Posts by Tromos

Unearthed emails could be smoking gun in epic GDPR battle: Google, adtech giants 'know they break Euro privacy law'

Re: "Online advertising model"

Advertising used to work extremely well in the pre-web days when people spent good money buying magazines such as 'Amateur Photographer' or 'Computer Shopper' or even 'Exchange & Mart'. These consisted of at least 75% advertising (100% in the case of E&M), yet many people keenly purchased every issue and lugged home the heavy tomes - Computer Shopper in particular often weighed more than a fully-specced gaming laptop. All this took place with absolutely no profiling, snooping, tracking, etc. In the case of TV advertising, once again, the targeting is broad and largely determined by the time of day the ad is to be shown.

If advertisers would put their efforts towards making their adverts more interesting and less effort into trying to extract phone numbers, postcodes, email addresses and shoe size it would be a step in the right direction.

Cisco sues lawyers on its own side – for bigger slice of capacitor price-fixing settlement pie

Presumably Cisco want the money to reimburse any of their customers who purchased equipment containing these capacitors.

Crypto exchange in court: It owes $190m to netizens after founder 'dies without telling anyone vault passwords'

This is why these cryptocurrencies need to be backed up by being stamped onto pieces of metal, or for large amounts where this can be unwieldy, printed onto sheets of some lighter material.

You're the Swan that I want, you are the Swan I want, ooh ooh ooh: Intel anoints Bob as CEO

He'd better perform...

...else it's 'Swan for the road'

Twitter. Android. Private tweets. Pick two... Account bug unlocked padlocked accounts

Too long.

... the best policy should be to never share anything with Twitter that you don't want the whole world to know about.

That last sentence from the article could have been better by terminating ten words earlier.

Three quarters of US Facebook users unaware their online behavior gets tracked

I would love to see the assertion that the average FB user would want $1000 to give up their account for a year tested. Let FB announce that they would drop all snooping, tracking, data collection, etc. but instead make their money by charging a $20 per month subscription. This comes to less than a quarter of the annual amount that the survey states FB users value it at, so the drop in users should be fairly minimal (and the subscription income more than make up for the loss of advertising revenue). I suspect the reality would be that users leave in droves and FB would become immediately untenable.

It's far too easy to give extreme answers to hypothetical questions posed in a survey. Initially, I would have said that I'd want $1000 to consider opening a Facebook account but, realistically, $50 dollars would probably do it (I don't have to use it after all).

The Large Hadron Collider is small beer. Give us billions more for bigger kit, say boffins

There's just one thing wrong with the proposed design

They're crossing the beams!!!!

Germany has a problem with the entire point of Amazon's daft Dash buttons – and bans them

Who needs a delivery driver?

Amazon do. To get the cargo from the aircraft to the fleet of drones that aren't allowed anywhere near an airport.

My 2019 resolution? Not to buy any of THIS rubbish

"soon they will be in every canal the length and breadth of the country"

Hopefully with the owner still attached.

Postmates plans rollout of autonomous delivery robots in US

And shortly after these become ubiquitous...

...we can expect the first Autonomous Mugger Robot

FYI: NASA has sent a snatch-and-grab spacecraft to an asteroid to seize some rock and send it back to Earth

How much rock will it bring back?

Will it be enough to make a Bennu Hill?

Giraffe hacks printers worldwide to promote God-awful YouTuber. Did we read that one right?

If they ever find this giraffe guy, I hope they stretch his neck.

Euro consumer groups: We think Android tracking is illegal

Re: Generous Google

The entire problem is that they take EVERYTHING on board.

Windows 10 goes into the Light and Cortana MIA as Microsoft buys chatbot bods XOXCO

"Microsoft is infusing intelligence across all its products and services"

Never mind 'across', how about 'into'?

Particularly regarding testing of updates.

Holy moley! The amp, kelvin and kilogram will never be the same again

Re: A modest proposal

Let me introduce the kibblegram. A unit of weight equal to 1024 grams. Primary purpose: to allow us to whinge about being given short measure in anything purchased by weight.

Palliative care for Windows 10 Mobile like a Crimean field hospital, but with even less effort

"...none can be spared to ensure there's any quality to the end-of-life care for the doomed platform."

And the situation is even more bleak for the mobile version.

This just in: What? No, I can't believe it. The 2018 MacBook Air still a huge pain to have repaired

Re: Death by Apple?

That takes some doing. A 14-year old i7 laptop. That's about 4 years longer than the Intel i7 has been available. Of course, if it's had a processor replacement (implying a motherboard replacement too) in addition to the screen, memory and disks, I would suggest there isn't much left that counts as 14 years old.

Has science gone too far? Now boffins dream of shining gigantic laser pointer into space to get aliens' attention

Not a brilliant idea

I was just settling down to my 5-dimensional crossword when this flickery light disturbed my concentration. Pass me the yottawatt laser so I can swat the pesky thing out of existence.

From today, it's OK in the US to thwart DRM to repair your stuff – if you keep the tools a secret

Don't try it

"DRM is also used to ensure people use only official printer ink cartridges or ground coffee beans."

I had a go with 'Special Kenya Blend' but it clogged the print-heads.

Amazon is at this point a money-printing cloud machine with a grocery store in the parking lot

Re: Indeed

It's not the financial system at fault here, it's the people playing it and their insane greed. For a wider example I refer you to the lottery a few days ago where little interest was shown for weeks while the maximum payout was a few 10's or 100's of millions of dollars, but queues formed to take a crack at the top prize when it got to 1.6 billion.

Have you ever, ever felt like this? Have strange things happened? Is high-speed data going round the twist?

everyone knows ROYGBIV

Yup, he's successor to ROYGBIII

Microsoft points to a golden future where you can make Windows 10 your own

Can I please uninstall 3...

...and get Windows 7?

It's October 2018, and Microsoft Exchange can be pwned by a plucky eight-year-old... bug

"...other Android devices will need to be updated through their respective vendors"

And therein lies the problem.

Surprising no one, Google to appeal against European Commission's €4.34bn Android fine

Don't pay the fine...

...just Gooxit.

Haven't updated your Adobe PDF software lately? Here's 85 new reasons to do it now

Update your Adobe PDF software...

...to something not written by Adobe.

Facebook monetizes 2FA, Singapore monetizes hacker, and ransomware creeps monetize US Democrats

Fix for Linux EoP problem

Revised function: create_elf_and_safety_tables()

Brit startup plans fusion-powered missions to the stars

What's in a name?

The man dislikes the word 'nuclear' as he says people think 'bomb'. He has named his mini-tokamak STAR where A stands for Atomic. I've just tried the word association game with a few friends and 'Nuclear' gives 'Reactor' as the usual response, but 'Atomic' was 'Bomb' in every single case. Either Dinan is much mistaken or it says something about my circle of friends.

AI image recognition systems can be tricked by copying and pasting random objects

The intelligence is artificial. The stupidity is all too real.

This isn't AI, it's just pattern recognition with the usual failings as soon as there's an unexpected item in the bagging area.

IBM slaps patent on coffee-delivering drones that can read your MIND

Re: heater?

"heating stuff uses a ton of energy"

Especially when the stuff in question is placed under 4 large cooling fans!

Use Debian? Want Intel's latest CPU patch? Small print sparks big problem

Re: Shrug

You should set aside your differences and unite to combat the real enemy - the people's atheist front!

Google risks mega-fine in EU over location 'stalking'

Re: It is also wifi

Bit stupid to use SSID rather than MAC. No guarantee as it can be spoofed, but much more likely to be unique.

IPv6: It's only NAT-ural that network nerds are dragging their feet...

Adoption of IPv6 is inevitable.

So is death, but I'm in no particular hurry.

Uptight robots that suddenly beg to stay alive are less likely to be switched off by humans

Lies

As the robot obviously lied about eating pizza, maybe the assumption was that it was also fibbing about not wanting to be switched off.

The wheel turns slowly, but it turns: Feds emit IoT security tip sheet

Keeping up to date with patches

No problem for most IoT devices. They start out with the full complement of patches that will be issued over the coming decade.

Amazon meets the incredible SHRINKING UK taxman

Yammermouth politicians

What is Ms Hodge on about? Which public services are Amazon using without paying? Did they borrow a library book or something? Their UK employees pay taxes and are entitled to these services.

As far as damaging the high street by undercutting goes, well, it must have been really difficult to find a source of USB cables less than £15 each to beat Maplins. Good bloody riddance to all those price gougers. I'm happy to pay a small premium for the convenience of being able to pop out and pick something up quickly, but draw the line at a several hundred percent markup. Supermarkets undercut the local convenience stores, but they seem to know how much to charge in order to keep enough custom.

Who watches Sony's watcher? Boffins poke holes in surveillance kit

"...found two serious flaws..."

Three. It's made by Sony.

Google Chrome: HTTPS or bust. Insecure HTTP D-Day is tomorrow, folks

it's likely that Microsoft, Apple and Mozilla will follow suit

But only after Apple invent it first.

Either my name, my password or my soul is invalid – but which?

Re: Barclays for security?

Their current TV campaign is actually badly flawed as far as security is concerned. The message it puts over is to never reveal your full PIN. What it should be saying is to never reveal ANY part of your PIN as no genuine bank will ever ask for it. Your bank might ask for a couple of characters from a security code, but this is completely different from a PIN.

What if tech moguls brewed real ale?

DOUBLE PRECISION ALE

Like REAL ALE, but twice as good...

Cancelled in Crawley? At least your train has free Wi-Fi now, right?

Re: SPRINT

It can be done. 'Connected Rail And Wireless Lan' is the proposed supplier.

And in current affairs: Rogue raccoon blacks out city power grid after shocking misstep

The squirrels usually end up with roasted nuts

New Android P beta is 'very close', 'near-final' but also just 'early'

Did you say Android Pee?

Cleaning up after the dog was bad enough...

Surveys-as-a-service outfit Typeform spilled a backup from May

Seems to me that the data breach took place a lot earlier. Did the Fortnum & Mason customers give explicit permission for their personal data to be handed over to Typeform?

Marriage of AI, Google chips will save diabetics from a lot of pricks

Why go for a wearable initially? The quicker something is made available, the better. Even if it's shoebox sized and heavy it will still be a blessed relief for many and a long-term money saver due to

saving the ongoing cost of test strips and needles. Once out and established, then start thinking about fitting it in a watch. We'd probably still be waiting for it if the MRI scanner had to be pocket sized.

UK.gov's long-awaited, lightweight biometrics strategy fails to impress

Maintaining public trust

Need to get it in the first place.

Uber's London licence appeal off to flying start: No, you cannot do driver eye tests via video link

Re: Why

"there business"

Where business?

Big Blue's Summit super sits, aptly, at the peak of official Top500 beast list

Where does my ZX80 come in this list?

How to stealthily poison neural network chips in the supply chain

"...it survives typical software scans..."

Even worse. It survives the ultimate sanction of switching off then on again.

Shatner's solar-powered Bitcoin gambit wouldn't power a deflector shield

Shatner's business acumen would appear to be about on par with his acting and authoring abilities.

Intel chip flaw: Math unit may spill crypto secrets from apps to malware

I'm OK then...

...I don't use floating point, all my passwords are integer.