Posts by Steve Aubrey

Railway cables overpowered errant drone's compass and flung it back to terra firma

Re: "over localised regions of the bridge below"

Oooooh, that's low.

US govt can talk about the end of lockdown, but Silicon Valley says 'as long as it takes' – and Twitter says 'WFH forever'

Re: What is it with the VCs?

Some people are trying to recreate the old way of doing things in the "new normal". There are times where vision is important. There re many times, though, where the information is the important part, and that generally doesn't need a webcam.

I keep thinking about the world's best buggy-whip manufacturer. Yes, there's a need for the product. No, Zoom doesn't fall into that verging-on-obsolete category. But I think we're seeing a lot of hype and people playing with new toys. The novelty will wear off and it will be a tool, just not as high-profile as now.

Elevating cost-cutting to a whole new level with million-dollar bar bills

Re: Never saw a car crash into a computer

Aaaaah, so that's what a Fenwick is. I thought maybe it was something like a henweigh.

Asleep at the wheel: Why did it take 5 HOURS for Microsoft to acknowledge an Azure DevOps TITSUP*?

Re: Follow the sun support

That's what happened - sun went down, so single-person support closed its doors (and eyelids).

After 16 years of hype, graphene finally delivers on its promise – with a cosmetic face mask

Re: Manufacturing?

And then there was the homeopath who drank distilled water and died of an overdose . . .

Roses are red, IBM is Big Blue. It's out of RSA Conference after coronavirus review: IBMers will not attend infosec event over 'health concerns'

Re: Overblown?

That third hand is called the "gripping hand" - cf. "The Mote in God's Eye". Thank you, Jerry Pournelle and Larry Niven.

It's a Bing thing: Microsoft drops plans to shove unloved search engine down throats of unsuspecting enterprises

Re: "The move was buried in documentation"

Optimist.

Cache flow problems continue for Intel: Yet more data-leaking processor design blunders discovered, patches due soon

Based on the branding icon . . .

I wouldn't worry about fixing this one soon. It's not too scary, so it must not be too serious.

It scares me to think that some people evaluate these things that way. OTOH, that's probably how some folks choose to read comments here.

Leaks point to Samsung Galaxy S20 Ultra with mammoth 108MP camera and ... what? 16GB of RAM

Re: I thought

Don't forget your gold interconnect cables, that make digital signals sound so much smoother. Tight this way, just three thousand a meter - and well worth it (to somebody).

ICANN finally reveals who’s behind purchase of .org: It’s ███████ and ██████ – you don't need to know any more

Bothered

Let's have some brakes applied.

Let's have some light applied.

Let's follow the money trail.

Full disclosure - I have a .org domain, and so does my church. Individually, my additional out-of-pocket won't be that much more. But I don't want to be that snowflake that goes along for the avalanche ride. Something seems very wrong here.

Are you writing code for ambient computing? No? Don't even know? Ch-uh. Google's 'write once, run anywhere' Flutter is all over it

Buzzword bingo

"Flutter is the Chocolate Factory's open-source, post-platform, interface development framework for creating applications that run on the web, mobile devices, desktop computers, and other chip-bearing kit with graphic interfaces like so-called smart televisions. And it's this last segment, the appliance and IoT market, that's a new addition to the Flutter conquest plan, at least in terms of public messaging."

I win! Or do I?

Americans should have strong privacy-protecting encryption ...that the Feds and cops can break, say senators

Really?

"no American should want a device that becomes a safe haven for criminality."

I am an American. My house has walls that protect against outside eyes. My car has a gas pedal, which (on occasion) has led to speeding.

Do I want both of those? Yes, I do. Do I consider myself a criminal? No I don't. Does the government think I'm a criminal? I'll let you know.

In my mind, the tool - whether a gas pedal or encryption - is not criminal in and of itself. Its use is what determines that.

VCs find exciting new way to blow $1m: Wire it directly to hackers after getting spoofed

It's a fine line

Disapproving of the crime while admiring the resourcefulness and attention to detail.

Gospel according to HPE: And lo, on the 32,768th hour did thy SSD give up the ghost

"A signed integer" because - of course - you never know when your SSD might be used in a time machine.

Found on Mars: Alien insects... or whatever the hell this smudge is supposed to be, anyway

20/20

“It is very clear that much more study of the photos is needed”

At least one thing is clear, then . . .

Astroboffins capture video of Mercury passing across the Sun's surface

Re: @abubasim

Affect/effect. Pedant.

Sticks and stones may break your bones but robot taunts will hurt you – in games at least

Esme, don't worry about the positive experience - they will fix that soon.

Mission Extension Vehicle-1 launches to save space from zombie satellites

Space work is becoming normal

This is good. And it's a great time to be alive. This stuff was science fiction not too long ago.

Remember the millions of fake net neutrality comments? They weren't as kosher as the FCC made out

Re: It's the new world order...

"We have the best government money can buy."

They say an honest politician is one who stays bought.

macOS? More like mac-woe-ess: Google Chrome slip-up trips up SIP-less Apple Macs

Re: SIPping

Rule 3(A) from http://mri.beckman.illinois.edu/resources/writing_tips.pdf

ASBMAETP: Acronyms Should Be Memorable And Easy To Pronounce

(3B is "SATAN: Select Acronyms That Are Non-offensive")

Seriously, this sh!t again? 24m medical records, 700m+ scan pics casually left online

Ratios

Three comments about the story. Five comments about grammar.

Commentards FTW!!

MIT boffins turn black up to 11 with carbon nanotubes that absorb 99.995% of light

"It will only look like a shadow until someone mistakes it for a shadow and shunts it into next week."

Not if it's VantaBlack all the way down . . .

Magnetic cockroaches, dirty money, wombat poo and posties' balls: It's the Ig Nobels 2019

Re: 10 trillion (Zimbabwean) dollars

They did. Probably several times since then.

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

Re: Microsoft OneDrive iOS does it too...

Because determining when you have stopped taking pictures based on something like recency is so - well, unprofitable.

Blindly accepting network update texts could have pwned your mobe, say researchers

Calling Carl Sagan

"Check Point claimed the vulns affected billions of devices."

Shouldn't that have been "beeellions"? Or even "beeellions and beeellions"?

Allowlist, not whitelist. Blocklist, not blacklist. Goodbye, wtf. Microsoft scans Chromium code, lops off offensive words

Physician, heal thyself!

El Reg's sub-hed says "Redmond suggests nuking 'profanity, geopolitical, diversity' terms from browser source"

Isn't the concept of "nuking" prejudiced against second- and third-world countries that don't have nuclear weapons?

And I am obligated to quote: "Sufficiently advanced political correctness is indistinguishable from sarcasm".

For Foxit's sake: PDF editor biz breached, users' passwords among stolen data

'if Foxit's password cache was indeed neither salted nor hashed, this could be severely problematic for its customers.'

And, presumably, for the firm itself. That's lawsuit territory these days.

So your Google Play Publisher account has been terminated – of course you would want to know why exactly

Re: The Register has asked Google for comment on Godeau's case.

And the El Reg journos, after getting Google's response, will anticipate hearing from the original complainant.

That's right, they will be waiting for Godeau.

Fed-up graphic design outfit dangles cash to anyone who can free infosec of hoodie pics

Re: Truth in advertising

Mom! TeeCee's been looking in my room again!!

Galileo, Galileo, Galileo, where to go? Navigation satellite signals flip from degraded to full TITSUP* over span of four days

And New Yawk? Fuggedaboutit.

Investor fires shot at 'sinking ship' Google in battle over privacy-menacing Google+ bug

Re: the world’s fifth largest social media network?

Largest =/= most-used. Just sayin' . . .

A Register reader turns the computer room into a socialist paradise

Re: Off and on again

Stolen - thanks!

Oh snap! The road's closed. Never mind, Google Maps has a plan...

Re: A Guess

Early winter, mid-winter, late winter, and three months of bad skiing.

Dev darling Docker embraces Windows Subsystem for Linux 2

Nursery rhyme?

First comes WSL

Then comes Docker

Then comes Kubernetes in a baby carriage!

Doesn't scan, doesn't rhyme. Any guesses on it working?

When customers see red, sometimes the obvious solution will only fan the flames

Wheat did you say??!!??

RAMBleed picks up Rowhammer, smashes DRAM until it leaks apps' crypto-keys, passwords, other secrets

Domain squatting

I think I'm going to try and guess the next trendy vulnerability name, then register the domain, and hold out selling it to the buyers.

DomainHammer.com

VulnThor.io

TheNextOneIsDis.org (anized)

I'll be rich. Eventually. I think.

Never let something so flimsy as a locked door to the computer room stand in the way of an auditor on the warpath

Re: First step, tell them to fire security

"carp ark"? I bet there were two of every kind of fish on that same ark.

Want a good Android smartphone without the $1,000+ price tag? Then buy Google's Pixel 3a

Re: Sounds iffy?

Mr Badvok a Google PR flak? If so, he's been doing a pretty good job of blending in. Five hundred comments since he joined in 2010. Sneaky, him - posing as a regular bloke but really just waiting for this moment in the sun to upset everything we knew about Google.

Symantec boss Greg Clark exits biz amid dismal financials

Re: There’s a special place...in Hell

no - come on, tell us. How do you really feel?

Double-sided printing data ballsup leaves insurance giant Chubb with egg on its face

I think it was a classic off-by-1 error. 2-page letter that they started on side 2 instead of side 1. That's a guess - no inside knowledge.

Nvidia, King's College train robot overlords to spot oddities on radiology scans

Curious

"Two of the trusts have already obtained ethics"

Would that be off-the-shelf ethics, or bespoke?

And I'm half-way serious.

A real head-scratcher: Tech support called in because emails 'aren't showing timestamps'

Verbing weirds nouns - Calvin

Re: Justifiable tree homicide

Think of them as cattle, not pets. Kubernetes for trees.

Never mind that naked selfie scandal... Brazil lights the, er, kindling, dot-Amazon saga roars back into life

Follow the money

Seems both sides are after a big pot o' cash - one protecting their envisioned future, one wanting to share the wealth (inbound). Unsure who is righter, but ICANN doesn't appear to be doing very well.

Reliable system was so reliable, no one noticed its licence had expired... until it was too late

Re: Soon never seems soon enough

"One man banned", apparently.

Sad relics of UK launch capability returned to Blighty while NASA fiddles with Boeing crew

Re: Galileo

"that drive on the correct side of the road"

That's not right!

Open sourcerers drop sick Fedora Remix to get Windows Subsystem for Linux pumping

Re: Seriously ...

Agree. What's the benefit of this over native, or even Fedora in a VM?

Lawyers' secure email network goes down, firm says it'll take 2 weeks to restore

Re: Genuine LOL.

"SOLEY" - pertaining to the bottom of shoes??

Shorely "SOLELY" - not involving anyone or anything else; only

Again, a grumpy Friday makes me hit the keyboard.

If I could turn back time, I'd tell you to keep that old Radarange at home

Ding!

I've been waiting all week for a story like this.

It's about time.

Happy new year, readers. Yes, we have threaded comments, an image-lite mode, and more...

Re: Width

But why not?