

Google to end updates, security bug fixes for Chrome on 32-bit Linux

Re: I wonder...

"In Winbloat land, how many boxes running 7 or later are running 32 bit OSes?"

I'd suspect quite a few actually. There's a serious amount of PC's used in production environments alone that by now run Win7 on "old" 32 bit hardware. Sometimes literally old, because of the hardware requirements of the machines, and the need to keep things alive by cannibalising the hand-me-downs from the Office Upstairs.

Sued for using HTTPS: Big brands told to cough up in crypto patent fight

Re: Some people might even call it a "patent troll"

A quick look reveals their office is in a lawyers' nest office building, and the actual registering of the llc is done by proxy through Legalinc....

Any bets the litigating attorney office is actually the owner of the patent, all the way down the line?

Hello Barbie controversy re-ignited with insecurity claims

Re: It depends...

Yes, and there are many, many other ways in which to do that in that scenario. This is why high-profile people tend to have high-profile security measures, often including their families.

Personally I wish Vulture Central would become a bit more ...resistant.. to publishing "Security!!" stories, or at least be more critical about the next release from the tinfoil hat brigade.

Security is important, but most readers here will probably be aware of the fact that anything made up of electronics and programming is ultimately hackable, under the right set of circumstances. And quite often, the "articles" , often rehacked press releases nowadays, gloss over the fact that the Next Scare really isn't all that practical, or even likely.

There's a bit of a Publish or Perish race going on in the Security business, and, pardon my french, every damn geek OCD tinfoil hatter is looking for his 5 Minutes of Fame, because the issue is "hot" at the moment. And quite a lot of the guff published about it contains "could", "would", "possibly", and "under the right conditions" , and ever more frequently the dreaded "leverage(ing)" which shows who the article really is aimed at: the Boss, instead of the BOFH.

And the latter....saddens.. me.

Connected smart cars are easily trackable, warns infosec bod

Re: I already...

hmmmyeah.. But paranoia aside, that is sort of the disadvantage of *broadcasting*... You're shouting out to within hearing range you're actually there.

And seriously, you could do the same the old-fashioned way by simply taking note of license plates, which would give you a little more than just a daily movement pattern with the right access... I've a feeling this would, for all practical purposes, be a non-issue.

'Hypocritical' Europe is just as bad as the USA for data protection

Re: Deliberately missing the point, or fuckwit?

Both.. A quick look at his resumé shows he's been at the heart of the Think of the Children Brigade and other such worthies. He also seems to suffer from Fog in Channel syndrome if he takes the UK situation when it comes to privacy, surveillance, and guarantees therewith as a standard for Europe.

Europe didn't catch the pox from Christopher Columbus – scientists

Re: It was around before that

That, and there's also many references in surviving documents requesting or granting added funds for "pox houses", indicating local outbreaks of [something] with an added complication of "madness" well before Columbus. Not a (medieval) medical opinion, but accountants have always had ... a tendency of accuracy... when it comes to tracking money, especially if they got a cut. Which makes for some great, if somewhat dull, historical research. It's well possible there have (always) been instances of syphilis in Europe, but that due to the then extent segregation practices and generally limited mobility of people outbreaks were local and ultimately limited.

It is entirely possible Sailors did introduce a different, and more virulent, strain into Europe which then became epidemic. Not unlike Y. Pestis, which did occur in Europe in a low instance and relatively non-lethal form, until the more virulent and rather notorious strains were introduced from Asia.

Blocking out the Sun won't fix climate change – but it could buy us time

Re: Sea rise

Given that even the worst case scenario would have the sea level rise at best a couple of centimeters in 2 decades, you can be pretty sure the erosion that is happening is simply that... : The sea pounding on soft rock on the same place for a long time. 10 cm up or down would not make much of a difference.

Re: Utter Tosh

I call "Utter Tosh" for a completely different reason: The dear Speaker is simply talking out of his arse.

Irrelevant of anyones' stance on the whole weary AGW discussion and related subjects, the whole thing has generated an immense amount of actual scientific research into how our atmosphere actually works, if only to dis/prove certain (pet) theories. Besides often sparking more Discussion, all this work has had a profound effect on the one practical discipline in this area: meteorology. The day-to-day weather prediction is the one thing that affects us most, and accurate mid- to long-term prediction of weather is a serious tool in managing a lot of economic activity and planning. Meteorology has grown from something of a Dark Art to a full science over the past couple of decades, and it has hugely benefited from all the data points and measurements that are being made about our planets' atmosphere. It also has the added bonus that between prediction and actual result even a half-trained amateur can check how well the predictions are. And no, not in the "it's not raining here, mate" sense, but it's really easy to check if the predicted progression/development of a weather front actually matches reality, and how far off that prediction is/was. Weather is strongly affected by Quantum, but if the atmospheric models are correct, things generally should end up where they're predicted.

And they don't. Short term ( up to three days) they're OK-ish, but mid-term ( about a week) the predictions are still ... prone to change..., and characteristic elements ( fronts, pressure centers, temperature boundaries,....) end up in significantly different places than predicted. Which means the models simply are not good enough... yet... Which can and does have some serious implications, as the failure to correctly predict the landing place of Sandy shows, for instance.

This all amounts to a number of very simple conclusions: Our atmosphere is significantly more complicated than previously thought. We do not know enough about quite a number of phenomena/cycles and their interaction to correctly model them. As a result of this, any result the models give is at best an educated guess.

Conversely, if someone boldly claims this One Simple Solution will Save the Planet, you can be pretty sure he's talking out of his arse, if not selling Snake Oil. If you're buying that kind of stuff, I have got this great! opportunity! to make $$$! in your spare! time!!! And that's cutting me'own throat, mister!

How NSA continued to spy on American citizens' email traffic – from overseas

Re: linicks Haven't a clue

" As with the Charlie Hebdo attackers, the majority of the Paris attackers were on the radar of the intelligence community, there was just the lack of political will to deal with them."

Not so much political will, as law... You need actual *proof* to make an arrest stick, get it wrong and jump in too early, and you'll just chase the people you're watching further underground. "Suspicion of criminal intent" is not something you can use in Europe, and worse: any evidence you may use for such a charge will become inadmissible in the future. Because Law, and judges having a dim view of having it played with here on the Mainland.

This makes for a very grim catch-22: To be able to legally arrest a criminal/terrorist ring, the authorities involved have to wait until the people they're watching have at least partially started to enact whatever they're planning. And getting that timing, and the associated "collateral damage" right is incredibly difficult. Especially when you're talking human lives as "collateral". It's not a position I'd be particularly happy to be in if I'd have to make decisions like that....

The thing about mass surveillance is that it does not help one bit in alleving that catch-22. It may give intelligence agencies a better idea of who talks to who, but it will still not tell them what people are up to. Even being able to easily read whatever communication will not help: try and prove that the "visit to Grandma" in that email is really code for [insert nefarious activity] in front of a judge.. You can't, unless you've got a signed and vetted Official Code Book to go along with it. And arresting people for Using a non-Authorised Communication Device.. Let's not go there, shall we.. That way lies madness, and oppression.

Some forms of mass surveillance are useful to map out networks, and I expect intelligence agencies to actually employ techniques like that. It's their job, after all. But the unfettered access to all communication desired by some simply would not assist in any way in gathering evidence and/or preventing [event].. And they know it. Which begs the question: Why would they want it then?

Rdio's collapse another nail in the coffin of the 'digital economy'

Re: My 2¢

For every 'great artist' making millions a year there are hundreds, if not thousands, of keen amateurs or wannabe professionals who are, if not just as good, quite often better that it makes it difficult to justify paying a lot more for the big names.

FTFY

Aside from taste, the level of professionalism and actual skill in the arts of music and singing in "small fry" tends to be much higher, especially given the fact that they can't get away with lip-syncing...

Roundworm infection increases female fertility

Re: This one is a known "immune system modifier"

That suggests the worms have a way to downtune heir hosts immune reaction without making the immune system itself less effective. Time to scour this worms waste products for antihistamine compounds and/or hormonal stimulants/depressors, methinks.

Ofcom asks: Do kids believe anything they read on the internet?

A Downvote? For practical common sense? What's the world coming to....

From $6bn to $4.2bn to $2.9bn: Square's ever shrinking unicorn horn

Re: as long as the net worth of the entire company is worth more than their investment

Because you can trade those *private* shares off to punters much more freely than publicly registered shares... There's preciously few rules governing the trade of private equity, so the tricks that can't be pulled at Wall Street can be pulled in that arena.

Astronomers catch first sighting of a planet's birth pangs

Re: Either way

ummm the farthest back we've seen so far is 13.3 billion years...

450 years is practically in the neigbourhood.

Uber Australia is broke: 'We don't pay tax because we don't generate revenue'

" these senators are giving Uber, Airbnb, Chevron, etc., a warning that the should become good corporate citizens without legislative action, or the legislative action won't be nearly as friendly."

Given that Uber has given up on UberPop in the Netherlands after 40-ish arrests of individual drivers, two raids by an interesting collection of government agencies, and racking up something like €750.000 in fines ( in a country where corporate fines are so low they're considered operational hazards, no less..) , maybe "shooting across the bow" should be done a bit more...convincingly?

Because, y'know, the service they provide has been deemed illegal in the country they've decided to be registrated in... Maybe some translation of Dutch court proceedings and news articles into english would benefit the Pollitickians there inOz..

Red dwarf superflares batter formerly 'habitable' exoplanet

Re: Not new news

*points to Earth's mass extinctions*

Yeah, because a couple of solar flares will stop Life once it's gotten hold...

If the planet has an atmosphere that allows for liquid water, then there'll be oceans. Water tends to be pretty good at stopping "excess radiation", so any life in it has a double buffer when it comes to that. In fact, life here started there, and thrived, when land-based conditions here on Earth were decidedly hostile to life in general.

It all depends what you mean by "primitive" life, of course... Biologically speaking there's only "more" and "less" adapted to a particular environment. In that respect, most, if not all life on earth runs on the latest updates, and is still trying out the alpha builds.

That's when and if...

It all depends on whether or not that planet still has a functioning magnetic field.

Never mind solar flares, the Earth has copped plenty of those in its history, and we still have a functioning atmosphere. If the data from our solar system is any indication, your basic solar wind is much more significant in terms of atmoshere stripping than any solar flare activity. Even Pluto shows the effect, and you can't really say its particularly close to the Sun....

Besides.. that star being a red dwarf, 6 billion years would be rather youthful.. they last a wee bit longer than our Sun...

Behold, the fantasy of infinite cloud compute elasticity

Re: I think the author missed something

The point of the Cloud is that there's many entities requesting many instances, making the excercise one of scale and availability, and making your physical capacity match "traffic".

"Virtual servers are not magic. They don’t exist in a parallel universe, decoupled from hardware. You still need physical servers, sitting in a data centre somewhere."

shows the real problem. You need a seriously fat data pipe for this to work, or you'll bottleneck rather horrible. It's all good and nice to have One Meeeeelion server capacity, but if you can't feed them they're next to useless. The world's infrastructure is simply not up to serving the Cloud Dream.

Hey Cortana, how about you hide my app from the user?

Re: They already had multitasking

Office? pah! What do you think happens in an actual production environment?

Try giving voice commands on the controlling console of a sealer/packager going at full tilt.. Mind.. there's a lot more about "METRO" that makes it completely useless for most management and control applications, but that one makes me laugh. A lot...

Google, didn't you get the memo? Stop trying to make Google+ happen

Re: G+ still tied to too much

yes.. it allows them to tie stuff about you across a *lot* of apps , outside your search preferences. It's their core business..

ISIS operates a crypto help desk – report

Re: "university education"

You're confusing cognitive intelligence with intellect.

There must be quite a few people in ISIS ( or whatever they're calling themselves now) that have perfectly functioning hardware in their noggin to be able to pull off what they're doing at the moment.

The software and applications running on it? .... leaves a bit to be desired...

Reg reader achieves bronze badge, goes directly to jail

Re: Actually I think there should be some form of quality control

Never!! There was even a time when it was a challenge to get to Silver on downvotes..

Gave rise to a spate of articulate, yet highly contentuous posts, that one.. classic.. :)

Re: Holy shit!

Silver gets you on the Special Watch List as a Subversive Element.

Gold... Well given that those worthies are handpicked by Vulture Central up to this day... Your iDevices will stop talking to you, and won't respond to your queries, at the least. Or Death by Playmonaut.

The Edward Snowden guide to practical privacy

"An elderly relative bought it against my advice, was disappointed that 'wireless' still meant a power-cord."

At which point you should have turned around and said "Sod this.. Sort it out yourself." and not even bothered. If you ignore the warning signs.....

US Congress grants leftpondians the right to own asteroid booty

"Such a law would then make it not worthwhile for ChinaMiner to go and mine Apophis since they wouldn't be allowed to sell anything made from the ore in the USA."

Only in Unicorn Fairyland maybe. In Reality, ChinaMiner wouldn't care less about the US of A , given that whatever Unobtanium it produces that makes the effort of going out to space worthwile, already has a market: the Rest of the World.

The US of A would be welcome to their slag, though. Ballistically if they get too uppity about it.

Most developers have never seen a successful project

Re: Needs just a tweak.

"On civil construction / arquitecture, normally, the project is sucessful when the building stands the test of time (aka doesn't fall due to structural flaws).

Perhaps software needs to learn a page or two from other industries"

Yeah, but in civil construction the stuff you build on isn't quicksand, the materials do not deteriorate within 5 years, with no hope of replacing them, and the basic concept of the building is generally not based on the latest fad in Unicorn Poo.