Posts by Doctor Syntax

Corporate criminal tax offences likely to further increase HMRC's use of dawn raids, says expert

"From 30 September, it will be a criminal offence in the UK if a business fails to prevent its employees or any person associated with it from facilitating tax evasion."

What does associated mean? Someone buys a ream of printer paper at the local stationers and uses a few sheets to print fake invoices. Is the stationer at fault because it didn't ensure (how?) that its employee didn't take steps (what steps?) to make sure the customer wasn't going to use any of the paper to evade tax? And what about the printer manufacturer? The printer cartridge supplier? The Royal Mail for delivering the printer cartridges?

70% of Windows 10 users are totally happy with our big telemetry slurp, beams Microsoft

Re: How-to

"check occasionally that it hasn't been re-enabled by updates"

That's the rub.

Eternal paranoia is the price of freedom. Vigilance is not enough.

Re: Windows privacy portal

"All it achieved was Microsoft spam to her email address"

Set up an address beforehand specifically for this. Then discontinue it or at least ignore it forever afterwards. Added bonus, make it a HotLiveOutmail address and let Microsoft store their own spam indefinitely.

Re: spends most of its time updating

"If you only turn it on for an hour a month then it downloads and starts installing all of the updates, you turn it off in disgust as it's used half of that updating"

The great mystery to many of us is why it needs to do updates this way. Earlie todayr I got an alert that my system had one update. The system's discovering that had no noticeable effect on performance. I don't set the system to autoupdate so a few moments ago I ran the update. One package was updated: 258kB downloaded at 636 kB/s and installed with no noticeable effect on performance. The whole update took seconds of elapsed time.

Clearly there'd be many more packages to update if I left it to be a monthly task. Even so I know from large updates, say the mass that occur when, as you describe, an infrequently used box is switched on, that it doesn't take anything as long as the equivalent Windows update, it doesn't impede performance to any noticeable extent, it stops and restarts any services which have had an update without reboots, it doesn't require long delays to shut down after an update nor on the consequent restart and, in fact, the only sort of update that requires a reboot at all is when the kernel itself has been updated.

FreeBSD is pretty similar (it's a while since I tried PC-BSD, based on FreeBSD and found it to be inexplicably similar to Windows in this respect).

So why is it that Windows updates are such a major production?

Re: No need to change the default settings! Erase all of WIN 10

"Where would the comments section on a Windows news story be without someone taking the time to tell everyone that they use Linux?"

Don't you find it just a touch ironic that Microsoft not only collect money for the licence want ongoing payments in data collection and displaying advertising whilst Linux distros don't demand either and yet it's the latter you implicitly criticise?

Re: MSFT and Facebook

"It would be preferable if you could name ALL the guilty parties"

Unfortunately the margin isn't big enough.

Re: No need to change the default settings! Erase all of WIN 10

"Should have gone to System76"

For those of us in the UK this seems rather a long way to go.

Re: No need to change the default settings! Erase all of WIN 10

"Too bad that so many seem to be so blinkered that they can only see one monopoly."

Are you implying multiple monopolies?

ROFLMAO

If we're in a simulation, someone hit it with a hammer, please: Milky Way spews up to 100 MEELLLION black holes

Re: So it was just a case that no one had bothered to do the calculation?

"IOW why did it take so long to find one?"

Once the instrument had been built it didn't take long. So the real question is why it took so long to build. If you want an answer to that then Google is your friend. Just go and read what it involves.

Marcus Hutchins free for now as infosec world rallies around suspected banking malware dev

Re: Blind support

"Yes, innocent until proven guilty, but it appears there was enough here to arrest him and make charges."

The one bit of solid evidence that's emerged seems to be that he wrote an explanatory post about some code which was then sent to a Github repository and subsequently incorporated in the trojan. If that's what the FBI mean by writing malware then I'm sure a lot of people who've pubished code on Github or elsewhere, answered questions on Stackexchange and the like should avoid visiting the US.

We don't have much info on this chat exchange to put it in context or even determine whether it was Hutchins or some other person using the same handle.

And the from some of the quotes in the article it rather sounds as if some of those who knew him fear it's a case of TPTB starting to shoot the messenger.

In the meantime I can't help wondering why, if this is a true bill, why he would have gone anywhere near the US.

If this ever gets to court it'll be interesting to hear a comparison between his contribution to Kronos and the NSA's contribution to Wannacry. I'm sure the defence would want to raise it.

Foot-long £1 sausage roll arrives

"Veganism is cow genocide."

I've come to the conclusion that vegans really don't like animals.

Assange offers job to sacked Google diversity manifestbro

Re: A job in the Ecuadorian embassy?

Maybe he's looking for a decoy. Someone leaves embassy disguised as Assange whilst Assagne leaves by back door disguised as....well, disguised.

Re: Well..

"Discernment and critical thinking appears to have been pressed out of people's brains by MSM/TV (a bit like apple juice is squeezed out of apples to make cider I reckon)."

No, your apple juice simile has a positive outcome.

It's cider -->

Engineer gets 18 months in the clink for looting ex-bosses' FTP server

Re: It's not the company's fault.. yeeesh.

That may be how it's seen in the US. The EU & UK seem to be taking a different view, at least in some situations: https://www.theregister.co.uk/2017/08/08/critical_infrastructure_firms_threatened_with_huge_fines_for_lax_security/

Re: I force password changes to protect myself

"Certain things are just not worth keeping IMHO."

Alternatively, get it out ahead of time.

Re: Hacking?

"its definitely theft"

It definitely isn't.

Re: Hacking?

"The company say they rotated passwords but I think the reality is they didn't or at least not for all accounts."

Probably just kept sending password reset emails to his old account.

Florida man is world's fastest flasher: Just 53 quintillionths of a sec

Re: What electrons?

"The electrons are still there though."

Where?

How did they measure it?

NotBeingPetya: UK critical infrastructure firms face huge fines for lax security

"see, we followed current best practice, so we're off the hook"

If they've demonstrably not followed "current best practice" in actual practice that mightn't be well received.

All this EU red tape telling us that we've got do sensible things like this. The sooner we're rid of it the better.

Coat. It's not raining right now so I don't need it.

Britons ambivalent about driverless car tech, survey finds

Re: Sunday (autonomous) driving

"A new DSG can change gear in 8ms, so it can go up then back down again in the blink of an eye without you even noticing."

A handy trick to fix mistakes but it still falls some way short of anticipating needs.

"You can also choose the style of gear changing you want"

I can do that with a manual without telling a machine.

Re: Sunday (autonomous) driving

"It's the oblivious '35 is the right speed in any circumstance' that I (and others, seemingly) find vexing."

IME it's been a safe rule of thumb for at least half a century that the driver doing 35 in a 30 area will also be the driver that does 35 in a 40 area and vice versa. There's something magic about that number.

Re: Integrated transport system

"Black cabbies ... are practically taught to pull across traffic without notice to get a fare."

And have the turning circle to do it.

Re: Sunday (autonomous) driving

"Auto gearboxes, I am sure there must be good ones out there"

I'm not sure. An auto gearbox can only respond to what's happened, it can't anticipate. My car has an indicator to signal what gear it thinks I should be using. It regularly tells me I should change up again just before I encounter an uphill hairpin bend. Presumably if it were an automatic it would actually do that and then change down again.

Re: Patent-bashing

"finding the autonomous car that's come to pick me up from the station"

It'll be the one shouting "paging Mr. Short" through it's loudspeaker and competing with all the others shouting for their passengers.

Re: Sunday (autonomous) driving

"rocks the whole car forward and back as the torque from the engine finds its way through the system."

It must be very embarrassing if there's anyone following.

Re: Sunday (autonomous) driving

"is there going to be a speed control button on these things, so the elderly can set it to FUCKING DAWDLE at 35 on country roads"

As an elderly country dweller my problem is with townies of all ages who come here, park in dangerously daft places irrespective of the proximity of car parks, when walking can't work out how to maintain maximum visibility in winding lanes and when driving can't work out an appropriate speed (that works for both alternatives*). Worse still, those who come cycling and worst of all, organize cycling events.

Walking parties who lack anyone who can read their map are another nuisance. I watched one party turn back a few yards short of the corner beyond which was the clearly marked (on OS and in reality) start of a public footpath and then head of up what was clearly signed as a private road instead.

*There are a great many roads here where your 35 would be vastly excessive as well as those which seem to attract drivers who are unable to maintain speeds uphill.

US military gets authority to shoot down citizens' small drones

Never mind drones around army bases, shoot them down around airport approaches.

KCOM whacked with £900k Ofcom fine over 999 call handling

Re: Fixing it

"I would be curious what happens every time a BT exchange in the 21CN goes up in flames"

I think the problem isn't in the BT exchanges. It's the emergency services closing call centres and relying on more distant ones where local knowledge isn't available.

Worse than that; the actual service provision gets closed. A few days ago there was a fire locally. I happened to be next door. The local fire station is only a couple of hundred metres or so away so after a couple of minutes and no sound of a fire engine being heard I walked over there to see why they weren't turning out and found it deserted until someone, presumably a retained local fire-fighter rolled up in a van and told me it's unoccupied most of the time.

We eventually had 5 or 6 appliances at the scene from up to about 20 miles away. But it's not the number that counts it's the speed of first response. A woman had been trapped in a flat above the fire Fortunately she'd been rescued unharmed before the first one arrived; a retired fire-fighter happened to be around.

Re: Gaucho Rasmussen

I read it as "Groucho" first off.

The worrying thing is that IP was supposed to have been designed to route round failures but all too often seems not to.

Can the last person watching desktop video please turn out the light?

I don't really regard a channels "look what is coming up" type announcements as adverts

Each to his own, I suppose, but I don't seem to be the only one here that does.

Re: Not surprised. No. Not even slightly.

"Pretty sure it is was noted as being the prime time for a reason and that was why it was targeted with better programming."

Targeted, certainly. Better? Matter of opinion. Thanks to MythTV we seldom tune in to watch anything at broadcast time these days.

"Pity theres no such thing as targeted advertising due to the strict privacy and freedom laws we have."

No, there's plenty of badly targeted ads. Even in-line from whatever site you're looking at: "You might be interesed in"

...whatever you've just bought and don't need another of

...something that you just decided not buy because it was overpriced crap

...something that matched one key word of your search string but failed on all four others

The reason there's no well targeted advertising is that marketing is over-populated with over-eager gabblers with no self-control and no thinking skills.

"It’s an encouraging figure, as it may incentivise advertisers to use their ad spending more effectively"

There's a leap of logic here which equates "seen" with "effective". For those of us for whom "seen" leads PDQ to "pisses off", "seen" should probably be equated to "counter-productive".

Smart streetlight bods Telensa nearly double full-year revenues

Re: Why?

"surely a cheap arse light sensor on the top will be far cheaper over the long run."

it depends what they're sensing. If, say, they're sensing a pedestrian or vehicle walking along the street the lights can be turned off completely when there's nobody about but turned on when there's someone in range. If they're able to communicate the next one along can also be turned on so as to light up the area the traveller is moving towards. That not only saves power but also cuts light overall pollution although the neighbours might be annoyed by them switching on and off.

Re-identifying folks from anonymised data will be a crime in the UK

"Otherwise it's little old you vs Google, and how do you think that will go?"

Maybe you should ask Max Schrems that.

Re: Tell me - who writes these laws?

"King Canute?"

This sort of comment is usually a good indicator that the commentard in question knows virtually nothing about pre-Conquest English history.

Re: IP addresses are "Personally identifiable information" are they?

"Retail the logs"

Dammit! Retain!

Re: Kids under 13

"How will parents give consent"

It will be up to the service receiving consent to work that out - and to be able to persuade a court that its solution constitutes all reasonable efforts.

"Like I said before: don't expect things to change."

In some respects the new legislation will simply replace the old. The consequences, however do change. Criminal charges against individuals are one change.

Re: intentionally re-identify individuals

Big retailers are already giving data they shouldn't basically to anyone "big" that offers something shiny.

Because they think it's a risk worth taking. It'll stop being worth taking. As ever, some will only learn the hard way.

Those vendor-specific email addresses I use could be quite handy.

"How exactly does one 'recklessly' perform high-level data analysis?"

By telling the court you didn't mean to do it, it just happened that way.

Look on it as a loophole blocked.

Re: Exceptions proving the rule

"No doubt there will be the usual clause where MPs are completely inviolable, also."

And if you ever need to discuss a confidential matter with your MP you'll realise the value of that.

Re: Really?

Yes, tell it to stop adding value liabilities to our product.

FTFY

It's going to take time to adjust to the new reality.

"It boils down to whether the company finds it cheaper to comply with the legislated anonymisation requirements or just sue the researcher. I know where my money would bet."

So do I, on the basis that pissing off an expert who can give evidence against you that could result in an eye-watering fine really isn't a good idea. If your legal department is any good they'll tell you that.

US Homeland Security CIO hits ctrl-alt-delete after just three months

15 minutes

As per a previous thread, clearly the policy is to implement Andy Warhol's idea. By the time of Trump's end of tenure the entire US population will have held a USG post for at least 15 minutes.

3 months is a pretty good tenure for someone not holding a job by nepotism.

Big question of the day: Is it time to lock down .localhost?

Re: Tiny changes may be fatal

"It was unfortunate"

A matter of opinion. For some it was a training opportunity.

Heavy clouds in IT world make it rain gold for UPS box manufacturers

Re: So You Think You're a Software Engineer?

"Programmers designing DCs is about as sensible as airline pilots designing planes."

I think you missed the A/Cs point: if the language used determines the efficiency of the program in terms of CPU cycles to deliver a particular function then ultimately it has an effect on the power and hence cooling requirements of the data centre that runs it.