Posts by gnasher729

Rogue ADT tech spied on hundreds of customers in their homes via CCTV – including me, says teen girl

If you do this to 200 people, there will be _one_ who will take the law in his on hands. He should expect some severe beating.

Attorney General: We didn't need Apple to crack terrorist's iPhones – tho we still want iGiant to do it in future

It’s well known that at least a former head of the NSA supports Apple in this: That creating a back door would overall be bad for US national security. (And the guy didn’t even care about other countries national security, or things like privacy, protection from scams etc. )

All that said... As the FBI boss, if I could decrypt phones, I would keep that very, very secret because I’d want criminals and terrorists to keep using iPhones. And if I couldn’t, I’d tell the world I could, so the criminals switch to something else.

Dutch spies helped Britain's GCHQ break Argentine crypto during Falklands War

Re: Breaks it angle

"CIA had the info, UK and USA are part of 5 eyes, yet, UK had to rely on its European friends."

Well, that problem is solved now.

ALGOL 60 at 60: The greatest computer language you've never used and grandaddy of the programming family tree

That feature is available in Swift as “Auto closure”. However, you are supposed to evaluate such a parameter 0 or 1 times. Used to implement && and || as functions in the standard library, not in the compiler. Very useful for assertions which are not evaluated in a release version. And supported by a clever compiler that can inline everything.

NHS contact tracing app isn't really anonymous, is riddled with bugs, and is open to abuse. Good thing we're not in the middle of a pandemic, eh?

Re: Since it's open source...

"Is it possible to spin your own version of the client that just listens rather than reports?"

With the Apple/Google API this would be entirely unnecessary because no data is shared until _you_ report that you are infected. Of course if you are infected and refuse to report it through the app you deserve to be shot instantly.

Many people won't understand why it is comedy gold:

A key pair consists of a private key and a public key. The public key may be given to anyone in the world, while the private key MUST NEVER EVER leave the device where it was created. So if you create a key pair on.a server and send it to a device, you already violated the most important thing: You have a private key that isn't private.

Re: Do it right from the start

"Google and Apple are not known for software or device products in the medical field."

Apple Watch has quite a few medical uses. Actually, extremely valuable medical uses that have saved people's lives. Detecting certain heart problems with very high accuracy.

But for the problem at hand, they are together solving a problem that isn't medical at all. The problem is: Notify people who have been close to a person X within the last fourteen days. They know how to use bluetooth, they know how to figure out how close one phone is to another, they know how to run this code while the phone is in your pocket with the screen turned off without eating your battery. They even know how to run this code while your phone has shut itself down because the battery shows 0% charge.

"UNLESS, of course

they WANTED it to be a complete balls up, with unimaginable consequences for the near future"

No, that's not what they wanted. What they wanted was putting money into the pockets of Dominic Cumming's best mates brother. At that it was a full success.

Re: One would have throught...

One would have thought that Apple and Google would have some rather smart guys working for them to figure this out.

Say we sit on the same park bench, too close together. Our phones exchange random codes identifying each other. If you get infected, you tell your app and it uploads the codes it used to a server. My phone downloads the complete list of infected phones once a day. It has one of the codes you uploaded, so my phone knows it was nearby someone who is infected.

NHS contact-tracing app is best in the world, says VMware CEO... whose company helped build it

Re: Wear the mask

UK curve is actually falling. Weekly deaths have been going down 20% per week for the last five weeks.

Re: NHSX proximity tracker v1

I think that's for the replacement of the non-working app with one that uses the Apple/Google API.

Don't trust deep-learning algos to touch up medical scans: Boffins warn 'highly unstable' tech leads to bad diagnoses

Problems with photo copiers

Years ago it was found that some photo copiers tried to enhance images, and in the process sometimes changed letters and digits in copied images. So they looked at a rather low quality digit 8, decided it was a rather low quality digit 3, and replaced it with a nice looking 3. It seems the same thing happens again.

Behold: The ghastly, preening, lesser-spotted Incredible Bullsh*tting Customer

Re: There should be an IT Driving Test

Always wondered... Do Formula 1 drivers need a valid driving license?

If it feels like the software world is held together by string and a prayer, we don't blame you: Facebook SDK snafu breaks top iOS apps

I always tell the kids “Don’t trust anything coming from a server”. iOS guarantees that when JSON is parsed you get either correctly parsed data or just an error. Anything in that data needs to be verified, and if necessary rejected. You can’t just assume that you received a dictionary, it must be verified.

But at least crashing of an iOS application is rarely a security risk, and assuming that a Boolean value is a dictionary will lead to a clean crash.

The iMac at 22: How the computer 'too odd to succeed' changed everything ... for Apple, at least

Re: Nowadays Macs don't look different than PCs

"Nobody copies Apple design anymore."

Isn't Huawei just starting to sell AirPod clones?

UK finds itself almost alone with centralized virus contact-tracing app that probably won't work well, asks for your location, may be illegal

Re: Covid jail "prank"

I don't know what the NHS app will do if some idiot claims he is ill to get people into lockdown. The iOS app (reviewed on macrumors.com already) requires some health professional to enter a code. Because unfortunately (or fortunately) people infected are still outnumbered by idiots who would do this for a laugh.

Re: And what about the people ...

"... people who don't have a cell phone addiction, and so don't really see a need to carry one everywhere ..."

You are talking about people with a cell phone addiction, who have to use it everywhere. Many people just want to be reachable wherever they are, and have a mobile phone in their pocket. I carry mine around with me all the time, but not using it. Most people have a phone with them all the time.

Now of course after reading the article it seems that with Apple/Google's solution this will work if two people with their phones in their pockets walk past each other, while the NHS solution only works if both have _active_ phones and both have no other app in the foreground. So if one of the two reads theregister, or one of the two is on Netflix or iPlayer, or one of the two just has the phone in his pocket doing nothing, then the NHS app doesn't work,

Re: Hanlon's razor

Much more likely is that there's not much money to be made from Apple/Google's code. As an iOS developer, you can download a working app right now and just have to add a few bits say to make it NHS specific.

Academics demand answers from NHS over potential data timebomb ticking inside new UK contact-tracing app

Re: Who said it?

“Who said "Each people has the government it deserves"?”

When the USA got Ronald Reagan, half agreed with this saying, half didn’t. With Trump, everyone agrees. With Johnson? No, we don’t deserve him and Cummings and Gove and Patel and the rest of the bunch.

Re: Smartphones

Nothing runs on any smartphone ten years old. Cheaper to give people newer phones.

Re: Sunset?

A “die” date: The value of this kind of app is highest when there are few infected. Everyone lives normal, and the few unlucky ones close to someone infected get locked down immediately. Same as back when we had 100 infected except the numbers don’t go up.

Re: Presumably this will download and operate on all flavours of smartphone...

“Massive server underprovisioning” - apple/Google need about 1Kb per person catching the virus. And everything deleted when it’s more than 14 days old.

I'm doing this to stop humans ripping off brilliant ideas by computers and aliens, says guy unsuccessfully filing patents 'invented' by his AI

What happens when a highly advanced extraterrestrial civilization visits Earth?" Thaler told El Reg.

We'll look at the situation when it happens.

I'd say the inventor needs to be someone who is legally considered to have the same rights as a human being. So far, dolphins and chimpanzees haven't managed that, but maybe an AI can. So if "DABUS" manages that, then DABUS can file its own patents (or whatever its preferred pronouns are), and tell Thaler to f*** off. Possibly sue Thaler for kidnapping or illegally hold him in captivity.

UK snubs Apple-Google coronavirus app API, insists on British control of data, promises to protect privacy

Re: No thanks

Gonzo: I've seen the Apple version of the API. Creating an app with that takes a good developer a few weeks at most. The cost of running it is basically zero, because Apple and Google pay for it.

Re: Why are we even bothering to discuss?

Please not that an app using the Apple / Google API will automatically be compatible with all other apps that do so. So if travelling is allowed again, people using _any_ app using the Apple / Google API will automatically have the same protection when they travel to a foreign country, but not if one of the two phones involved uses the NHS app.

Especially important when tourist travel is working again.

Re: Then they have the same problem as France

What I hope Apple will do: They will accept the NHS / GCHQ app for review, like any other app. Reportedly GCHQ has helped getting around some of the restrictions created by Apple to ensure end user's privacy. Apple will hand the app straight to its developers to analyse how this is done, and all their hacks won't work on the next iOS release anymore.

It's not about privacy and gathering everyone's data really.

I think the real explanation is that whoever came up with the NHS's solution is now totally butt hurt that all the hard work they have done can instead be done with about a dozen API functions. Apple's API is so simple, I could put an iOS app together in two weeks time (unfortunately Apple has said that they will only accept apps from official health services). And I have colleagues who could built an Android app in the same time frame.

I bet someone has to justify a multi million pound bill to the NHS, and that's the real problem.

Wall Street analyst worries iPhone is facing '2nd recession' after 2019 annus horribilis

Re: Saturated Market

How do you spend £70 a month on an iPhone? An iPhone pro should last for three years / 36 months so that is £2,520?

Or could it be most of the money is for bandwidth for downloading movies when he’s on the road? Between iPlayer, Netflix and iTunes I can download everything without paying for excessive bandwidth by doing it at home or at work (until recently).

Keen to go _ExtInt? LLVM Clang compiler adds support for custom width integers

Re: Intel? Excuse me?? INTEL????

C isn’t created for FPGAs, but Clang is created for everything. Including graphics cards and why not FPGAs.

Any custom width?

For desktop / mobile programming a 13 bit int isn’t very useful. But having 128, or 1024, or 25,000 bit integers supported directly in the language, that would be nice for some people. So I’m all for it.

Obviously some changes for compilers needed. I wouldn’t want to have to use long long long long long long int.

Royal Navy nuclear submarine captain rapped for letting crew throw shoreside BBQ party

Re: Optics

Why should an orgy on the dockside not be tolerated?

Common sense would be that they stay at a generous distance (considerably more than 2 meters) from anyone outside the ship, desinfect anything they take on board, and meanwhile come as close to each other as they like. And then leave all together.

You don’t get the virus by being close to others. You get it by being close to others that are infected. And you have a good chance of catching it from people who don’t care about getting close to others.

The rumor that just won't die: Apple to keep Intel at Arm's length in 2021 with launch of 'A14-powered laptops'

Re: Irrelevant

"Apple have less than 10% (and falling) of the desktop market."

Apple has about 90% market share in laptops over $1,000. And that's where you want market share. That's where the money is made.

In the desktop market, they have about 10% of unit sales, but 30% of the revenue. And make more profit than Dell, who in turn makes more profit than anyone else.

"I don't see why Apple would bother with fat binaries. The concept was made obsolete years ago by the Internet. It only made sense when you bought your software on CD in boxes."

Fat binaries are useful to upload to the App Store (and then every device downloads the slim binary that is appropriate). On iOS, apps are not backed up, just the fact that you had them, so if you upgraded from a 32 bit to 64 bit device and restored your backup, you would automatically get the 64 bit version.

There's "ARM based chips" and "ARM based chips designed by Apple".

Apple is hugely ahead in the area that interests them: Low power but not extremely low power, few very powerful cores but not 64 of them. There are companies making 64 core ARM servers. They use a lot of power. Apple doesn't have any chip right now that can do that. But they _can_ built a chip with eight high speed and four low power cores, as the article suggested, and per core they are on par or ahead of Intel. The proposed 8+4 cores would make one hell of a laptop at lower power than using Intel chips.

Re: enabled?

You can bet that Apple has a desktop hidden away somewhere with an ARM processor running full MacOS. At the time when they prepared switching to PowerPC and final decisions hadn't been made yet, they also had some computers with a Motorola 88100 processor running (well, the "flying toasters" screen saver was running on it, I don't know how much else), And of course they had some Macs with a Pentium IV processor before it was released with Pentium Core.

House of Commons agrees to allow Zoom app in Parliament, British MPs will still have to dress smartly

Re: Costs...

If you use FaceTime, for that £568.10 a month you could get everyone in parliament a new iPhone, locked down properly, and an unlimited data plan, and give Johnson some money for a pole dancer. In the first month. The second month it's just the data plan.

Europe publishes draft rules for coronavirus contact-tracing app development, on a relaxed schedule

Re: iOS update would be a blocker on the Apple–Google scheme

If the UK government says so, they have the right.

Re: Titanic thinking

Better to have a hospital and not needing the beds than needing the beds and not having a hospital.

Re: We know what you did ...

"We will never be rid of people in our society who don't give a fuck. It's depressing. "

COVID-19 at least gives us a chance.

Re: Meanwhile in the UK...

"And if the system relies on self-certifying COVID-19 symptoms, imagine how the system will be gamed. Certify yourself, then hold your mobile on a selfie-stick closer to others while shopping, out for a walk etc, maybe?"

Most people are not techies with Asperger's syndrome, so this is unlikely to happen. I wouldn't throw away a solution just because of the possibility of some dickheads. And obviously once you've self-certified, if you come near to another phone that other person will get a message popping up, asking them to call the police and take a photo of you.

Minister slams 5G coronavirus conspiracy theories as 'dangerous nonsense' after phone towers torched in UK

Just followed a YouTube link and the nutter who produced posted something like "My Facebook account has been closed - if 5G was harmless and they had nothing to hide, why would they close my account?"

Think about this logically. If 5G was _really_ there to spread coronavirus, that is produced by some powerful conspiracy with the intent to kill at least 10,000 people in the UK alone, they wouldn't have closed your account. They would have put you in a hole six feet under.

Capita inks deal with NHS to 'bring back staff': Workers get an hour of training to recruit and vet retired doctors, nurses

What we really want to know: How much does Crapita get paid to get one retired nurse or doctor back to work, and how much does the nurse or doctor get paid?

Cloudflare family-friendly DNS service flubs first filtering foray: Vital LGBTQ, sex-ed sites blocked 'by mistake'

Re: Cloudflare won't say what "adult content" is

The saying is: In the USA, you can cut off a breast, but you can't look at it.

Re: So?

"So what's wrong with keeping children away from trans-activist sites? Or any other body dysmorphia activist sites such as pro-anorexia sites?"

Being transgender is not body dysmorphia. About 30 years ago, the health insurance system in Germany had to decide about who pays for treating transgender people, and how to do it. And their result was quite clear: 1. It is a medical problem. 2. There is nothing wrong with the mind, what's wrong is the body. 3. Therefore, people have the right to have the correct medical treatment and to have it paid for by their health insurance, and the correct medical treatment is gender reassignment.

With anorexia, the anorexia itself is a medical problem. And it is a problem of the mind, not the body. Therefore, pro-anorexia sites do NOT help the patient but cause them harm.

HPE fixes another SAS SSD death bug: This time, drives will conk out after 40,000 hours of operation

It's a bug where a huge circular buffer is used, which needs to start back at the beginning of the buffer after 40,000 hours of operation, and the code checking for the condition is wrong by one. Since they are telling people now about this, which means they will update the firmware or be responsible for it, I'd assume this is entirely bad luck.

Sennheiser Momentum True Wireless 2 earbuds: They're good – though for close to £300, they really should be

Should last the duration of a transatlantic flight

What transatlantic flights?

Morrisons puts non-essential tech changes on ice as panic-stricken shoppers strip stores

100,000 infected, 55,000 recovered, 3,400 dead - that’s six percent mortality. There are 45,000 where it’s undecided yet if they end up as “recovered” or “dead”.

If you're wondering how Brit cops' live suspect-hunting facial-recog is going, it's cruising at 88% false positives

Re: Motives and false negatives

False negative rate is really irrelevant. What counts is: How many valid arrests? How much inconvenience (or worse) for false positives, and what is the cost.

If you have one camera, and it flags one wanted criminal and seven innocent citizens, and lets ten perps walk past, then we can install a second camera, and together they flag two wanted criminals and fourteen innocent citizens, and let twenty perps walk past. The doubled number of false negatives doesn't matter, the true positives and the false positives are the only thing that matters.

What hasn't been mentioned actually is who is on the watchlist? Is it just photos of unknown people (say a photo of an unknown bankrobber, where a match means you are a crime suspect), or photos of known people (say a guy who murdered his wife and is now on the run, once the police checks who you are they know you're not that person).

Revolut-won: British banking app gets half a billion bucks in backing, seeks to subvert today's market incumbents

Re: The startup got a European banking licence in late 2018

"Apparently nobody had the foresight to code or legislate for that in any other EU nation, but in the UK I was at least able to bully my GP into using the correct name by asking to sign a form accepting the risk of being misidentified in case of an emergency - they caved quickly. "

I'm not Dutch, but the name in my passport isn't my legal name either. HMRC was fine with it, Barclays Bank is fine with it, everyone is fine with it. Only thing with my passport name is my driving license, and booking flights is a pain.