* Posts by David Roberts

1606 publicly visible posts • joined 25 Jan 2007

Bug of the month: Cache flow problem crashes Samsung phone apps

David Roberts

Re: Seen this one before....

Well, yes, I was wondering about this as well.

We have a report of a bug where only half the cache is cleared. What happens in the opposite switch case when the code tries to clear twice as much cache as there is?

It actually will be Obama who decides whether to end US government oversight of the internet

David Roberts

Re: My money is on a punt

Might go the other way. A last chance for a "screw you, guys" gesture before he moves on to more lucrative stuff.

Infected Android phones could flood America's 911 with DDoS attacks

David Roberts

Flowchart?

One of the tests has a NO exit but no YES exit.

I assume this is a mistake.....

Apple, Google auto auto woe

David Roberts

Limited application?

Lanes in cities and on motorways for "automatic cruise control" could improve traffic throughput quite a bit without the extra hard "replace a human in all circumstances" they seem to be trying for.

Even in the wildly optimistic SciFi of the '50s they still had the concept of automated traffic control on major highways and switching back to manual on the off ramp when you neared your destination.

Specialised lanes for automated traffic could also have extra hardware/software to solve the current edge cases causing much of the confusion.

Reg hacks warned off drugs

David Roberts
Thumb Up

Excuse me

While I dash off a quick line or two.

Damn, but I love this job.

Google's diabetes fight

David Roberts

Constant monitoring?

I would be surprised if this is blood glucose monitoring given that the NHS doesn't want to pay for test strips for T2s. Perhaps in the USA?

One problem with the bulk {cough} of T2s is that they aren't motivated to address their condition because there is no obvious day to day problem.

Coupled with food addiction in the cases where it is obesity related (roughly 1 in 5 are not) there is often a lot of difficulty in persuading people to change their lifestyle.

Monitoring and controlling sounds like constant glucose monitoring and a pump as used by some T1s.

Money still to be made with an artificial pancreas.

Edit: just skimmed some blurb and it is T2 first then T1. First target seems to be lifestyle and medication management. So presumably apps. Paint me sceptical.

Airbag bug forces GM to recall 4.3m vehicles – but eh, how about those self-driving cars, huh?

David Roberts

I'd be more concerned

that the seat belt didn't deploy either.

This is likely to be far more serious than an airbag not deploying.

The Rise, Fall and Return of TomTom

David Roberts

Pretty good navigation

Bastards on the software licencing.

The software on my current TomTom has the capability to plan a route depending on the type of vehicle. However the option is greyed out.

As far as I can tell there is no option to enable this feature; I have to go and buy completely new hardware.

NHS health apps project plan: Powered by your medical records

David Roberts

+1 on that

Online medical records are very useful.

As are repeat prescriptions and booking appointments.

Re-announcement of existing capability.

World eats its 10 millionth Raspberry Pi

David Roberts

Ironic

They looked back at all the people who learned to tinker with computers in the '80s and thought "Hey, I bet the kids of today would love to do that!"

Completely forgetting that any form of computer was a fascinating novelty then but computers are ubiquitous now.

Result?

Most of the Pis have been bought by old geezers nostaligic for the wonerful times of the '80s.

Or retired with too much time on their hands.

Excel abuse hits new heights as dev uses VBA to code spreadsheet messaging app

David Roberts

When all you have is a hammer......

......every task looks like a nail.

Nobody can stop the use of any office product for scripting tasks because the person with the problem only knows one scripting language. Real coders are nowhere in sight and would anyway get sniffy about requirements, testing, budgets, ongoing support.

If I had a pound for every middle manager who said "what's the problem? I knocked this up over the weekend and it works fine." I would have spent it all on beer long ago.

Ten-year-old Windows Media Player hack is the new black, again

David Roberts

Codec repository?

If all the codecs were held by a trusted third party then any video which needed a new codec would trigger a connection to the repository.

Instead you download an illegal ripped copy and then trust it to add stuff to your system. Because it is free. So it must be trustworthy.

Printers now the least-secure things on the internet

David Roberts

Insidious

My latest HP printer wanted to phone home to report on the toner cartridges.

Presumably to confirm that you are using 3rd party toner and invalidating the warranty ; avoiding the usual trick of removing the original toner catridges and then putting them back if a fault appears.

I told it "No" but who knows if it obeyed me?

The defaults on installation are massively biased towards data collection.

I don't have a current use case for Internet printing; perhaps there might be for households where there is nobody at home you can trust to print a file locally?

Kaspersky to 1337 haxors: take down our power grid. We dare you

David Roberts
Facepalm

Just checking

The world's elite hackers are being encouraged to train the Russians in how to take down power grids?

What could possibly go wrong?

Sex is bad for older men, and even worse when it's good

David Roberts
Coat

Buy your wife a vibrator

For a health related win/win situation.

Although being sent out on an emergency errand late at night for new batteries may up the risk profile.

Microsoft redfaced after Bing translation cockup enrages Saudis

David Roberts

Crowd sourced?

Perhaps the same crowd which gave Melbourne a discreet shove northward?

Google breaks heart, White Knight falls off horse

David Roberts
WTF?

Puzzled

Land line spend of 30 bn a year sounds much the same as 7 to 9 bn per quarter for mobile. That seems to be about 28 to 36 bn a year?

False Northern Lights alert issued to entire UK because of a lawnmower

David Roberts
Angel

Anyone else..

..forward this to El Reg?

Container OS for RPi

David Roberts
Windows

Now what?

So I've got two Pis both with containers.

What do I put in them?

Last time I messed around with a Docker it hurt a lot and now look at me.

KFC-scented sunscreen

David Roberts
Coat

Lay around the pool smelling like fried chicken?

Depend entirely on the demographic of your intended partner.

"No idea what attracted me to him. Just made me HUNGRY being near him."

Kentucky Flavoured C$?

Labour election 2FA fail

David Roberts

Saves on the postage

Ideally you should use two separate transport mechanisms such as email and post in case one is compromised.

Two emails doesn't cut it. [Both in one is a joke.]

As an aside, this is why doing both parts of 2FA using the same mobile phone is not a good idea.

UK IT consultant subject to insane sex ban order mounts legal challenge

David Roberts
Big Brother

Slippery slope.

In this specific case the SRO has been imposed after a failure to convict.

However the recently reported civil recovery of "criminal assets" can take place prior to or even instead of a criminal trial.

How soon before an SRO is imposed after an allegation of rape or other sex crime before (or instead of) a criminal trial?

Thinking this through, in some cases an SRO might be suggested to keep tabs on someone who showed the potential to offend multiple times before trial. However surely this is what bail is all about?

The slippery slope is the apparent increasing tendency to outsource what should be criminal law to the civil courts. Easy to impose, less burden on the police and CPS, and easy to encourage "mission creep" as seen with RIPA.

UK military buys third £4m Zephyr drone for 'persistent surveillance' trials

David Roberts

Thought you weren't allowed to fly drones near airports.

PayPal patches 2FA portal bug

David Roberts
Trollface

What?

Two tabs in the same browser both logged in?

Say it is not so!

Never seen that happen before.

Difficult choice of icon.

BT best provider for 10Mbps USO, says former digi minister Ed Vaizey

David Roberts
Unhappy

Sadly he may be talking sense

If it was hugely profitable to run new connections to sparsely populated areas then there would not be an issue.

The UK is cabled up for electricity and phone because at one point this was mandated and the utilities were part of the government.

Then the utilities were sold off to reduce costs by introducing competition.

Nerly all the broadband progress has been made squeezing the current infrastructure, which is why we have speeds far in excess of the original dial up over the same lines.

A lot of the Virgin network is based on the infrastructure from smaller cable companies which built out then went bust. Effectively funded by commercial losses. Not a model to encourage the building out of new networks.

We are lucky to have cable; however even in our town only the higher density housing was ever cabled up. Note this - in a town where all the infrastructure was there, it was judged not economic to cable up an area of mainly detached houses. Only mainly semi-detached. This by a company which AFAIK overextended itself financially.

Rural areas? No chance.

So where is the busines case to cable up sparse locations with fibre? Because of course copper just won't hack it over a certain distance. Most farms and private houses can't afford the cabling costs for fibre. So any upgrade has to be centrall funded. Which most likely will involve Openreach (unless they split it off and sell it to be milked to death by foreign investors).

Some small firms are doing sterling work using community funding to cable up small villages but this seems to be the exception.

How about a £5 ukp a month levy on ALL domestic broad band connections (including mobile data) and pro rata on business data connections to directly fund fibre to the wilderness? Spread the pain for national gain?

If you could guarantee the money would be all spent on infrastructure, of course.

Oh, and the best thing the regulator could do is offer Openreach the opportunity to upgrade these small villages, and if they decline hit them with a "no compete" clause for say 5 years to prevent them from targetting the oposition.

Tech support scammers mess with hacker's mother, so he retaliated with ransomware

David Roberts
WTF?

Hair straighteners never turned up?

How would they when you cancelled the credit card and dropped all their customer database details?

Like swearing that tearing newspapers up keeps elephants out of your living room and pointing to the lack of elephants as proof.

London cops waste £2.1m on thought crime unit – and they want volunteer informers

David Roberts
Joke

Only abuse people in different countries (apart from the USA?)

Just wondering how they intend to police this across national borders.

We all know that the USA considers that it's laws apply worldwide, however.

Just a minute; if I offend one of the brain dead dickhead Merkin commentards can I be extradited?

Joke alert to help with my appeal.

P.S. As they can't be arsed in the UK to do anything about international cold callers and scammers what chance is there that they will do anything about international Twitterati?

David Roberts
WTF?

Re: No evidence necessary

So you are saying that no one else has to be present for the crime of "exposure" to take place?

So, presumably, you would have to give yourself up?

Mumble.....if a tree falls in the forest and nobody..........mumble.

I once had a piss against a tree trunk when out walking. Nobody else was there. Should I give myself up?

Cops to let the private sector chase after cybercrims' assets

David Roberts
Mushroom

Privatised police and "justice"

Justice costs too much and we don't have the police to implement it anyway.

Instead of calling the police when you are robbed and getting an incident number so you can claim on your insurance, you call shadyambulancechasers.co.uk who send round contract forensics, check fingerprints etc. against police records then sue the alleged perpatrator.

All costs of the investigation and trial included in the court costs.

Probably better to settle out of court; anyway you won't get a criminal record.

Think of it as a tax scheme to move money from criminals to lawyers (hang on.....).

Of course if you are poor you may not be able to afford a good defence lawyer so innocent or guilty you are screwed anyway.

If you are very poor you probably don't care anyway because what can they take from you?

Perhaps they could resurrect the old "Fire Insurance" arrangement where you subscribe to a private police force who look after your property and interests? Loads of PPI lawyers coming free soon.

Look out for "Neighbourhood Watch" signs being replaced by "Neighbouhood Police" signs.

Flipping heck! Virtual machines hijacked via bit-meddling Feng Shui

David Roberts
Paris Hilton

When does (de)duplication take place?

As far as I can see this only works on writable memory. Else how do you flip the bits rapidly?

Sharing read only code between processes is as old as the hills.

So apparently you need to take a copy of a writeable area of memory which remains unchanged long enough for deduplication to kick in. You then have two (or more) processes with write access to the same memory area?

This just doesn't sound right because if you could do this you would have read and write access to the memory anyway and wouldn't need to do fancy bit flipping.

I think you could identify a read only area of memory, and if you could identify the absolute hardware address then gain write access to physical memory very close to it you could go for rattling the cage. However, can you do this in a VM?

Nope, beyond me.

Adblock Plus blocks Facebook block of Adblock Plus block of Facebook block of Adblock Plus block of Facebook ads

David Roberts
Windows

Back to reality for a moment........

The vast majority of Facebook users just don't give a shit about the adverts.

Facebook succeeds because it provides something that the majority value - the ability to post rich content once and have it visible from then on to friends, family and anyone else who might or might not need it. The down sides don't impinge on their consciousness.

The can also snoop on others to their hearts' content.

They also like it because it is (in direct monetary terms) free.

Facebook are well aware of this, and also well aware of the problems involved in putting the content behind a paywall - a long and mainly fruitless battle fought by the newspapers.

However powerful now, all it needs is a small change in the market place and a new "free" system will gain traction.

With the greatest respect to the Commentards posting here, if we all stopped (or didn't even start) using Facebook the effect would be much the same as a gnat bite on the Matterhorn.

Using ad blockers is a direct attack on the current funding model for the Internet and is having enough impact to provoke advertising funded sites to try and kick back. Interesting times.

However beware the law of unintended consequences. If all advertising on all sites is permanently blocked, how will the Internet be funded?

Dedicated Commentards may well pay a subscription to El Reg; I would.

However there is a limit to how much I am prepared to pay per month for Internet content.

Still using an ad blocker, including El Reg (apart from the recent dodgy downloads reported, they also seem to be aiding the DRM Police) but I am aware that ultimately TANSTAAFL.

Still as I said, intersting times.

Popcorn at the ready.

Head of UK oversight body to join GCHQ 'tech help desk'*

David Roberts

Re: GCHQ's help desk?

Helping others to help themselves.

Idiot flies drone alongside Flybe jet landing at Newquay Airport

David Roberts
WTF?

Re: Yet More Pilot Ado About Nothing - Unnecessary Scaremongering

So because in this specific case the aircraft was more robust than average, no problem move right along?

So if you are driving dangerously and just miss a truck this isn't a problem? Only if you just miss something more vulnerable?

IBM makes meek apology for Oz #CensusFail, offers no fail detail

David Roberts

Still missing the main issue here.

In the UK the census has always had personal data.

At least, name age and profession for each person in the house on census day.

This is now published on line.

Sadly the UK has stopped the census because....well...no money?

However the previous data is invaluable for researching your ancestry.

If you fill in paper forms these days some poor sod will have to key the data in for it to be analysed (or at least check the results of the OCR scan). The data is then on a computer. How does this decrease the long term risk of hacking or disclosure compared to directly keying the data via a web form? Granted that sending the data unencrypted on Census Day seems a dumb move.

Bottom line: at the moment I'm not seeing the major benefit of using paper. Just a major extra cost.

Linux security backfires: Flaw lets hackers inject malware into downloads, disrupt Tor users, etc

David Roberts
Joke

Won't you think of the children?

From the picture all of the UCR researchers are foreign looking.

Can't even pronounce their names.

Sweet Jesus, Donald, where are you when we need you?

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

Sort of joking, but have you noticed how many US security researchers (mathematics based generally) seem to be Asian? Loads of Chinese and Pakistani/Indian names? Are they better at maths than their Western counterparts due to early training? Or just all round brighter?

Italian MP threatens parents forcing veggie diets on kids with jail

David Roberts
Facepalm

Knuckle dragging bigots out in force, I see

Nice to see one balanced response about whole cultures who are vegetarian by choice and still seem to be surviving and even thriving. As opposed to most commentards who seem to think that being vegetarian is some kind of upper middle class alternative life style.

I noted in passing that all people who eat organic food shop at Waitrose. I assume that nobody buys the stuff available at Lidl, then?

As already pointed out there is plenty of current legislation against child neglect and cruelty. Most often (according to the press) used against parents with morbidly obese children.

Proposing new legislation where existing legislation is more than adequate is just an unscrupulous politician pandering to the brain dead bigots for publicity and votes. Plenty of that in the UK as well.

Hitler ‘ransomware’ offers to sell you back access to your files – but just deletes them

David Roberts

Still musing

On how you get a cash card and type in the number in less than an hour.

Thailand plans to track non-citizens with their mobile phones

David Roberts
Facepalm

Good plan!

So anyone involved in cross border traffic will just get a local to buy a SIM for them.

As already suggested, this will just bump up the sale of SIM cards to the locals and encourage SIM swapping.

Just remember to remove the SIM before you cross back over the border.

All this will do is track tourists and legitimate long term residents; perhaps this is the real aim?

'Alien megastructure' Tabby's Star: Light is definitely dimming

David Roberts
Alien

Light sails?

Is the fleet already on the way?

Alternatively, are they having intermittent shortfall in their solar wind power?

'Clock Bomb Kid' family sues

David Roberts
Go

Good for them

Sadly, massive law suits are the only deterrent to some people.

More VW cheatware 'found'

David Roberts
Trollface

Seems about right for the UK

Most journeys for these vehicles - yummy mummies carting their precious offspring around in these "Chelsea Tractors" to and from school - will be under 20 minutes of urban driving.

Longer trips on out of town roads are inherently less polluting. The worst pollution comes from cars on short journeys with the engine not up to operating temperature.

So it seems a pretty good strategy; just needs to detect stop/start driving and revert to eco mode and job done!

Some benefits of digital health to NHS may be delayed by consent model consultation – expert

David Roberts

Still skirting the issue

Nobody trusts the government not to sell the data on when cash gets tight.

Breaking 350 million: What's next for Windows 10?

David Roberts
WTF?

Old hardware?

I upgraded (as opposed to clean installed) W10 on a number of systems (using a clone of the original drive before refitting the original drive).

Two of these systems were a Core 2 Duo and a Core 2 Quad which originally came with Vista 32 bit. Both run W8.1 64 bit with no apparent problem and upgraded and ran just fine. So unless the Anniversary update has some seriously bloated new features I wouldn't expect any problems.

Not that I intend to run W10 on any of my systems any time soon (if ever).

I have no idea what the author was chuntering on about.

Power cut crashes Delta's worldwide flight update systems

David Roberts
Mushroom

One of the only airlines?

FFS it is either the only airline or it is one of the (very) few airlines.

Am I very unique in being annoyed by this?

Brit network O2 hands out free Windows virus with USB pens

David Roberts

Some sympathy

If you ordered 10,000 USB sticks with a custom tacky logo from a supposedly reputable supplier, would you then employ someone to virus test every single one?

How many people routinely test every new pen drive for viruses? O.K. perhaps you should have scanning for all removable media configured, but still......

The real culprit is somewhere further up the supply chain, who has also managed to piss off a major customer. That is unlikely to end well.

BBC detector vans are back to spy on your home Wi-Fi – if you can believe it

David Roberts
Trollface

Cost/benefit?

Given that we can't even afford enough police to come round and check on a break in - just enough to issue a crime number over the phone so you can claim on your insurance - how would this cost in?

Allegedly most of the original TV detector vans worked on FUD. Just cruised around the streets with a van with big metal bits on the roof and everyone panicked because "magic" and rushed off to buy a licence.

Perhaps a bit of newspaper article FUD and some Eastern European on minimum wage who puts temporary "TV licence detector" signs on the white van and drives round the estates when not delivering packages.

Probably worth mailshotting estates with "TV license detectors are in your area. We can make your house undetectable for a low, low price on simple monthly payments". Then either sell them a black box with a small heater element inside or subcontract to a local electrician to wire the house with Ethernet. Or flog them some Home Plugs. The possibilities are endless.

Bimodal IT: Let the backlash begin

David Roberts
Windows

GDS?

Sound like UK government IT over the last few years - "agile" dicking about with a web page but no real integration with the major back end systems.

Still, it is going exceptionally well.......

The developer died 14 years ago, here's a print out of his source code

David Roberts

Posdibly one of the first questions would have been..

...which version of the source code?

Not much point in banging the whole thing in (after having solved all the other major problems) only to find that this was V1 and the patches needed to make it work were on the failed hard drive.

What's long, hard and full of seamen? The USS Harvey Milk

David Roberts
Coat

Only a 5 inch gun?

How boring!

Mine's the one with the high calibre tooth brush in the pocket. ->

.

.

.

.

Yes? Well as it happens I am very pleased to see you. Why do you ask?

Cyberpunks might not be crooks but they're really very rude

David Roberts
Coat

As a fan of the author William Gibson

I have a sneaking sympathy for our foul mouthed flamer.

Cyberpunk is a literary genre and should not be confused with cyber crooks. Although, come to think of it, the stories do feature a lot of (often unsuccessful) cyber crooks.

O.K. carry on as you were.

Mine's the one with the copy of Pattern Recognition in the pocket ->