Posts by Naich

The Anti Defamation League is Musk's latest excuse for Twitter's tanking ad revenue

When you post on it, you Xcrete.

Twitter says it may harvest biometric, employment data from its addicts

Xeeted?

Shouldn't that be X-creted?

Last rites for the UK's Online Safety Bill, an idea too stupid to notice it's dead

Big brains

Magical thinking from the government is usual. Just because something is logically impossible doesn't stop them pursuing it as policy - see Brexit and how they thought we could "have our cake and eat it", despite everyone who actually knew anything about it telling them it was fucking stupid and wouldn't work. I fully expect them to ram this through and it to be just as successful as Brexit is.

Twitter sues Brit non-profit, claims hate-speech reports scared off advertisers

Re: Arrogant Muskrat

Of course it's possible to dress hate speech up as disagreement or opinion. Your kind know that and we fought against them twice. See what I did there? See what I called you, without actually saying it?

UK watchdog reopens consultation on Microsoft's bid for Activision Blizzard

They will get it

MS will keep hammering away until they get approval. It's inevitable. Then they will use their uncompetitive power to make things shittier for everyone. It's a story as old as Microsoft.

Always on the Horizon, UK must wait for megabucks EU science deal

Good old Brexit

It just keeps on giving doesn't it? And these mucking forons seem to want to squeeze every single disadvantage they can out of it.

The number’s up for 999. And 911. And 000. And 111

Good dog, I can't believe I had to scroll down this far to see this.

Now Apple takes a bite out of encryption-bypassing 'spy clause' in UK internet law

"Strong" encryption?

I'm a bit confused about the use of the phrase. It implies there is "weak" encryption, with a line drawn somewhere between the two. I'd be interested to know where the line is and if there is any consensus about where it is. I'd imagine that the security services would like to class anything above ROT13 as strong.

Can I suggest everyone stops calling it "strong" encryption? Strong encryption = encryption, any other form of "encryption" is meaningless.

Europe seeks to punish Putin's infowar pals with bans on Russian tech firms

You mean when Russia becomes the old Russia.

Euro Parliament green lights its AI safety, privacy law

Seems sensible

It would be nice to live in an EU country, where the wellbeing of its citizens are considered.

Ads for lucrative jobs in Asia fail to mention chance of slavery as crypto-scammer

It's a holiday in Cambodia.

It's tough kid, but it's life...

Don't panic. Google offering scary .zip and .mov domains is not the end of the world

Another reason it's not a good idea.

It's all lovely until someone sends an email with a zip attachment and says in the body text "I've included download.zip for you here", and the email software converts download.zip to an URL, the user clicks on it and gets pwned.

CEO sorry after telling staff to 'leave pity city' over bonuses

Ah yes, the old "I'm sorry you felt upset" apology that makes it your fault. A nonpology?

Child-devouring pothole will never hurt a BMW driver again

Get round the paywall.

https://12ft.io/proxy?q=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.thetimes.co.uk%2Farticle%2F95e6ee68-ddd2-11ed-a0a8-657f9e54fc6a

Yes, Samsung 'fakes' its smartphone Moon photos – who cares?

Re: I may be wrong, but I think El Reg has gone the wrong way with this one.

Egg fucking zactly. It's weasel words to excuse a deceptive practice.

Wind, solar power outstrip fossil fuel generation for EU

Re: Policy driven

I wonder what the actual cost of coal and gas is once you factor in the damage they do to the environment and the ongoing cost we all have to pay to live with it.

Surely you can't be serious: Airbus close to landing fully automated passenger jets

Re: reducing the crew cost of operating the plane

You should get in touch with Airbus. I'm sure they haven't thought of those things.

Palantir's Covid-era UK health contract extended without competition

Working as intended

If you see the NHS as nothing more than a way to shovel vast quantities of public money to your mates via their companies, then this is a resounding success.

Man wrongly jailed by facial recognition, lawyer claims

Re: Helo Ametica

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BO8EpfyCG2Y

Raspberry Pi hires former spy gadget-maker who baked devices into surveillance ops

Re: It's not gone well for them

This is a write up on the affair.

https://eiara.nz/posts/2022/Dec/09/a-case-study-on-raspberry-pis-incident-on-the-fediverse/

Adobe to sell AI-generated images on its stock photo platform

Re: is it art

It's the meaning of the art which gives it value. AI generated art has no meaning to it, whereas a signed urinal is a statement from the artist and thus has meaning.

Killing trees with lasers isn’t cool, says Epson. So why are inkjets any better?

Brother laser every time

I bought my Brother laser printer 6 years ago and it's still going strong. It's had at least 4 sets of cheap non-branded replacement toner and it's printed christ knows how many tens of thousands of pages for my wife, who is a primary school teacher. I just cannot comprehend how anyone would ever consider buying an inkjet. You can leave a laser for a month and it'll just start printing again straight away with nothing getting clogged. It's a standard driver format that works with anything, the ink is waterproof, and the quality is better 90% of the time.

The printer probably cost about £150 more than an inkjet, but I've saved £1,000s in consumables and saved a huge amount of stuff from landfill. Inkjets are just shit and the fact that Epsom wants everyone to use them just shows what a cash cow they are compared to laser.

Look - you can still buy it new, 6 years later - https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B00JGKB5L8/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_search_asin_title?ie=UTF8&psc=1

Amazon halts work on ‘Scout’ delivery-bot that delivered parcels no faster than humans

We call them "Prosecco robots" because of what we mainly use them for.

Brexit dividend? 'Newly independent' UK will be world's 'data hub', claims digital minister

Re: It's the brexiter anti-growth coalition at it again

Brexit enthusiasts are very difficult to parody because it's so difficult to make anything stupider than brexit itself.

Here's how crooks will use deepfakes to scam your biz

"...deepfakes are being used in web ads to make Elon Musk, security specialists, and others appear as though they are endorsing products..."

I would automatically give anything Elon Musk endorses a wide berth.

Now's your chance, AI, to do good. Protect endangered eagles from wind turbines

If you are worried about birds being killed by wind turbines, you will shit yourself when you realise how many birds are going to be killed by climate change.

Merge shifts Ethereum to full proof-of-stake, price slumps

What happens to the forfeited stake if a validator is fined?

Nadine Dorries promotes 'Brexit rewards' of proposed UK data protection law

https://fullfact.org/europe/online-cost-brexit-net-contributions/ has the numbers up to 2020 - £200bn worse off since Brexit vs. £216bn contributions. I can't see how extrapolating the numbers up to 2022 can do anything but put it over the £216bn mark. I mean, you can pretend that because we don't know the exact number, it might not be true, but the evidence pretty much confirms it.

Google's ChromeOS Flex turned my old MacBook into new frustrations

Re: Modern Computing

*CoughLinuxcough*

Martin Shkreli, out of prison for running a Ponzi scheme, now pushes Web3 thing

Putting sprinkles on a turd

I suppose if you are going to be pointlessly investing in a block chain Ponzi scheme, it's slightly better if you are doing something useful with the energy it requires. Mind you, if a useful drug does come out of it, who gets the rights to it?

FYI: BMW puts heated seats, other features behind paywall

A lawsuit in the making?

Is deliberately disabling a safety feature in a car not grounds for a lawsuit if it causes a subsequent crash?

NASA ignores InSight's battery woes in pursuit of data

This sounds like a joke, but is there a good reason why it couldn't? It's 370 miles away so it will take a while to get there, I suppose.

The sad state of Linux desktop diversity: 21 environments, just 2 designs

Why is it important to be different?

You want different? How about TempleOS - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TempleOS

Maybe there is a reason there are only 2 desktops? You want an area to work, an area for indicators and an area for controls. It's difficult to get diversity when there are only 3 elements you need.

UK science stuck in 'holding pattern' on EU funding by Brexit, says minister

We did

http://fuckingtoldyou.com

Fans of original gangster editors, look away now: It's Tilde, a text editor that doesn't work like it's 1976

Joe!

I thought I was the only person in the world that used Joe because of the Wordstar keys. First thing I do on a new system is install Joe and let my muscle memory do the rest.

LoRa to the Moon and back: Messages bounced off lunar surface using off-the-shelf hardware

"...we transmit, immediately switch to the receive mode and receive our own message back."

So it's basically data storage.

Not just deprecated, but deleted: Google finally strips File Transfer Protocol code from Chrome browser

Aaar anonymous FTP

I remember the good old days of anonymous FTP and poorly configured servers that anyone could write to. Finding a directory called "..." and following it to the warez treasures contained within. Kids these days with their dark webs and torrents don't know they are born.

LOL ;-) UK govt 2 pay £39m 4 txt msgs 4 less thn 2 yrs

Troughing

They will be Tory party donors or friends of someone in government. This government likes spunking money at their friends.

Ch-ch-ch-Chia! HDD sales soar to record levels as latest crypto craze sweeps Europe

Too late

You can't make any money from your spare space. A couple of months ago I rounded up all my spare hard drives (about 1.5 TB) and started farming. The "estkimated time to win" started off at 10 years and got higher as more people added their HDDs to the network. God knows what it would be now. To have any chance of getting a payout you need to invest in 100s of TB. When I gave up I was competing with 24 EiB of network space or 28,000,000,000,000,000,000 bytes.

Galaxy quest: Yet another sub-£500 phone comes to trouble mobile big dogs in the form of Realme GT 5G

Re: For how long will it receive updates?

I've got a Realme 6 and it's still getting updates after a year. That's more than my previous chinese phone did.

What is it with Facebook and screwing democracies? Now calls for Prime Minister Modi to resign censored in India

Re: Delete Facebook

I thought I needed it. I was wrong.

Delete Facebook

I deleted my Facebook account 2 weeks ago and haven't missed it at all yet.

Australian police suggests app to record consent to sexual activity

Giant step forward for women's empowerment

So basically, once she has swiped "shag", the bloke is entitled to a shag, whether she changes her mind later or not. Or if the guy gets hold of her phone and swipes it for her? I can't see this ever being used in a rapey way.

Belgian cops crack down on encrypted phone network Sky ECC in 200 overnight raids as firm denies criminal ties

I knew the hacks liked a bit of nose candy.

"Police and prosecutors boasted of seizing 17 tonnes of cocaine and €1.2m during a post-raid press conference."

Sounds like a wild press conference.

As battle for future of .UK's Nominet draws closer, non-exec director hits a nerve with for-profit proposal

Re: Time to move away from GoDaddy and 1&1?

https://twitter.com/NRoolz/status/1364543617407344641 For lolz at me arguing with 1&1 that their domain renewal system is stupid and them doubling down that the "auto renew" feature should deactivate your domain if it's turned off.

Apache foundation ousts TinkerPop project co-founder for tweeting 'offensive humor that borders on hate speech'

Re: How refreshing!

You might want to look up what "racism" is.

Re: How refreshing!

Jesus, it's like the Daily Mail comments section in here. The poor petals can't even be racist these days without it having some consequences.

Microsoft sides with media groups, together they urge Europe to follow Australia's lead, make Google, Facebook pay for news article links

It is possible for both sides in a dispute to be arseholes.

Command 'n' control botnet of notorious Emotet Windows ransomware shut down in multinational police raid

Waste of money

If I was part of a multi million pound criminal gang, I'd splash out on a cleaner and maybe a new house that wasn't knee-deep in filth. Gold bars are nice and all that, but I'd rather not catch salmonella from looking at the walls.

'Malwareless' ransomware campaign operators pwned 83k victims' MySQL servers, 250k databases up for sale

Double extortion?

Does this not negate itself? You encrypt the databases, the victim doesn't pay, so the databases are published. If it was me, I'd just not pay and then restore the databases from the published data. It's probably a good thing that it isn't me, TBH.