Posts by Doctor Syntax

Six critical systems, four months to Brexit – and no completed testing

Re: Time running out

@Codejunky

Exactly what was the pig that was supposed to have been in the poke at that referendum? Complete Brexit taking down a good chunk of the UK economy and the Good Friday Agreement with it in the hope of eventually building trade agreements with the rest of the world that would rebuild the economy in about a decade's time? More or less what we have now? Some fantasy agreement with the EU in which we keep all the good bits but ditch the bits BoJo etc don't like? Magic happens?

AFAICS the immediate prospect, short of exiting the back stop, is about as good as it was ever likely to get - stay in some sort of customs union without being in the decision making in the name of taking back control. Of the others one would be a disaster and the other two never were going to happen.

Re: Time running out

"IIRC we also need a written constitution before we can apply to rejoin."

People keep saying we haven't a written constitution. We do. It's just not written in one place and some of it was written such a long time ago people forget it. The Constitutions of Clarendon would be a good place to start, proceed via Magna Carta and the Bill of Rights to the Representation of the People Act and beyond.

Re: Time running out

"You might think it would be in their interest to be in possession of all the facts"

They never wanted that. They didn't even want to establish the correct procedure for invoking it until it went before the courts.

Looking at it in one way it's a pity that it actually did go before the courts then; now would have been a superb time for the court to come up with the verdict that the invocation hadn't been approved by Parliament and was invalid if May had gone on with her original idea.

Re: Time running out

"it does not specify a procedure to stop the leave procedure"

It doesn't say it can't be done either.

Re: Honest answer here also from the colonies

"Don't be dissing Strictly"

What else should one do with it? Watching it's out of the question of course.

Re: How about scrapping them?

Do we really need "notifications to manage food imports"?

Tinned stuff, maybe not. Fresh, yes. Fresh food can bring in pests that can then run rife through UK agriculture were they to get in. One of the advantages of being an island is that biosecurity is a tad easier to manage.

Isn't this BaU for DEFRA?

Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean hackers won't nuke your employer into the ground tomorrow

"Despite that, just a third thought their employers' compliance was good."

The breakdown is likely to be a third good now, a third good once they've seen a few others get big fines and a third good after they've had fines.

Oi, Elon: You Musk sort out your Autopilot! Tesla loyalists tell of code crashes, near-misses

One thing AI might be better at: believing Road Closed signs. We have a road closure on the corner next to us. Before they get there drivers have to pass two Road Closed Ahead signs. Just now the latest bright spark - Land Rover pulling a trailer loaded with one of those big round hay bales - stopped just outside the hose when the actual closure came into view. Then pulled ahead until he could see round the corner that it really was closed. Then started snaking back until he managed to turn in my drive like all the other bastards who don't believe it's closed.

I want them to channel Spike Milligan and change the sign to read "We told you it was closed".

Re: Marketurds vs Reality

"there is nothing stopping good, safety critical code being developed in an agile manner, as long as the constraints are known up front."

I thought the whole point of Agile was that you didn't need to know about such things up front, you just dealt with them as you discovered them.

Re: No way ready!

"They don't understand the world"

This is the crux of it. Way before we ever get into a driving seat, way, even, before we stand up we have gained an understanding of what solid objects are. We come to understand that breaking things isn't good and what actions might break them. We understand what it's like to get hurt - we'll do it to ourselves - and mostly understand that hurting other people is bad. It's understanding that comes from being material objects ourselves interacting with other material objects. Software is not a material object.

Re: Say what you like about Teslas

"I agree that cycling can be risky given the number of utter morons daydreaming in their steel cages whilst (erroneously) imagining that they own the road"

What I see as a driver and a long-ago cyclist are numerous cyclists who seem to have abdicated all responsibility for their own safety to others. If such cyclists are going to rely on telepathy and miraculous braking and steering to keep them safe then it's not surprising there are so many accidents.

Re: Whisper it…

"However OTA updtaes does mean that you don't have to do as much testing knowing (traditionally there would be a big cost to recall a car for software changes at the dealership)."

I'm not sure what this means but if you're trying to say that testing doesn't matter because you can push bug fixes that might be true but the bug fix doesn't get installed on the cars which crashed, killing all occupants and a few innocent bystanders before the the fix got pushed.

Google swallows up DeepMind Health and abolishes 'independent board'

Re: Lets hope

"Don't let small minded idiots and clickbaiters tell you otherwise."

If it's all open and above board why has oversight been cancelled?

Re: Be worried, very worried

"There ought to be a law..."

There is. Let's see it used.

Between you, me and that dodgy-looking USB: A little bit of paranoia never hurt anyone

Re: Name and Shame

And while we're calling PayPal out let's not forget they pass on your email address to vendors. That's an email address that's one half of your log-in credentials/ Very likely an email address that you set up for PayPal so you can identify genuine messages from them.

Re: USB is a godsend, but

"So, what actions does a user need to take to protect themselves from nasties on the stick when they plug it in? "

Epoxy in USB connector.

"Unless you can prove it's totally lawyer-proof, C-suites can probably just counter they can lawyer their way out of nigh anything."

Some of us work in jurisdictions with better employee rights protection. There'd also be a risk of flagging themselves up to the ICO in which case it'd most likely be settled very quietly out of court.

There's also the fact that some of us work/have worked for businesses that take security very seriously and there it really does start at the top.

Re: paranoia - Danger: oxymoron alert.

a responsible marketroid

Re: paranoia

"The conference organiser's reputation will be that they might nag you to sell their conferences, but they probably won't try to drug, bug or infect you with malware."

Succeeding without trying is an option. Just how much cost do you think they're prepared to take on board to source promotional tat?

"They do like to have security people who can be held responsible for any security issues that arise."

OTOH security needs to start from the top. You can delegate the work but not the responsibility.

Re: My superiors?

"A couple of days later some swinging dick working for Dear Leader attempts to slap my wrist for embarassing Dear Leader."

I trust you pointed out that the only person to embarrass Dear Leader was Dear Leader.

Re: A paranoid mount option ?

From https://www.circl.lu/projects/CIRCLean/: "The code runs on a Raspberry Pi (a small hardware device), which also means it is not required to plug the original USB key into a computer."

Last time I looked all my Pis were computers.

But a good idea even if the explanation wobbles.

Re: A paranoid mount option ?

"That's where the old crap laptop with wifi disabled comes in handy."

Raspberry Pi. The most you have to discard is an SD Card and that's only if you think it might propagate something nasty through that.

Re: A paranoid mount option ?

"It will require some rewiring in the computer to make such an action safe for the computer itself though."

Or just an old USB connector wired to mains. Via an RCB of course. And videoed for YouTube.

Re: Did you accept the USB?

"Reformatting won't protect you against malware at the firmware or chip level."

Especially when you can't reformat it because you didn't accept it.

"So I did what I was told"

It depends on what you were told. If I was told to report emails with phishing characteristics I'd have continued to do it. What's more, back in the day, they'd have known I'd have continued to do just that.

"Who hasn't had an email from their banks with a "click here" rectangle for customers to log in and learn about some new trick with their account."

Me for some time now. I reported a number of these to their phishing report helpline. I eventually emailed that or some similar address than in the continued absence of any reply I'd discontinue the email address set up specifically for said bank. No reply so I gave them the chop. They don't seem to have noticed their emails bouncing.

You're dealing with marketroids & PR.

These are the folk who will keep sending out emails which exactly emulate phishing emails to customers and would-be customers. Emails, even, warning their customers of the dangers of phishing. They'll keep doing that until you prise their keyboards from their (hopefully) cold, dead hands.

Given half a chance they'll hoard customer details contrary to GDPR until they earn their employers multi-million quid fines.

They'll make every effort to force ads onto people who make abundantly clear by using ad blockers that ads are unwelcome and hence hugely counter-productive.

They lobbied Bambi's govt to make exceptions for existing customers to let them bypass TPS and make those calls despite use of TPS should send the same message as ad-blockers.

They're the biggest single risk to their employers in terms of pissing off potential and existing customers and in attracting GDPR fines.

You're never going to talk sense into them.

Data-nicking UK car repairman jailed six months instead of copping a fine

"I’m saying that when you have severe data breaches then individual should be liable for gross negligence or malfeasance."

GDPR and DPA 3.0 both have this provision but only with fines administrative penalties as punishment. As it's an administrative penalty (except in those countries that don't allow administrative penalties) there'd be no criminal record.

Re: Time will tell

"Hopefully this won't reach the mainstream media"

1. I don't know why you hope that. It should reduce that.

2. The Beeb had it before el Reg.

Re: "Shall I ship it to you home address sir?"

"And then I know a guy who moved like 9 years ago, and the council, BT, his pension provider, and lots of other people still send stuff to the wrong address."

We had that for some time until I phoned the sender and told them there would be a £10 handling charge on every item I sent back to them and if they didn't pay I'd have no qualms about taking them to court. It stopped.

Re: Accuracy is not required......

"Unfortunately, the requirement to ensure data is accurate does not apply to all."

The requirement applies. It's just that businesses aren't always good at applying it. The more self-important the business the less good they are.

"Despite threatening to call the police on us as we had breached data protection"

In the circumstances my reply would have been "see you in court - as a witness against you for wasting police time".

"99.9% of the times I've called up any utility companies... there is literally zero need for them to personally have access to any of those details."

It depends what the call's about. If it's to do with utilities there can be a definite need to know as the physical network can be a problem. Recent anecdotal evidence is that the call centre doesn't know enough. Last week the road was closed for water main work almost at my gate with no notice. The call centre operator was sure it was a different road that was affected.

Yesterday the internet connection went dead. And then it died a second time. Checking the phone showed no dial-tone either. When I finally got back online I rung BT. The immediate response was to offer an engineer visit (at a cost of £85 if it was a false alarm); no no faults or work in the area. I went down to the village and found 2 Openreach vans with one engineer working at the cabinet and another down a manhole doing remedial work on the cable between the two. Call centre don't have access to that information or aren't able to relate location of work to physical addresses.

Congrats from 123-Reg! You can now pay us an extra £6 or £12 a year for basically nothing

Re: Moved to Mythic Beasts

"Mythic Beasts who seem ok. They don't offer free web or mail forwarding which is a shame."

They offer both.

Log in and go to https://ctrlpanel.mythic-beasts.com/customer/home

Top left of the options is "Web and Email Hosting". The second option there is Web Mail which offers a choice of Round Cube and Squirrel Mail.

On the "Mail Configuration" page the first option on the "Add delivery address" panel is "Forward to".

Maybe you've discovered all that by now.

France: Let's make the internet safer. America, Russia, China: Let's go with 'no' on that

Re: Strange bedfellows here...

@ Phil O'Sophical

It's now over an hour since you posted that & el Reg still hasn't corrected it.

World leaders were meeting in France for the Paris Peace Forum, where French President Emmanuel Macron used the Internet Governance Forum

So it's forums (or fora) all the way down.

My hoard of obsolete hardware might be useful… one day

Re: I think this proves you can throw things away...

"my theremin. I hadn't touched it in years."

Dammit. I've only just caught that. Nice one, Simon.

Re: Logic

"As such it is impossible to benefit from you having it."

No, you benefit immensely from having it. The benefit is the absence of the need you'd have if you binned it. Don't discount that.

Re: Peeking?

"All nicely labelled so things can be found"

That's cheating!

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

Re: "The goal is to make the OS team work more like lean startups"

"The goal is to make the users the beta testers."

If you do that you've got to take note of what the beta testers say. That applies irrespective of who the beta testers are.

UK.gov fishes for likes as it prepares to go solo on digital sales tax

Re: Industry mouthpiece TechUK sound like idiots

"Represent your clients by all means, but don't think up excuses that make them look like incompetent idiots in technological savvy terms"

No need to do that at all. Said clients manage to do that all by themselves.

Take their "recommendations" for a start. You may be interested in whatever it was I made a one-off purchase of.

The chaos resulting from a failed delivery to an Amazon locker which results in a courier being tasked to come to the door to collect the item that wasn't delivered because they treat non-delivery as a return.

The spamming for feedback which, should I ever consent to click in a link in a spam, is only going to result in score that represents the negative customer service that is spam.

The failure to notice that an item hasn't legitimately moved out of (and probably can't be found in) the depot where it's recorded as having arrived at and should be delivered from.

The battery of estate agents' ads that follow any search for information about a specific place.

And more and worse besides.

"Spreadsheet Phil hopes that it will bring in £5m in 2019-20, rising to £275m the next year and to £440m by 2023-24."

Has there ever been a Treasury prediction that didn't look more optimistic the further it got into the future? And has any Chancellor ever presented the eventual result to Parliament with a comparison of the predictions of one, two, etc. previous years?

NHS*IT: Welsh system outages put patients at risk

Re: NHS Wales

"x Ray done and results instant on the dentist pc"

Remembering the days of wet chemistry for developing X-rays and even the gains resulting in use of Polaroid-type film I'm still surprised by the speed by which they can get an image onto the PC. Is the "film" some type of CCD?

Re: NHS Wales

"I have noticed throughout, however, these pages that any positive comments about Wales receives downvotes as a matter of course."

Someone was determined to prove you right so have an upvote.

“The fact that NHS Wales still refers to its digital programme as 'Informatics' is emblematic of how dated its approach is.”

I raised an eye-brow at that too. Using last year's buzzword is bad; using last century's....

Junior dev decides to clear space for brewing boss, doesn't know what 'LDF' is, sooo...

Re: Killing a database?

"After that more care was taken in ensuring data integrity."

Put the box lids on and secure with string?

Re: Coincidentally...

"We never did get the job, which was based in an East Anglian city well known for football and insurance."

Were they also as keen as mustard?

"Running a full backup will normally consolidate the transaction logs on a MS database (SQL, Exchange, etc) server. If you run incremental or differential backups, it doesn't."

I'm more used to Informix where you back up the logs separately. Also the restore of a full backup plus incremental takes you to a fully check-pointed position. You only need the logs since the last incremental was made to roll forward from there. And you were doing your incrementals every night or even more frequently, weren't you?

Re: Killing a database?

"I'm not paranoid about it"

Being paranoid is the essential requirement for a DBA.