Posts by Bear

Dems look to close the barn door after top DOGE dog has bolted

Consequences of gerontocracy

The Democrats decided that seniority was more important than ability or energy in putting their people onto these committees. AOC wanted to chair this committee, but she was pushed aside for a member in his 70s who had done his time. He has now stepped down due to his cancer reemerging.

AOC would have been very good and would had done great work holding the current lawless administration to account. The Republicans under the last regime demonstrated the power of this committee by pushing around many of the administration's appointees. Unfortunately, the Democratic party are just a sideshow to the bigger clown show happening now.

Crypto-apocalypse soon? Chinese researchers find a potential quantum attack on classical encryption

Sound and fury signifying nothing

Putting the paper through translation, there are a lot of untested assumptions in the paper.

It appears to be an attempt to conduct some sort of quantum Linear Cryptanalysis in the style of Kasia Nyberg. It may have had some success on a small block size, but it will not really scale up to full size ciphers.

It's an interesting idea and presents the first real quantum cryptanalysis that isn't simply factoring large integers.

Security pioneer Ross Anderson dies at 67

Memory Eternal

Very sad news. Gone too early.

Ross will be remembered for his passion and keen insight. He was always good to listen to and to speak with.

Ex-White House CIO tells The Reg: TikTok ban may be diplomatic disaster

Sanity

This is probably the most balanced and insightful interview on this legislation.

Privacy is good and all governments should encourage everyone to respect the privacy of others.

Man arrested in Northern Ireland police data leak as more incidents come to light

Re: Strange Times

Okay - call it Occupied Ulster then.

White House: Losing Section 702 spy powers would be among 'worst intelligence failures of our time'

Amendment 4 anyone?

The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.

How is Section 702 even remotely constitutional?

Guess what happened to this US agency using outdated software?

Re: Thinking smart

Hey! we ain't senile yet. Besides, there is a real shortage of COBOL programmers so the hackers have to compete with large financial corporations and they have better pay.

Pentagon super-leak suspect cuffed: 21-year-old Air National Guardsman

Re: BBC journalists need a clue.

Yes, quite correct. Sir David Attenborough.

Very talented family - not sure why I mixed them up.

Re: BBC journalists need a clue.

They need to send Richard Attenborough to do a documentary on gamers and other spaces on the internet. Then they might find out what a Discord server is.

First-known interstellar Solar System visitor 'Oumuamua a comet in disguise – research

Re: One thought

And the object was asymmetric which wouldn't help things.

Catholic clergy surveillance org 'outs gay priests'

I would have thought the important thing about the chastity thing is that priests aren't sleeping with anyone, i.e. keeping chaste, rather who they aren't sleeping with.

Cop warrant orders Ring to cough up footage from inside this guy's home

This conversation is long overdue. I was happy when I saw an article in the February 2018 of National Geographic which tracked the increase of video surveillance, particularly in London.

One of the good points brought up was that it happened very organically, and there was no policy debate or other discussion about the proliferation of private and public cameras. Then London found itself the most surveilled city in the world - although I am sure that many others have caught up.

This should cause a wider policy discussion and will hopefully end up with an appropriate way to use cameras and surveillance in general.

Aussie tech worker payroll scheme operators found guilty of tax fraud

Re: Boosting the bottom line

Never thought of Twitter as a luxury item, but now you point it out and it’s a bit obvious.

Scottish Environment Protection Agency refuses to pay ransomware crooks over 1.2GB of stolen data

Danegeld

As Kipling said “ once you have paid him the Danegeld You never get rid of the Dane”.

It’s good to see this happening, and if it happened more often then this scourge would lessen.

China's Chang'e-5 lands on the Moon to scratch surface

I think the EU has the same feeling about Poland and Hungary – that they are not entirely reliable.

GitLab mulls ban on hiring Chinese and Russian support staff because 'security'

You mean this: http://subversion.apache.org

SpaceX touches down in California as Voyager 2 spies interstellar space

A dose of Dylan Thomas first thing in the morning without the day's first dram is a very dangerous thing. Good thing that a triple espresso is available.

I'll torpedo Tor weirdos, US AG storms: Feds have 'already infiltrated' darknet drug souks

Re: Hmm.

Absolutely agree with you 100%. My father had a degenerative disease and was in a lot of pain. He was prescribed fentanyl for ease of administration (tablet under the tongue). There was little chance of him forming a habit because he was one of these ultra-stoic people, and only took it when most other people would have been delirious with pain. The doses were not high, but did provide relief.

Former US State Department cyber man: We didn’t see the Russian threat coming

Another way to rephrase Mathew 26:52 would be: to avoid losing a nuclear war, don't become a nuclear power.

I didn't realise that Japan was a nuclear power in August 1945. Not only sword bearers die by the sword.

80-year-old cyclist killed in prang with Tesla Model S

Re: As a cyclist, a motorist and someone who can't wait for self driving vehicles to be the norm

John - you are the first commentator to recognise that a tragedy has occurred. I just hope that I am still riding my bike if I make it to 80.

A draft US law to secure election computers that isn't braindead. Well, I'm stunned! I gotta lie down

Re: Paper ballots?

Joe Kennedy also managed to buy his son the presidency using paper ballots.

RIP Stanislav Petrov: Russian colonel who saved world from all-out nuclear war

Вечная память

Eternal memory for this hero who dragged us from the abyss.

Russia launches non-terrifying satellite that focuses Sun's solar rays onto Earth

I read through the ratings, the two complaints seem to be: a. it is not in English, and b. the code is not freely available (main complaint in Russian). There seems to be a connexion with some sort of bank who is sponsoring it.

UK prof claims to have first practical blueprint of a quantum computer

Factoring prime numbers??

Recalling number theory from many years ago, factoring prime numbers is trivial, no matter how bit the prime is.

Factor non-prime numbers into primes in a short time - now that is a trick worth knowing.

Google DeepMind cyber-brain cracks tough AI challenge: Beating a top Go board-game player

Re: Confused

Yes - that would be worth seeing :-) Perhaps we can get IBM in on the act also.

How to solve a Rubik's Cube in five seconds

Re: Algorithm./ Technique

There are a lot of problems in which is it intractable to have an optimal solution, but sub-optimal solutions are very tractable. A good example of this is the Travelling Salesman Problem - which is known to be NP-Complete. However, if one accepts that we can accept a solution which is less than or equal to twice the optimal solution, this problem becomes tractable.

Although there may be an algorithm that will solve the cube in 20 moves, the one which solves it in 40 may be quicker from a computational point of view.

Re: Algorithm./ Technique

This is a good point, and finding the algorithm could be rather difficult.

Handing over emails in an Irish server to the FBI will spark a global free-for-all, warns Microsoft

MS taking legals to another level

I understand that the Dead Hand in law is a very powerful thing. But M$ have taken it one step further - using a dead lawyer...

Mystery Russian satellite: orbital weapon? Sat gobbler? What?

Re: Panic!

Not to forget that goose fat is very very tasty

Re: Panic!

Сенсационная новость (sensatsionnaya novost') is the usual translation. But the title of the Evelyn Waugh novel in Russian is Сенсация (Sensatsiya), so I would go with that.

Re: Panic!

Yes please!! What are the proportions?

Although I am probably cooking pheasant or goose this year for Christmas, turkey can be for New Years.

Hacker crew nicks '1.2 billion passwords' – but WHERE did they all come from?

Huge arctic fox

That is a huge arctic fox!!!

These guys have really industrialised cracking. It would be interesting to know more about the stolen credentials - for example length and complexity. This would assist is knowing what needs to be done to fix this...

Cassandra can FINALLY predict the future

But...

nobody will believe her.

'Maybe I'll go to Hell, but I think it's a good thing' says plastic Liberator gunsmith Cody Wilson

Re: No actually its not statistically true

The link is a Google search of the terms "us gun bans". How is that a reference to a study? The list of the first couple of pages lack any actual scientific study of the question.

Swedish linguists nix new word after row with Google

Newspeak

We no longer have august institutions failing to control the development of language, such as L'Académie française, we have multinationals. One advantage that multinationals have (apart from lots of money) is trademarks.

Also must refer to Orwell and Whorf about language controlling thoughts... so the Chocolate Factory should just google off...

Dongle smut Twitstorm claims second scalp

Re: Idiocy & Joan of Arc

Before mouthing off at a woman who is an historical figure, perhaps you would consider actually finding some evidence before traducing her.

If one reads the transcript of the trial, one would not find her to be unstable, disliked, misanthropic... For example, La Hire, who fought with her, held her in the highest regard. He himself was a professional soldier with a distinguished career. Many of the other commanders also held her in high regard - which is evidenced by the re-trial that happened some years later, away from the malign influence of the University of Paris and the English crown.

How iiNet beat Big Content

The use of regions is a way of dividing markets to get the most out of them. For example, if the local content market is small, such as Australia, it will lack the economies of scale to reduce the per unit cost. Thus, a large content provider can import content into this region and increase the profit margin on each unit by charging a similar price to locally produced content.

This is why DVD and Bluray regions were established.

But also content providers are loath to release content to countries which do not have acceptable legal structures or enforcement. You would not want to release content into a country if you knew that it would be immediately copied and distributed cheaply and you would get very little out of it. This is why some content is unavailable.

These restrictions are also a way of putting pressure onto foreign countries to conform to US (ie Hollywood) copyright structures.

So content owners benefit.

Australia's 'answer to the velociraptor' unveiled

It was too much to expect...

Since they named one "Clancy" and the other "Banjo", one might have been foolish enough to think that Wintonensis was a reference to the West Australian novelist Tim Winton. But this would require:

1. these guy actually reading novels, and

2. look beyond Queensland.

Silly me. Winton is a place in Qld...

IP security shortcomings unpicked

a summary would be useful

This appears to be a useful document, but at 130 pages it would have been nice to have a bit of a summary of the major concerns.

Looks like I have some reading for the day...

Catholic priests cane YouTube over blasphemous vids

civility and some respect

Clearly the adolescents who put the videos up intended to offend. In a civil society, no one really supports behaviour which is intended to be offensive: and only adolescents really indulge in this pointless offensiveness.

There is entire range of offensive behaviour which is considered to be criminal and perpetrators are prosecuted accordingly. Poofter bashing is one such example.

Perhaps, El Reg readers should extend the courtesy they demand be shown for themselves to other people and accept that there are minimum standards for behaviour in civil society. Just because some adolescent, or someone who has never grown beyond that, finds that hard, consider some people might think that they deserve to be beaten to a pulp, but refrain from doing so because they realise this is inappropriate behaviour.

Crypto guru thinks outside the box with Cube attack

A5.1 has already been analysed...

There has been published work looking at algebraic attacks against A5.1 (the GSM cipher for most people). Look at: http://www.springerlink.com/content/eu97gk8786h7tj25/ and obtain this paper for full details.

Essentially, A5.1 and other similar ciphers are immune to algebraic attacks because the irregular clocking introduces many non-linear terms, and the order of the terms grows very quickly.

There was work published 2-3 years ago on this also: so this is not really new.

Google: 'Even in the desert, privacy does not exist'

what planet are they on??

Trespass law "is insufficient to negate Google's privileged and trivial entry upon Plaintiff's property." Come again?

Google has a privileged entry? Who do they believe they are? The Borings did pay to have their privacy, which Google completely disregarded. What right does Google have to photograph and publish everything.

As for the Restatement of Torts go: how is someone sneaking up on me and photographing me and publishing said photography part of "the ordinary incidents of the community life of which he is a part"?

Just because all the Googlers are exhibitionists does not mean a) the rest of the world is, and b) that we want to participate.

I seem to also recall that the penalty for trespass was hanging -- later to be substituted for being sent to Bondi Beach.

French won Waterloo, says Italian telecoms chief

The Royal Demesne

To be strictly correct, in 1066 Normandy was held suzerain to the King of France, but it was not part of the Royal Demesne. This gave it is significant freedom, but it was not independent from the King of France - they still had to pay fees to the king.

The Dukes of Normandy, in so far as they were Dukes of Normandy, were suzerain to the King of France. However, as Kings of England they were sovereign.

In the fourteenth century, the Angevins, in particular Philip the Thief (IV), extended the Royal Demesne to Gascony, Burgundy, Champagne and the South. The Kings of England were attempting to do the same to their domains.

As a final note, the Tudors always designated themselves as "the King of England and Fraunce".

How safe is VMware's hypervisor?

design and small print

Although Monsieur Guilmette is correct is pointing out that NT4 had C2 certification, it came with small print. It excluded hosts with network connectivity and a few other things (I seem to recall a problem with the default bootloader). With the small print, it made the certification pretty worthless.

The greatest problem occurs between the design and implementation. Almost all security issues and faults occur due to poor implementation.

So while not ignoring the need for good design and proving the security of the design, the implementation needs to be controlled also - not using C would be good start.

Swede with UK betting licence held in Amsterdam for 'breaking' ancient French law

m3rd3 alors!!

Just a small correction: the Ancien Regime was ended by the unfortunate and foolish events of 1789. The laws being used were made by the rather corrupt Third Republic, which ended in 1940.

In the 1980s and 90s in Australia, people were convicted using mediaeval English laws

Sharks in the soup, says conservation group

flake

Not forgetting all the wicked people in the southern states of Australia consuming flake (shark meat) in vast quantities when they go for fish and chips.

Woman arrested for WoW love affair

internment

This appears to be progress. This time they have caught an Australian from Adelaide in the US, possibly breaking the law. They even had the courtesy to charge her this time.

It is just certain that even if she were set up, there is no way that the Australian Government will do anything about it.