Posts by GrapeBunch

Spies do spying, part 97: Shock horror as CIA turn phones, TVs, computers into surveillance bugs

22. Writing things on the backs of envelopes is fairly secure. If you are a physician, it is 99% secure. Only a pharmacist will be able to decrypt it.

$310m AWS S3-izure: Why everyone put their eggs in one region

Pyrus vs Citrus trees

If cloud costs .02 / GB, then the home user of the silver standard of storage devices (the external 2.5" USB3 magnetic drive) amortizes his investment in a few (say 3) months. It's a pears and oranges comparison, of course, but it does give a flavour for why (some) cloud storage companies keep losing money just to stay in the game. They have to be competitive both with the big guys, and with on-site storage.

Some tech services are naturals for offshoring: coding, support, telemarketing, manufacturing etc. I wonder to what extent that applies to cloud storage. For example, keep your data in Poughkeepsie, but your redundancy in Poona?

Google's troll-destroying AI can't cope with typos

Willie Bee

Google AI: the real reason he's William the Conqueror.

Analbuddy hoo votted gogg.le iz.za wasteof.space

No deprecation intended, just wanted to raise the spectre of insulting terms also being possible to interpret as links, and th.us triggering different automation modules in filter.space

GoDaddy DNS has gone diddy

Re: Typo propagation?

Sure TTLs, but wouldn't gonedaddy.com be more elegant, a self-fulfilling prophesy typo?

Europe's data protection rules set a high bar for consent – and UK ICO welcomes your thoughts

Virtual nostalgia

freely given, specific, informed and unambiguous

I like that. Apply it retrospectively to sub-prime mortgages, and the global economic collapse of 2008 goes away. Both the people who signed up for the mortgages, and the people who bought the poisoned derivatives, did not give informed consent. And the people who did not inform them, largely got away scot-free with bags of lucre and no negative consequences.

The Psion returns! Meet Gemini, the 21st century pocket computer

Psion Chess

Psion Chess predates the Psion computers mentioned, but, well, Wikipedia puts it this way: "Die Schachengine war in Assembler programmiert. Es gab Versionen für Sinclair QL, Atari ST, Mac, PC und Psion Organiser. Eine Version für den ZX Spectrum aus dem Jahr 1983 ebnete den Weg für die PC-Umsetzung." This may, or may not, explain long-term confusion in my head. Just call me Colonel Dump.

LG, Huawei unwrap 'Samsung Galaxy-killers'

Re: "Wonder why nobody's tried it before"

'view two square windows side by side. Less obvious is why you’d want to.'

Simultaneous chess.

Brit cops can keep millions of mugshots of innocent folks on file

Re: Nobody Mention Backups

The obvious solution is that backups not be kept forever. Let's say backups are labelled M, T, W, H, F and if the change is made on F1 then in a week the offending photos will be flushed out.

I'd also say that having the photos of innocents on tape, out of sight and therefore out of mind, is a huge advance on meddling (or pressured) cops looking in the criminal records databases for excuses to bust somebody, anybody.

Famous last words: I have 50 likes on Instagram.

Giving the coppers the maximum leeway, and basing whatever I know on television, how about this compromise:

1. Delete all (criminal records) database photos of innocents. This is, or should be, trivial to program(me). For example: loop databases, if convictions% = 0 then loop delete photos-in-this-record >> dev null, next record, next database.

2. Allow them to keep hard copy photos in folders;

3. Establish new procedures with sunset rules for digital photos not held in databases.

What they proposed looks to anybody like they're 100% intent on maintaining / creating the Surveillance State, 0% on Magna Carta and its afterthoughts.

A lot of innocents will have had their photo taken, surreptitiously, by police and not know to request that it be deleted. Five years and this is the best they could do? No wonder "laughingstock" is a word. But after you've laughed for a while, "cryingstock" should become available.

Uncle Sam needs you... to debug, improve Dept of Defense open-source software at code.mil

You don't frack for drinking water

Open source can be great "among (wo)men of goodwill", but just like MS in Linux, I'd be afraid of poisoning the well. Not just back doors, but subverting the purposes of the software. In the subtlest ways, of course.

Prepare your popcorn: Wikipedia deems the Daily Mail unreliable

Re: This is wrong

Article about Medical treatment in Atlantic Monthly:

A decade ago, Stanford’s Ioannidis published a paper warning the scientific community that “Most Published Research Findings Are False.” (In 2012, he coauthored a paper showing that pretty much everything in your fridge has been found to both cause and prevent cancer—except bacon, which apparently only causes cancer.)

So, not just radiation. Everything but baaaaaaa.

Re: This is wrong

"How will I know what causes and cures cancer simultaneously?"

You don't need an unreliable source for that. The answer is "radiation".

BOFH: Elf of Safety? Orc of Admin. Pleased to meet you

Re: Working at....

How appropriate! The left-handed guy with the hardhat and clipboard is also a cross-dresser.

Get this: Tech industry thinks journos are too mean. TOO MEAN?!

Re: Just like happened to any other inudstry....

I agree with LDS so much that I almost want to drop a tab of Mormon.

Here's another way of putting it: In the beginning was The Word, PR, painting a rosy picture. Some decades later, we have actual data points. That suffices to explain any differences in attitude between 1980s tech coverage and today's: we know more.

If you don't believe it: coal-powered steam engines.

Radioactive leak riddle: Now Team America sniffs Europe's skies for iodine isotope source

Could it have had anything to do with Chernobyl and its brand new sarcophagus? I don't know, disturbing some previously inert fuel rods? Or one of those weird weather patterns depositing goodies from Fukushima?

Google agrees to break pirates' domination over music searches

Medicine without leeches.

If somebody wanted to set up a fair-use foundation, the music equivalent of a clearing house for donation-supported software, it would have some hurdles to clear. For example, one hurdle would be that 100% of the donated money got to the intended recipients. Another would be that the intended recipients be choosable. For each track, you could choose whether you wanted the donation to go to the musicians, to the technicians, to some charity, or to the label itself. We know in 2017 that this would not work, because the label executives always find ways to siphon off money. It's what they do. Expecting them to do otherwise is like expecting a rat to be tidy. So, would a government pass legislation prohibiting labels from siphoning or clawing back this money--and regardless of whatever weasel words are in the contracts with the musicians--with 3x damages and possible jail terms for the execs? Without that, the idea is a non-starter.

You'd need good ways of anonymizing donations, first that a person donated at all, and second which particular pieces were chosen. Otherwise, labels would try to convince gov't that fair-use donations were an admission of copyright infringement. It's absurd, but it would take only one crooked administration somewhere in the world to start an ugly mudslide.

So, for example, one might want to donate $5 for fair-use of The Beatles, Lucy in the Sky With Diamonds to the Timothy Leary Foundation (if there is such a thing, I apologise). On the credit card bill one would want it untraceable, and on the site, at its Lucy page, the donation would be credited to a hash code, which one (but not anybody else) could verify. For the untraceability aspect, it makes sense to me that the site fall under the wing of a large retailer, even though otherwise that makes me cringe. So it would show up on your credit card bill as a transaction with Orinoco, which nobody would question because 99.9% of its transactions are for widgets. Thinking out loud.

Love lambda, love Microsoft's Graph Engine. But you fly alone

Chess

Methods of doing pairings for one-on-one sports where the number of competitors is much greater than the number of rounds, these looked like witchcraft in the 1950s, and sophisticated by 1970. But in 2017 they are tired. When computer pairings came to the fore, the systems were rewritten to eliminate the last vestiges of uncertainty, so now pairings may contain no trace of favouritism. Both the manual and computerized methods are algorithmic, procedural. If Graph Theoretic methods become available, it is an exciting new kinggame. When I last looked into this in 2007, Graph Theory was being taught to undergrads, but way back when I studied Math(s), it was not. Caveat: nobody has determined whether Graph Theory is an appropriate method for making pairings, often called Swiss System pairings. Another caveat: you may invent the greatest pairing system since sliced bread, but it has to be seen as such.

Google bellows bug news after Microsoft sails past fix deadline

Give me Continuous, or give me Nothing.

Pardon me, is this where I can order one of them Microsoft Continuous Lifecycle London? See, me cousin is interested, like. She's interested and I'd like to give it to 'er as a berfday present. So stay shtum and here's me credit card, like. Start it soon, cause 'er ticker's a bit scratchy. Yeh. She'll be wantin the ticker upgrade program, har! No, I'm not from London, she's from London. Right. Apology accepted. It's why I don't sound like I'm from London. But I can do impressions. Want to hear one? It's from Penzance: "Why you laugh at me? Eeet ees breeleeant for man in open to conveence everybody zat roof need freequent main ten ance."

Oh happy day! Linus Torvalds has given the world Linux 4.10

Missing icon for "you should be sooo glad this is a text rather than audio medium"

Oh, when Linus walked, when he talked, he took my Wins away, oh happy day, oh happy day.

Watson can't cure cancer ... or all the stuff that breaks IT projects

Cancer is Amarillo,

Friendly funding a pecadillo,

Recoding to read a different data format should take a morning, but in the Medical world, every programmer has to be an armadillo.

Round-filed 'paperless' projects: Barriers remain to Blighty's Digital NHS

Re: 2018? Are you having a larf?

Has comedic potential, though. Can you imagine Sid James: "No no, mate, Doctor Siri prescribed No Treatment for my lipoma, but you're saying it was Neutron Bombardment for my lymphoma?? I don't have a lymphoma!!" Or something like that.

Florida Man jailed for 4 years after raking in a million bucks from spam

Ideally, I'd get one spam email and forward it to the authorities who would act immediately to shut down whoever sent it. In practice, the reaction to such reports is "you probably signed up for their spam but forgot".

You live in a different universe. Decades ago I would report e-mail based fraud to the RCMP address for that. What I heard back: silence. What I heard elsewhere: lots of reports of people being scammed, no reports of anybody in Canada going to jail for scamming them. Ditto for phishing e-mails spoofing a bank at which I actually held an account.

Mere spam. Well. I occasionally help a small number (3 ?) of individuals with computer problems. One of them was complaining about a particular spam stream. She swore up and down that she never signed up for it. As she never erased e-mails, the forensic trail was easy to uncover. There was a first spam, and it was from the purveyor, thanking her for signing up. It transpired that yes she did sign up for the spam, thinking to receive messages only about subject A, but in fact getting messages about subjects B, C, D, E, and F in addition. And lots of them. Another helpee doesn't sign up for anything, and if she receives spam, it is filtered for her by [ubiquitous free email purveyor].

In brief, if they actually do something about fraud attempts, I happily forgive their inaction on mere spam.

Sometimes when I look at these reports, I begin to think that they are fake news. Maybe not 100% fake, but at least doctored. For example, in this item, the bad guy did a plea bargain by agreeing to give back the money. So who receives the money? The people whose computers he botnetted? The spam recipients? I doubt it. There's something too trite about the story, so trite that I smell trout.

New Royal Navy Wildcat helicopters can't transmit vital data

Net stockings

Net stockings - standard Navy issue.

UK Snoopers' Charter gagging order drafted for London Internet Exchange directors

LINX bod: "Looks like I'm pwned" "Nothing to what you'll have on yours"

Unfortunately, the gentleman not speaking this line has the call of whether probable cause exists for a search of another person's computer. The spoken gentleman does not.

Why can't the L be changed to mean Limerick. Or even Los Angeles. Or don't change anything and move the whole op to blooming London, Ontario, Canada. Although my personal favourite for an organization that no longer works but has too much baggage, is for all of good will merely to start a new one.

FAKE BREWS: America rocked by 'craft beer' scandal allegations

Pomona ad astera

He might win the suit. Or Walmart might be elected POTUS in 2020. Or neither. Or both.

My father used to make beer. It wasn't a "kit", the concept maybe hadn't been invented. But he made it from ingredients he could buy at a supermarket. For years I never tasted a beer like it. Then on a visit to the UK, on a ferry to the Continent, I ordered a Stella Artois, and Ding! that was exactly the same taste. I don't know how Stella rates among the cognoscenti, but let's look at it this way: home-made beer could have been a lot worse.

I'm rather a fan of cider, at corner shops. In the UK, it's cheap, it gets you tipsy, and, one hopes, it is not too hard on the kidneys. A random brand seemed OK (Gaynor's, Gaymer's, whatever), but I do remember buying Strongbow, and it was REVOLTING. Now, they couldn't sell it if people didn't like it. So is this one of those things like cilantro, where by genetic predisposition some people find it inedible (I'm not one of those, incidentally)? Or is some other mechanism in play?

The Register's guide to protecting your data when visiting the US

Re: I'm more relaxed visiting China than the US (or Russia)

The story of the ersatz "bomb" caused me to remember way back, in the glory days of travel, I often used to carry a chess clock. By securing the levers, I could make it not tick, but even then it always attracted the attention of airport security x-ray machines. If it did not, that meant that the agent was sleeping. Putting an analogue chess clock in checked (ha ha) luggage was always safe, but I doubt it would be now. I wonder what US border agents do with today's digital chess clocks. They are little programmable computers, but don't contain data in any meaningful way, don't have passwords etc etc. Would you like to have a game of chess, Dave?

Re: I'm more relaxed visiting China than the US (or Russia)

In Canada, airport sniffer dogs are beagles. Cheese is expensive in Canada (because eggs and dairy are supported through quotas etc which I favour, but still it's great to have imported cheese). Before a visit to the UK, I discovered to my surprise that it (was) legal to import cheese from the UK (despite quotas and BSE), so I bought a few # of delicious Stilton from a random supermarket, paying less than half what it would cost in Canada, and brought it home. I declared the cheese to the customs agent, and was sent to the inspection room. The beagle came up and politely (after all, it was a Canadian beagle) sat next to my luggage. So then I took all the Stilton out of my luggage and they tried again. The beagle again came up to me, sat next to my luggage, and looked with those sad eyes at its master. I think by that stage they realized that they weren't going to get any useful work out of the beagle until my Stilton, and anything it had touched, was long moved into another part of the air terminal.

In 2009, the last time I did US-involved travelling, US border agents had no interest in computers. Airport security would sometimes ask you to power up a laptop to make sure it wasn't an obomba. Canadian airport security did similar. In fact, Canadian airport security was more interested in computers. They would sometimes swab the keyboard, and put said swab in a gizmo, presumably for explosive residue. US airport security did not do that.

The whole body scan thing put a damper on my travel enthusiasm. It's tricky (tendentious?) to blame sh¡t on a particular Prez. When the colour of the White House goes from one primary to another (but never G), I feel confident that the outgoing Prez puts in motion changes that the electorate will blame on the new Prez. Despite the moronic lists of names that contain no other data, those Americans, or some of them, can be clever.

Re: Even Americans can get deported

So why did the Mexicans not just deport him back to the US?

He may have been deported to Mexico, but not over the Mexico immigration border control, which begins several miles beyond each Mexican border city. So Americans can simply walk into Tijuana, buy a belt, and walk back. The first time they're asked for documents is when they're returning to USA.

The Soviets, for all their blemishes, had the passport / visa thing worked out properly in the 1980s. They did not put any stamp in your passport. The visa was a separate document. At one time, I thought that countries such as Israel did the same.

My country issues 5-year passports. We get warned that other countries will not allow you to enter if your passport has 6 months or less validity. Is that nonsense, or are all passports only 90% passports?

Some countries allow foreigners to hold passports if parents or grandparents were born in that country. I could hold one such passport, but then I'd have to file tax returns in that country (as well as in my own) so it is not worth it to me. I am one generation shy of being able to carry two other passports, and in neither case would the country be so invasive of my business. Close, no cigar. My wife could hold a passport from a fifth country, but I don't think I can too by virtue of being married to her. Aside from the embarrassment of holding a passport while being able to speak only about 5 words of the language.

Inside Confide, the chat app 'secretly used by Trump aides': OpenPGP, OpenSSL, and more

So funny they couldn't be making it up, yet they do.

Canadians have decades of loving satire news, parody news, and yea, even fake news. This one is all three, and even doubly fake because what they call a security breach is actually, well, you be the judge:

https://www.thebeaverton.com/2017/02/major-security-breach-donald-trumps-personal-phone-outdated-fisher-price-model/

Screen crapture

I don't know about androids, but on an iPod 2g, you can record what's on the screen by pressing the two buttons at the same time. The screen capture then appears in your "Photos". That may open another attack vector. If the attack works, it gets only a subset of the messages, but perhaps the "most important" ones. Such as the answer to "what's the password for ....?", or "where do you go for rapture?"

Hortonworks brakes on breaking even, continues to burn cash

"Next Year in"

Curiously, every gog hit on "next year in" refers to Jerusalem, as in "next year in Jerusalem". At least in the first page of hits. Isn't there a piece of Great Literature that is "Next Year in [Exotic Place that isn't Jerusalem]" ? By famous dead guy such as Aldous Huxley?

Left to own devices: Next Year in Biarritz, alliterative with CEO's surname.

Linus Torvalds decides world doesn't need a new Linux today

I think I'll go down to Rio

It's refreshing that Linus is as arbitrary and capricious as, well, me. The similarity doesn't end there. Millions hang on his decisions. Among those waiting for my next pronouncement are, well, nobody. It doesn't get any better than this.

Verisign probed by US Dept of Justice over $135m .web auction

Private auction

"Nu Dot Co was the only one out of those seven that refused to take part in a private auction where the proceeds would be shared between the companies rather than a public auction where the money would be given to domain name overseer ICANN."

Elsewhere, the "private auction" concept would be frowned upon, possibly even illegal. How does it further the public good?

Why software engineers should ditch Silicon Valley for Austin

Grammar and Geography Gnastic alert

In the comments, site sb cite; cache sb cachet. But what really caught my pedantic eye was the map. Seattle is up a snowy mountain somewhere on the Olympic Peninsula. Denver is about 150 miles closer to Kansas than it is in real life. Toronto is on a land-extension drawn onto the map because the map itself is of USA. As to its actual orientation inside Canada, you've pinned it around Brantford, but maybe it's a heartier laugh to be London, Ontario. So far as climate goes, I would have thought that the SF Bay area with its surprisingly (considering how far south it is) cold, damp and foggy weather would be a perfect fit for Brits. Also Seattle and its Canadian cognate Vancouver, should help one maintain that English rose complexion. As for the rest of NA: there is a reason for central heating / cooling.

Judge green lights Microsoft vs Uncle Sam gag order case

Fighting the good fight

</cynicism> Whatever happens, it's refreshing to see MS fight for its customers.

Brexit could further harm woeful rural payments system

Technological fix

OP: "RPA aims to make its digital mapping data no more than three years old, as required by the EU, and has a goal of ensuring maps are no more than one year old. "

Doesn't that strike anybody as upside-down? Digital maps should be up to date, at least as far as the submitted data goes. Mostly that could be entered the same day it is received, maybe in some particularly complex cases it could take a week. Three years ??? It's not always, eternally, universally, about Brexit.

Re: Cheaper food at the supermarket.

"The best thing for the RPA is a bought of transparency"

Priceless.

Crims in £160m broadband scam facing 44 years of porridge

If they only had caused a Global Financial Collapse, they might have got away with the fraud. Too bad for them, that role was already filled.

USA! USa! Udia! India! India! Apple nudges iPhone production base

Law of Karna

"the Karnataka province"

Karnataka is one of the 29 states of India. Canada has provinces, Australia and India have states. Here, let me use that in some sentences:

I'll have chile con karna takaway, and you'll pay for it.

There is no breaking the Eternal Law of Karna. 't'aka trumps all other Laws.

GitLab.com luckily found lost data on a staging server

Losing users is not the same as losing users data.

Ring.

"Support."

"Uh huh..."

"...Ask not for whom the tel blows, it tolls for the

luser."

Click.

'Maker' couple asphyxiated, probably by laser cutter fumes

CO-opt

Around here, carbon monoxide monitors last at best 10 years because the radioactive materials in them have half-lives. There must be a better way.

Microsoft's Cloud UI brings Windows full circle

Daemonology

Surely it's not C-SHELL, but CS-HELL.

National Audit Office: UK's military is buying more than it can afford

Re: And the winner is...

You can easily save $5 billion a year in maintenance by selling the kit that doesn't work to Canada. And sleep the Sleep of the Just in the knowledge that it will never be used against you. Or anybody, in all likelihood.

Kylie withdraws from Kylie trademark fight, leaving Kylie to profit from… existing?

Warm the cockles

http://goldengirlfinance.com/inspiration/?post_id=2514

The first one stuck in my mind because we had family friends named Brick. Later it transpired that we also have relatives (sur-) named Brick. Needless to say, I will never shop at the Brick Warehouse. But the end of the story at least was happy.

2017 is already fail: Let’s try a Chinese reboot

Re: False deadlines

They demand immediate attention from me, insisting on the urgency of the matter, then proceed to dither about or tinker with my work endlessly, as if those deadlines evaporated into air as thin as the stuff that fills their heads.

I don't really work well under pressure. But I'm relieved when I make a deadline. At least it's over, right? But clients that do this demonstrate that they were dicking with me only to be jerks, and for no other reason.

By dikking around, they're reiterating their hierarchical superiority. Also, there's a good chance they don't understand what you did, even though it's exactly what they asked for. Rodin needed tonnes of bronze to convey the impression of thought; they intend the same with a mere pause. Of. Appropriate. Duration. It's on page 157.

Re: dozidoze?

do-si-do, or however you want to spell it, is an important part of growing up. It is seeing where the other person is, without physically being able to see them.

Devonians try to drive Dartmoor whisky plan onto rocks

Re: Slàinte mhath

That programme tore the heart out of the community.

That would be Silent Witness working overtime on a holiday weekend.

Re: Whisky vs Whiskey

I come in peace. When we were kids, we made up alternative lyrics to radio jingles. I have adjusted the spellings in a song that went with a jingle tune for peanut butter:

Whisky, whiskey, best by far;

Creamy and smooth to the bottom of the jar;

Tastes so good, you'll want more;

Buy some more at your grocery store.

Whisk(e)y!

Should please everybody. And as a descendant of long-ago booze merchants from Devon, I'll have you West Country types know that I'm of two minds about your fresh air hobbies.

Hey, AT&T. Help us out. Why is buying Time Warner a good idea?

It's to get AOL and win the Internet.

Northumbria Uni fined £400K after boffin's bad math gives students a near-killer caffeine high

30 grams is a horking mountain of powder. Perhaps the responsible person's arithmetic skills were shy, but common sense should have told him to re-check. I remember extracting the tea-equivalent of caffeine in first year Chemistry lab, and what surprised me was how much white powder came out of what would have been about 5 cups of tea. Thank goodness nobody croaked.