Posts by Dan Atkinson

Mobile network Three UK's customer details exposed in homepage blunder

Only three?!

Sounds like a storm in a teacup if it only affected three customers.

Thought Macbooks were expensive? Dell UK unveils the 7 meeeellion pound laptop

Meant for the UK Gov Procurement Portal?

I'm pretty sure that this was meant to only be displayed on Dell's UK Government IT Procurement Portal.

Private Internet Access VPN opens code-y sarong, starting with Chrome extension

Kudos

I use the Chrome extension at work because I already have an existing VPN connection in Windows and PIA doesn't seem to work well with my other connection. It's great to use, but their bypass list functionality is an utter mess.

I've requested that they open up their code several times so that I could help out, and I'm really glad that I can start contributing to it.

Re: Why not openVPN?

When I first started out with PIA, I used their app because I honestly didn't know any better. It is/was frankly awful, and I had endless problems whenever it needed an update. Removing the network adapter didn't always work correctly, and the server selection UI is still very slow to this day.

*But*, it did work out of the box, and I think this is what they were aiming for.

Sure, it's not perfect, but it allows people to quickly and easily secure their Internet connection. For more technically proficient users it makes sense to just use OpenVPN directly to avoid the messy overhead.

23,000 HTTPS certs will be axed in next 24 hours after private keys leak

Trustico Statement

Trustico released a statement offering some information. Basically they stored private keys in cold storage.

https://www.trustico.com/news/2018/symantec-revocation/certificate-replacement.php

BT reveals vanishingly small detail about its fibre broadband network

Windows 10 also responsible?

I'd like to throw it out there that Windows 10 is probably one of the reasons for traffic being higher during the summer, given that everyone using Windows 7/8 was downloading about 6GB on each of their computers.

Boffins brew graphene in kitchen blender

Don't try this at home, folks!

Just a word of warning to the unwise - if you try this at home without the right quantities, you'll end up with a worktop FULL of grey-coloured bubbles and a knackered blender.

I asked Argos if this was covered by the extended warranty they try to ram down the throats of customers and they told me it wasn't, even if I broke it in the name of "making possibly world-shattering scientific breakthroughs".

Google's Drive SLASH, secret 'big upgrade': Coincidence? Hardly

Good news, but still lagging behind the competition in features

I love Google Drive, having tried many different products before settling on this one. Being on the 9.99 a month deal, the storage boost is a welcome addition, but I think it'll be a while before I get anywhere close to filling that up.

However, I still think they need to add more functionality, such as:

* Selective syncing. I don't want to have to sync everything on each machine; just a little on each. Syncplicity has the right idea.

* File deltas (versioning). They kinda have this with their own document formats, but it should be available on all file types, like several other cloud storage specialists.

* Full system backup, and not just my documents, or items in my Google Drive folder.

Overall, great pricing/storage combo, but still lacking on the features front.

Virgin Media's flaky broadband network turns Bolton off

A happy customer?

Am I the only person here who is a happy customer with Virgin Media?

Sure, I've had problems with Virgin Media's service in the past, and had an occasional outage, but I've had severe outages with other ISPs such as Karoo (KC) and BT as well.

Every time I've called them, they've been helpful, and if they couldn't solve my problem there and then, they credit my account with a chunk of money and free services until the engineer can come out.

I've not had any problems with the Superhub either. I'd prefer it if they didn't reskin it and take out useful things like DNS, but there are ways around that anyway.

Google blats bugs in Chrome - days before $560k hacking contest

Re: There's some unhappy folks out there now.

It works both ways however. The fact that the entrants spotted these vulnerabilities and planned to exploit them for monetary gain doesn't exactly cast them in the best light either.

They could have disclosed those bugs privately to the companies concerned before the competition and made nothing (or less, in Mozilla's/Google's case), but instead they chose to withhold said exploit for the chance to win.

Architect pitches builder-bothering 'Print your own house' plan

Potential in post-disaster recovery

I see this sort of technology really making its mark in the wake of the next Katrina-esque natural disaster where homes where large numbers of new homes will need to be built very quickly and cheaply.

Lights, camera, infection: HACKERS get Bollywood makeover

Hopefully their machines will be more powerful than the Powerbook Duo in the original.

And stars Aishwarya Rai.

Meltdown ahoy!: Net king returns to save the interwebs

Web in 1986?

C'mon. a technology news site talking about web in 1986? It should be a basic fact taught in schools that the web is not the Internet, and the two terms should not be interchangeable.

Firefox 3 alpha unleashed

And Acid Test 2 compliant!

It's also been reported that one of the builds which has recently landed on the trunk is actually renders infamous Acid Test 2 correctly:

http://www.howtocreate.co.uk/acid/