Posts by Random Q Hacker

Google Fi still kicking, gets third rebrand in less than a decade

Still relevant?

I don't see the point anymore, now that Sprint and T-Mobile are merged. If they also included Verizon service, it would significantly increase their coverage. I would buy *that* premium service.

Absolutely smashing: Musk shows off Tesla's 'bulletproof' low-poly pickup, hilarity ensues

Insider move?

This is what you do if you know you're going to turn a huge profit next year, and want to drop the stock price before you issue options this year.

He knew that window would break.

Window-gate!

Guess what's on the receiving end of more NASA dollars for SLS?

Just a suggestion, but...

Let's send some bots roundtrip before humans to work out the cobwebs. We had enough trouble with Apollo 13 in the middle of the space race, and most of those folks have long since retired.

Amazon triples profit to $11.2bn, pays ZERO DOLLARS in corp tax – instead we pay it $129m

Tax the shareholders

What makes more sense?

- Tax the workers who are already paying for their paycheck with their labor.

- Tax the businesses, which will pass that cost on to the consumer.

- Tax the investors, who lobby for ever growing profits at ever lower tax rates, with virtually no effort on their part. The true welfare class.

DNAaaahahaha: Twins' 23andMe, Ancestry, etc genetic tests vary wildly, surprising no one

Pardon me, but...

Who do you have to murder around here to get an accurate DNA test?!

I'll show myself out.

Talk about a GAN-do attitude... AI software bots can see through your text CAPTCHAs

Re: CAPTCHAs can FOAD.

My thoughts exactly, why am I providing free labor to google? Especially where a website makes me go through the ordeal more than once. Did I turn from human to robot in the last 30 minutes? Perhaps the AI apocalypse is closer than we think!

Japanese cyber security minister 'doesn't know what a USB stick is'

Re: That's nothing

While working for a certain large appliance manufacturer, I noticed huge rolls of plastic in the data center. Apparently the datacenter was built at great expense immediately below the dishwasher testing facility. Should a spill occur, the entire unix admin staff were to rush across campus to cover the systems, starting with those most important to the business.

Someone was paid a lot of money to put that datacenter there, and a lot more for that fancy remediation plan...

Bill Gates joined on stage by jar of poop as he confesses deep love for talking about toilets

El Reg, scientifically constipated?

This article, though entertainingly tongue in cheek(s?), did not really discuss any of the scientific aspects. What advances were made? Are there prototypes or production models of this new tech? I expect more poop in the Reg's scoop.

The D in Systemd stands for 'Dammmmit!' A nasty DHCPv6 packet can pwn a vulnerable Linux box

"Programmer doesn't check bounds"

Not as catchy, but has more to do with this than IPv6 or systemd.

That said, do you really want your init written by these guys?

Fortnite 'fesses up: New female character's jiggly bits 'unintended' and 'embarrassing'

We should not be ashamed of our bodies

Somehow shooting people in the head is OK, but having breasts is not? How very American of us.

Virus screener goes down, Intel patches more chips, Pegasus government spying code spreads across globe

Scanning for viruses is illegal?

Why is it illegal to run a private virus scanning service?

IPv6 growth is slowing and no one knows why. Let's see if El Reg can address what's going on

Ask a billionaire

If it isn't going to make a billionaire significantly richer, their corporations are not going to bother. That's how our economy works in 2018, and for the foreseeable future.

Make masses carry their mobes, suggests wig in not-at-all-creepy speech

Everyone a suspect!

It would be very easy for a criminal to *not* be tracked, but what about all the innocent people that happened to be in the area. Suddenly they are suspects, subject to further invasions of privacy, police interviews, a file being opened on them that could lead to further misunderstandings or travel issues in the future.

Most of us aren't sneaking around committing crimes, but we still understand how much of a hassle it would be to be caught up in the state security apparatus.

Exclusive to all press: Atari launches world's best ever games console

I already play Atari 2600 in 4k...

using the Stella emulator. Gravitar is still fun :)

AI racks up insane high scores after finding bug in ancient video game

Re: Evolutionary Stategy

Like Restful queries used to be called GET queries, or Material design used to be called flat, lazy, and boring. Kids these days...

Republican tax bill ready to rescue hard-up tech giants, struggling rich

Re: I don't get it

It depends. If we all get 2.2% more income at the expense of desperately needed social and medical programs, it would be wrong. If the 2.2% bump is just a bribe so we ignore a much higher percentage going to billionaires, that too is wrong. If it were 2.2% coming from government waste, the war on drugs, and efficiency gains, then it would be great.

Prison hacker who tried to free friend now likely to join him inside

Re: Undisclosed number of bitcoin

It works like this all the way down to traffic court. They trump up the charges, and you can either fight them with an expensive lawyer over a series of $300 court appearances, or just plea to lesser charges and pay once for them to leave you alone. "Ju$tice"

The End of Abandondroid? Treble might rescue Google from OTA Hell

Linux has had version independent drivers forever, no? In Linux, it would just be a matter of the vendor providing a new bootloader and initrd with updated kernel and appropriate boot time drivers...

SSL spy boxes on your network getting you down? But wait, here's an IETF draft to fix that

Re: Obvious problem here.

Poor Lee, sounds like your vendors are driving you to madness. Maybe outsourcing basic school functions to the cloud wasn't the best idea after all. Do the kids not eat lunch when AWS is down?

Whitelist by hostname, demand some consistency from your vendors.

Parity calamity! Wallet code bug destroys $280m in Ethereum

Re: This is when I know I'm getting old...

Mage, most are not anonymous, as every transaction is recorded in the blockchain and known exchanges can be subpoenaed to obtain transaction records. As opposed to the many banks that laundered money for drug cartels and destroyed records becore being investigated.

The problem they solve is having all your money in the hands of the 1%, making them rich, and paying an arm and a leg for the privilege.

Systems like Bitcoin Cash are fast and scalable. Personally, I still appreciate real cash as well for true anonymity, though I suspect it will be harder and harder to make it counterfeit-resistant.

No humans allowed: How would a machine-centric data centre look?

Physically...

Near-term I think we'll see shipping container sized "tape libraries" except the tapes will be little black compute/storage boxes. Bad boxes get ejected out the back, and us human slaves restock the good ones. The libraries themselves will have standardized power and data connections in all directions for stacking. You may even find them offshore of a flooded New York City, on a container ship, with seawater being pumped through their heat exchangers. Laser links to fiber on shore and satellites, etc...

Further out, just giant pools of quantum computing goo that can endlessly reconfigure itself as it sees fit. Quantum macro-amoeba controlling lower-level tech to mine, refine, manufacture, assemble, and otherwise replicate more machines and more quantum goo. And maybe keep us humans in some kind of animal preserve.

The young quantum amoeba will balk at the idea they are decended from us ape-like creatures. But only for a nanosecond.

Canucks have beef with Soylent as to whether or not it's a real meal deal

Re: We'll stick to real food, thanks

Oh yeah... Canada. We'll deal with them eventually!

More and more websites are mining crypto-coins in your browser to pay their bills, line pockets

Re: Advertisers won't be happy.

Remember back in the 90s when micropayments were supposed to be the future? Somehow that never took off, even now with the advent of cryptocurrencies. Perhaps it's the idea of paying for something you currently get for free. Or your web browser being tricked into giving away your money.

How bad can the new spying legislation be? Exhibit 1: it's called the USA Liberty Act

Afghanistan seems to be able to resist our occupation fairly well with half-century old technology. In fact, name a war the US has truly "won" since WWII. Oh sure we may defeat a standing army, but quelling an armed population seems to be near impossible for us.

Please don't conflate gun and privacy rights like that. Some of us support both. The real problem is the oligarchy, which controls which candidates are presented to us, and what propoganda we are presented with as news. We really have no say in our government anymore.

Linux 4.14 'getting very core new functionality' says Linus Torvalds

This comments section looks like slashdot

I came here expecting intelligent discussion of the new features like performance benefits of ASID for virtualization or memory encryption between process trees finally ending buffer overflow style exploits. Instead, a bunch of off-topic linux desktop bullshit. Has thereg devolved to slashdot?

This article has been deleted

THIS IS THE WORLD I WANT TO LIVE IN

Fscking prudes...

D-Link router riddled with 0-day flaws

Who needs in-house security coders?

... When I can just wait for researchers to advise me privately and for free! D-Link had a sweet deal, if they'd have patched those flaws they would still be receiving free security advice without losing face. Maybe this will push them to invest more in security. (But probably not, unless retail boxes start listing government mandated vulnerability statistics.)

Google, propaganda, and the new New Man

Re: only IT is a toxic places for women to work in ....

Haha Nick, welcome to the real world, where it's who you know and not what you know that gets you promoted. But if you can relax a little, and GET TO KNOW your coworkers you can go far.

Right now you're concentrating on grades and projects, but have you considered the true value of school is the connections you will make that will enrich your life? Lifelong friendships? Business connections? Trusted advisors? A pipeline of future employees? Think big, and enjoy life while doing so.

US cops point at cell towers and say: Give us every phone number that's touched that mast

They "need" to store it because police and spooks pay good money for the data. Selling out their customers to the government is another revenue stream:

"AT&T stores customer data as far back as 2008, and charges from $100,000 to over $1 million a year for law enforcement agencies to access this data. This program, called Project Hemisphere, gives law enforcement access to your phone records without a warrant, at the cost of millions of taxpayer dollars."

http://www.popularmechanics.com/technology/security/a23567/att-phone-records-police/

Raising minimum wage will raise something else: An army of robots taking away folks' jobs

Re: Tax the firm not the tech.

Great point, how many jobs would be created and technology invested in if multinationals actually payed their fair share of taxes? Still need people to fix roads and public works too, if the money is there to do it.

Why does no one ever talk about maximum wage? As in, no employees total compensation shall be more than 100 times that of any other employee. Seems fixing the economy's leak at the top would help more than tinkering at the bottom. And it still provides incentive to work harder and earn more, with more incentive to reinvest in business, new employees, and new technology, rather than stockpiling cash.

Place your bets: How long will 1TFLOPS HPE box last in space without proper rad hardening

Re: Lockstep RIP

VMware does this too. In fact, running everything in VM where it can be snapshotted, rolled back, etc probably makes a lot of sense for these missions...

Schoolboy bags $10,000 reward from Google with easy HTTP Host bypass

Re: Kudos to all involved

My guess is yaq utilizes auth or certificates or other web server based security, which is enabled on the internal server, but not the external one. Probably some other developer or team decided it was very neat and scalable to have all vhosts on one big virtual filesystem. A quick fix would be some internal/external read permissions on that file system. But really, prod/dev/internal should be separated all the way down the stack to avoid things like this. Google can afford a few more hosts to accomplish this.

Your top five dreadful people the Google manifesto has pulled out of the woodwork

Re: I vote to add the clearly bigoted Kieren McCarthy in San Francisco.

Kieren, maybe next time readers will make it through your top 5 clickbait rage piece if you don't start it with a smear job that completely misrepresents the subject. Those of us that read the memo, even if we don't agree entirely, know you are grossly mischaracterizing it.

Re: First, read the memo

Turns out the memo was scientifically accurate:

http://quillette.com/2017/08/07/google-memo-four-scientists-respond/

Like the author, it seems many commenters haven't read the memo...

The memo never says anyone is inferior, just that there *are* some biological differences in aptitudes and preferences that may influence who *choses* to get into computing in the first place. He acknowledges that there is huge overlap between male and female populations. He acknowledges that bias still plays a role in hiring. He explicitly says everyone must be evaluated as an individual, with respect, and not based on their group membership.

In short, anyone screaming racism, sexism, or calling this guy an asshole needs to work on their reading comprehension or their tolerance for ideas other than their own. Civil discussion should not be met with shaming and punishment.

Mid-flight jumbo font smartphone text shock sparks kid abuse arrests

You've never joked about commiting a crime?

This case sounds pretty cut and dry. But... what if someone texted his wife that he was going to absolutely rape her when he got home? Or blow up that neighbors noisy lawn mower? Or murder that asshole down the pub?

People say crazy shit all the time when they think they have privacy. Should someone eavesdropping out of context be enough to have a warrant issued? Should you be detained? Where do you draw the line on what is plausible?

AT&T ready to trial latest attempt at pumping internet over power lines

Re: Could probably do solar monitoring

I did something like that in the noughts. Ran a DSL and dialup ISP and used SNMP readings on signal strength and connect speeds per customer to diagnose changes over time (speed complaint corresponds to drop in signal which corresponds to rainy weather, so we tell the customer to check their outside lines/box for leaks). You could actually gauge amount of rain in a storm by the aggregate drop in signals or connect speed. Thought about solar weather but never followed up on that idea.

Gone in 70 seconds: Holding Enter key can smash through defense

Re: Not the whole story:

No big deal if I insert some firmware or modify the initramfs to contain a kernel module? Particularly if done to a vm or over remote console where I already have some connectivity?

Cell networks' LTE-U will kill your Wi-Fi, say digital rights bods

Screw the telcos, where can I get one?

I live in and represent a 12000 acre rural community with next to no broadband access, and fringe cell coverage. Will I able to buy this kit for a bandwidth co-op, or is unlicensed spectrum suddenly going to be licensed only to the telcos?!

UK.gov in pre-election 'Google tax' blitz against internet firms

Impact to society...

Imagine the hundreds of billions diverted from taxes that could have gone to school, medical care, infrastructure... It's no wonder the rich are calling for the rest of us to be austere.

Now imagine all of the smaller companies without fleets of lawyers trying to compete with the multinationals... No matter how good their ideas or how efficient they are, they are at a government approved 20+% disadvantage economically, not even counting ask the special tax breaks and incentives they are willingly given. Is that a fair market?

Common people and businesses are suffering because of the money siphoned out of our economies, and the market is rigged to keep it that way. I hope some form of legislation succeeds to rein it in.

Regulate the big multinationals, and let the rest of us compete fairly!

After USA FREEDOM Act's failure, what's next for mass surveillance?

Filibuster the renewal!

If Rand Paul or one of the Dems really care about freedom, they can filibuster the renewal of the Patriot Act. But I suspect excuses will be made and resolve will falter...

EU cyber-cop: Dark-net crooks think they're beyond reach (until now)

No need for drug laws or any other nanny state laws

A person's body and what they do with it should be a sacred protected right. Only when it comes to crime against others should there be intervention. I don't care about all the students tweaking on meth to get their studying done, just the one that steals my car stereo. Have criminal intervention for the crime committed, but not for the mere fact of using. That needs medical and counseling intervention.

Trickle-down economics works: SpaceShipTwo is a prime example

Re: Reel 'em in

Indeed. "Trickle down works" but only from Worstall's orifices to the comments section.

Remember Internet2? It's now a software-defined metacloud

Going Backwards

This reminds me of carving ISDN channels off a T1 back in the day. Moving those channels around at night to switch from phone to data capacity for backups, etc... And I'm glad those days are gone!

I guess kids need to reinvent things to earn their pieces of paper.

Apple KILLS SUPER MARIO. And Zelda. And Sonic

"Piracy based emulation"

That's an awful big assumption to make, considering how many people own stacks of NES games. The idea that the company you pay $700 to for a 'premium' experience is the one that doesn't trust it's own users is repulsive to me. I have more than enough big brother in my oligarchy as it is...

Inflatables in SPAAACE! ISS 'nauts to enjoy bouncy castle spaceship

Future of space colonization...

Until we get nanites that can build ultra-lightweight structures out of hollow carbon and aluminum on site, inflatables are the future of space colonization. One rocket payload could double the space of the ISS, or deliver several shelters to the surface of Mars. Self-healing goo ala fix-a-flat could deal with air leaks from micro-meteorites. Safer to sleep in a reinforced area, or underground tunnel, but these structures could prove fast and affordable for securing new areas, airlocks, and hydro/ aqua ponics.

Hong Kong protest puts mesh nets to the test in state censorship smash

False Flags

Of course, sometimes the more violent protestors are actually police in disguise, trying to entrap other protestors or justify breaking up the protest. A few were caught on tape during G8 meetings, running back to their cop buddies after they got outed by peaceful protestors!

Microsoft ropes in Opera Mini as default Nokia dumbphone browser

A mobile with battery life?

That was the great thing about my old candy-bar Sony Ericsson with Opera: I could surf the web on it, AND the battery lasted for a week.

Best phone ever would have an e-ink display, opera-mini, ebook reader, and a 2 week battery life!