Posts by bombastic bob

Chrome devs attempt to slip muzzle on resource-guzzling browser beast with 'Never-Slow Mode'

Re: Better solution

last time I tried, Pale Moon wouldn't build on FreeBSD...

Re: Better solution

firefox better? slightly.

However, the arrogant devs over at Mozilla have basically LOCKED US INTO the 2D FLATTY McFLATFACE FLATSO 'Australis' HAMBURGER MENU CRAPBAG UI "just like Chrome" and so I'm not willing to give them a whole lot o' credit for that...

I wish I had the time and funding to port Webkit over to MY X11 TOOLKIT (which is blisteringly fast if I ever get time to complete it), get it running cross-platform for Win32 [at least], and display my own window decorations and borders to ENFORCE the 3D SKEUOMORPHIC, with a *REAL* menu, and make it a competing browser, lightweight like Midori, plugins like Firefox, and built-in "NoJS" or "NoScript" and advanced cookie management and ad blocking without whitelists. And statically linked so it loads REALLY FAST without bloatware shared libs.

yeah, what people REALLY want!

[if you want to save CPU utilization, STOP! USING! BLOATWARE! SHARED! LIBS! and javascript on the client]

From Firefox to fired cocks: Look who's out to save you being shafted by insecure Internet of Dingalings – it's Mozilla!

Re: Huh?

there was that 'FUFMe' device a while back that was supposed to work over cell phones, as I recall...

Some people simply wanna do the cyber-sex thing with actual remote devices connected to actual remote humans. Maybe that's what it is. But I wonder if lag times might change the dynamics a bit too much...

(IT angle? where is it?)

Sure, you can keep Grandpa Windows 7 snug in the old code home – for a price

Re: Don't worry 7,

Tax software (updated every year) may make sticking with 7 hard to do, unless it runs OK under Wine. I have not tried this, however.

Otherwise I have _ZERO_ need to leave windows 7. I don't use it for web surfing, just accounting, taxes, software development, and music production, and occasionally, e-mail, in plain text only, with thunderbird.

I should, over the next year, do what I can to make a 100% "POSIX" transition possible, even if it means getting a Mac.

Crypto exchange in court: It owes $190m to netizens after founder 'dies without telling anyone vault passwords'

Re: Bullshit

a normal LEGIT company would have some sort of 'escrow' system set up, like writing down the passwords or copying files/info onto an unencrypted device, and placing this into a bank safety deposit box, and/or keep in secure legal storage at a law office.

IANAL, but there's an obvious liability issue here, if it's not a deliberate scam.

Oh cool, the Bluetooth 5.1 specification is out. Nice. *control-F* master-slave... 2,000 results

The 'mistress' side of the device uses a whip for communication...

Re: It's not cultural cluelessness

with respect to adopting the bullshit around this kind of crap... (i.e. the SJW "sensitivity" bullshit)

neither do MOST people, from what I've seen. I generally rebel against the entire concept. I'll continue to use 'he' as a generic pronoun with the sex of the subject is not known. "The baby crapped HIS diaper". It was a girl? Well, the sentence is still grammatically correct. I won't change it.

And *NEVER* *EVAR* use "the singular 'their'" - *shudder*

Icon because too many people fall into this trap and give "them" what "they" want, those bullies! NO rewards for bad behavior!

El Reg is focusing on the SJW angle because they are, *ahem*, "illustrating absurdity by being absurd" !!!

OK - _where_ have I heard that quote from before??? Some radio talk show guy... heh

Just think of Master/Slave in BDSM terms, then *DEMAND* that we be recognized as BDSM'ers, and our rights MUST be respected, affirmative action special treatment blah blah. I'll laugh while the chaos ensues and a bunch of SJW's step up to the task to "defend us", and eat popcorn and drink beer.

Ok to make it official (again) there's:

master/slave

dominant/submissive

giver/getter

top/bottom

Uki/Semi (it's a JUDO term. Judo. Heh)

etc. (I'm, at a loss now, don't wanna do another google search on BDSM terminology)

(and the safety word is: semprini)

preferred pronouns... my preferred pronoun is "Sir!" though it usually sounds more like "asshole"

"a snowflake gets offended"

A daily occurrence, like taking a dump

If not for the smell, nobody would care

[I saw 42 upvotes, so I left it as-is]

Windows Defender update: So secure, it wouldn't let Secure-Boot Windows PCs, er, boot

disable that whole pesky Secure Boot thing.

should've been done from the start, In My Bombastic Opinion

What's that, Skippy? You want a taste of Windows 10 19H2? Oops, too late

Re: Please quit complaining

"you can bitch all you like but nobody's listening AT MICROSOFT."

Fixed it for ya!

Yeah nobody at MICRO-SHAFT is listening, we scream "what about the icebergs?" and they're all "FULL SPEED AHEAD!!!" (obligatory Titanic reference for WIn-10-nic) Their arrogance is only exceeded by their cluelessness.

Re: XP Search

for search I just install Cygwin and use find+grep [it's probably faster, too], just like I would on Linux and FreeBSD

Re: No more testing

"and leaving it to the public FANBOIS will always be a mistake."

fixed it for ya!

Good news! Only half of Internet of Crap apps fumble encryption

Re: New???

yeah and ROT-13 if you want a symmetric "key"

ancient code methods included tattooing a secret message on a slave's head, letting his hair grow, then sending him out to deliver the message. Early invisible ink with lemon juice also. But these are both examples of steganography, not actual crypto.

The wikipedia page on History of Cryptography mentions the 'Atbash cipher' from around 2500 years ago, where you take an alphabet and map it to its reverse [rather than ROT-x]. So A becomes Z, B becomes Y, etc. until M and N swap for one another. Apparently use of this cipher even made it into the Bible, where 'sheshach' is an 'atbash' of 'Babylon' in Hebrew (other examples also exist, and some are on the wikipedia page for 'Atbash cipher').

As for military grade ROT-x, that was the 'Caesar Cipher' mentioned earlier, that according to the wikipedia page, was used by Julius Caesar in his private correspondence.

(so yeah some references for all o' this, you're welcome, a few seconds in a search engine and some entertaining reading)

small memory footprint in devices

end to end encryption in small footprint devices may be more difficult than perceived...

Unless they have ARM processors instead of microcontrollers, with significant NVRAM space for encryption libs, and so on, the libraries just won't fit on the devices, and the algorithms are likely to run too slowly anyway.

What needs to happen for this to work is some help on the silicon end, like hardware networking with built-in SSL support. There is ENC624J600 (which was around $4 on digikey's site) for ethernet, but I don't know of any wifi bolt-on systems with similar built-in SSL capability. They're obviously NOT "the cheaper solution" on the hardware end. Supporting SSL and related protocols needs quite a bit of firmware.

As for phone applications and the cloudy IoT servers, someone should be PUNISHED if NOT using proper encryption and security at THAT level... it's too obvious of a need, and too easy to integrate. NO EXCUSE!

/me points out that Android has a free library or two (probably built in, probably uses webkit and/or OpenSSL) that handles 'https' requests, and I'd bet iOS does, too. For desktops there's OpenSSL.

Intel to finally scatter remaining ashes of Itanium to the wind in 2021: Final call for doomed server CPU line

x86 arch isn't all THAT 'crap' and here's why: name a single RISC architecture chip that currently outperforms x86 _AND_ runs on desktop computers! *crickets*

CISC vs RISC is an old debate. RISC applications tend to take up more memory, as do 64-bit ones [in general]. But in the case of RISC, you're dealing with instruction fetching and pipelining too. Sometimes having one instruction instead of 2 or 3 or 4 just makes things GO FASTER. It also makes it significantly more complex on the silicon, eat more power, etc.. So RISC has significant advantages in phones and other battery operated things.

And what made AMD64 so brilliant was its obvious 'evolutionary' rather than 'revolutionary' design, including a backwards compatibility, almost like the way 16-bit went to 32-bit for x86.

Why Intel didn't do this first amazes me...

and now, /me quotes the 'Dead Parrot' sketch in its entirety, substituting 'Itanium' for 'parrot'. Thanks, El Reg, for that perfect analogy in the photo for the article link on the main page.

"Pining for the fjords" - heh

I'm a crime-fighter, says FamilyTreeDNA boss after being caught giving folks' DNA data to FBI

Re: inaccurate testing

"Ethnicity reports are poor unless you are mostly West European Origin"

what if you're 1/1024'th American Indian ?

(I'm around 1/8 and actually LOOK like it, unlike a certain politician in the USA that claimed 'Native American' on a COLLEGE APPLICATION to qualify for 'affirmative action' programs - right, 'Pocahontas' ? and I personally *DESPISE* racial quotas of ANY kind)

I have to wonder if anyone's considered scamming DNA test results to qualify for PREFERENTIAL TREATMENT... (but suggest using IQ results for head-o-the-line privs and you'll get a ship-load of backlash!)

Re: Yep

"as usual the trumpLIBtards start with sad little insults,"

fixed it for ya. Seriously, I voted for and support Trump, and you can read my existing comments on this topic if you want to know what I think.

Civil liberties and 'rights of the accused' are EXTREMELY important in a free society; otherwise, you might as well be in a dictatorship. [and I'm pretty sure that Trump would agree with this, particularly in light of the current 'witch hunt' going on].

Re: Proof of ownership?

lemme 'splain...

the violation of the rights of everyone in "the system" is allowing law enforcement to LEGALLY "go on a fishing expedition" with it. A warrant should be necessary, identifying the SPECIFIC person you're trying to match it against. And to get a warrant, you'd need evidence to show to a judge to justify it. Otherwise, law enforcement "fishing expeditions" is generally a violation of privacy. We don't need THAT in our society, now do we?

Re: Proof of ownership?

"The idea that criminals have no rights is disturbing."

Exactly. If you have EVER been falsely accused of something, or in ANY way wrongly prosecuted, you'd have to agree. The important thing is that THE ACCUSED specifically has rights. Once "the accused" becomes "a criminal" in someone's minds, and it's NOW justified that "criminals have no rights", then say goodbye to any fairness in the criminal justice system.

Adversarial criminal justice in which the accused has EVERY possible advantage means that 'wrong convictions' happen least often. If it means that criminals get off without punishment, so be it. And if it means that law enforcement can't be LAZY by doing FISHING EXPEDITIONS in a DNA database, TOO BAD.

It's better to catch the ACTUAL criminal, and convict without a shadow of a doubt. Then we lock 'em up knowing the right person is in jail, and wrongly convicted people (due to prosecutorial laziness or ABUSE of power) don't end up there instead.

"the NHS in league with the plods"

If not NOW, then eventually...

Re: Shocked

how about "government run hospitals" and EVERYONE'S blood samples?

Bug-hunter faces jail for vulnerability reports, DuckDuckPwn (almost), family spied on via Nest gizmo, and more

ratted out when you report a vulnerability?

Ok here's the new procedure when you report a vulnerability:

a) find a lesser vulnerability, one that's unlikely to get cops sent to your door, and report THAT one first

b) if the cops are called on you, offer the WORSE one and threaten to actually SELL THE THING TO BLACK HATS if they DO NOT DROP THE CHARGES.

c) follow through on whichever one matters the most

See, THAT is what YOU GET when you PUNISH a WHITE HAT HACKER. You get an ANGRY GREY HAT willing to SEEK REVENGE, however long that might take...

Siri, how do you wipe that smug smile from Qualcomm's face? Apple wins patent skirmish with chip nemesis

It's a "Sue War"

a Sue War by Sue-ers. And it kinda stinks.

(too many lawyers)

Are you aware of the gravity of the situation on Mars? Why yes, say boffins: We rejigged Curiosity to measure it

or, once DID hold water. during formation [let's say], and probably not that long ago in terms of mars-a-logical history

accelerometers read 1G in the direction of gravity (combined sum of all 3 axes on typical 3 axis accel) and so you can use them to determine the orientation of things. Re-purpose to use them to measure gravity differences is pretty smart. I've done coding with the angular position in the past, in that case for a surfboard, and did an interesting "video" of xyz plots to show what was happening over time. I'm guessing they take regular measurements of the IMU, now, and extrapolate the gravity changes from it.

beer icon, of course!

A second preview of .NET Core 3? Shucks, Microsoft. You spoil us

"Fools errand."

see icon

Re: Standalone... in which context?

in 1999 there was _NO_ ".Not" nor C-pound

Re: Standalone EXEs - what futuristic sorcery is this?

I think Micro-shaft is stuck in a loop, but it's going backwards.

The UI for Windows "Ape" and Win-10-nic went all 2D FLATTY McFLATFACE FLATSO, like Windows 1.0 but uglier.

Now they BRAG about creating stand-alone EXE's ? I guess they forgot about MS-DOS!

I have a brilliant idea: STOP using ".Not" in the _FIRST_ place, don't use C-pound, write in C or C++.

Any takers? We'll "party like it's 1999" writing code that does NOT need ".Not".

/me points out that if you have not already been doing 'static link' and ZERO ".Not" dependencies, you should be... in which case, stand-alone EXE's have been "getting done" since, like, forever.

Furious Apple revokes Facebook's enty app cert after Zuck's crew abused it to slurp private data

Re: Promise to do better

could not say this better.

Even Windows 10 can't save the PC market as chip shortages, Brexit uncertainties bite

Re: One word...

the last PC I bought was a reconditioned Lenovo - with Win 7 on it - because I still could and didn't want to lose the opportunity to get pre-installed 7.

Re: Windows 10 can't save the PC market

"Most of the things that a home user did on their PC, they now do on their phone"

that was the perception from SALES data... but people who buy a smart phone don't throw away their PCs, they just don't buy NEW ones. Same with slabs. That misinterpretation of the market drove Micro-shaft to do what they did in 8 and Win-10-nic - the "one windows, everywhere" nonsense, in particular. The spectacular failure of THAT market thrust should prove my point. [admittedly 8's tile screen works for a fondle-slab, but NOT on a PC and 8.0 was a MAJOR failure, too]

You're right about a few people I would have to admit. But from my own perception, I'd say that the vast majority of people still use PCs for what PCs do better for, and just don't buy new ones.

Give people a REASON to get a new PC, though, and they will, if for no other reason than to replace the aging hardware that's increasingly difficult to find repair parts for [or have security concerns that Intel won't fix]. Windows 10, of course, stands in the way of that.

Windows 10 can't save the PC market

From title: "Even Windows 10 can't save the PC market"

Fixed it. You're welcome. After all, windows 8 and 10 *BROKE* the PC market!!! Well, that _and_ the lack of Moore's Law causing next year's model to be *PERCEPTABLY* faster by 25% every year.

Now... a re-release of Windows 7, or even XP, complete with 'new hardware' updates and any additional kernel+driver fixes from Win-10-nic, *WOULD* save the PC market, if Micro-shaft even DARED to admit their YUGE mistakes with 8 and 10...

but they're too busy slapping lipstick onto the non-oinky end of THAT boar!!!

/me wonders how many Win-10-nic users would GLADLY *PURCHASE* Windows 7 to replace 10 with... as long as it was being maintained, updated to run on the hardware, and so on [or even if it were NOT]

Say what?! An AI system can decode brain signals into speech

Ghost in the Shell

waiting for my brain augment... [just don't hack my ghost]

Worried about Brexit food shortages? North Korean haute couture has just the thing

Re: "Are people _really_ saying that 'supermarket shelves will be empty"

"customs checks for goods arriving from the EU take no more than about 30 seconds to process, this is a benefit of free movement of goods within the EU."

It's my understanding that there are no serious problems at either the Canadian nor the Mexico border in the U.S. as far as commercial vehicles go (and I also know someone who's a U.S. Customs officer). Sure you may go from a 30 second to a 30 minute wait [let's say] but I doubt it will be long enough to spoil produce.

In any case, trade agreements can help to streamline this process, and you could (in theory) have inspectors working on the "foreign" side. If UK Customs has such bottlenecks that it takes weeks for a container to be cleared, it reflects an inefficiency in the system that needs to be corrected (or a serious problem with that one country trying to get things in).

So maybe a simple trade agreement with the EU, in which a similar process (as it is now) continues to happen, might be a good idea.

Re: How I explain Brexit to children

"he wants to leave and take just the blue bricks with him."

But (it seems to me) many of his blue bricks were re-painted and given to others without his consent. And the ones 'in charge' are doing what THEY want without regards to what HE wants. [it's how I see Brexit from across the pond]. The simplistic analogy falls apart in the face of what _really_ happens.

and edible clothing... gives new meaning to "eat my shorts"

I studied hard, I trained for years. Yay, now I'm an astronaut in space. Argggh, leukemia!

Re: magnetics

well, it kinda works like this:

For high energy gamma, 1 inch of lead or 2 inches of steel is an approximat "tenth thickness"; that is, with that much material between you and a source of radiation, on the shielded side the dose rate is about 1/10 of what it is on the unshielded side. For water, it's 3 feet if I remember correctly. I think concrete and dirt is 1 foot.

For neutrons the numbers change. Lead and steel don't do diddly squat for neutrons, and water and plastic have a tenth thickness of around 1 foot. If you include neutron absorbing material you can reduce it significantly, though - however, the shielding would deplete over time and become less effective the more it's exposed to neutron flux.

The idea of having a double-hull with water in between isn't bad. Plastic or oil might actually work better, though [but cost more]. I guess a returning space ship could deliver its extra shield water to a space station, to be used for 'whatever'. But the extra mass would be a heavy penalty in fuel. And now you could probably calculate how thick it would all need to be...

Re: Radiation effects methinks

"Just wondering if we could create an artifitial magnetic field arround our interstellar spacecraft to mitigate the radiation issues"

That would help against charged particles, but not neutrons nor gamma. For it to work against those, you'd need a lot of other particles trapped in there, too. That happens to be the case with the Van Allen belts, though.

Neutrons are particularly bad in that they case things to _become_ radioactive, or change the atom into something else (even if temporarily, like Nitrogen 16 from Oxygen in water that is exposed to a high neutron flux, as in a nuclear reactor, which after a few seconds, turns back into Oxygen 16, but you can easily measure the additional radioactivity just from the decay of N-16 to O-16).

High energy gamma radiation can disassociate chemical bonds, effectively 'cracking' them, or cause oddball recombinations of chemicals that would otherwise not form [this is, I believe, the mechanism by how radiation kills a living cell]. Anything that's considered "ionizing" will do this, more or less.

The best way to shield against gamma radiation is mass. Gamma interacts with atoms of high mass by ionizing the electrons, 'exciting' them, and they either absorb it [heating] or spit out lower energy gammas [scattering]. Other particles like free electrons, protons, and alpha, will be shielded by relatively thin layers of material, so you won't need a magnetic field at all - just need a decent hull on a ship, or a suit made of some kind of thick material for those.

Neutron shielding needs to scatter the neutrons and possibly absorb them. Materials that absorb neutrons are well known, boron and hafnium being two of them [used in nuclear reactors to control reactions, for example]. These materials deplete as they absorb neutrons, though, so they have finite life. And you might have to 'scatter' neutrons to bring the energy level to the right point to be absorbed. This means hydrogenous material to maximize the energy decrement per collision with a neutron.

Anyway, the magnetic idea isn't bad when you consider the Van Allen belts, but it's the ions they trap that are doing the shielding, and not the actual magnetic field. Actually, though, if a nuclear rocket had water as a propellant, and you could keep it from freezing, the water would be really good radiation shielding from the sun [and the rocket engine itself] - just keep it oriented 'that way' while coasting. actually liquid H2 would work the same way more or less for neutrons, but you would need something a bit denser to help shield gamma.

Well, exposure to ionizing radiation is _known_ to have various effects on blood, and that's the most likely candidate. HOWEVER, if the effect of 'first time' stress is HIGHER than that of radiation, it would make an appropriate study VERY interesting... (and perhaps demand a series of shorter trips before the long one, to improve astronaut health).

Ionizing radiation [as well as certain kinds of infections, poisonous substances, etc.] more easily kill cells that multiply rapidly. This is why radiation has been used to treat cancer, because cancer cells will die with somewhat lower exposure levels than regular cells. The villi in the intestines, certain kinds of connective tissue in skin, and immune cells are all candidates for radiation susceptibility. So typical symptoms of radiation exposure include "NVD" (Nausea, Vomiting, Diarrhea), skin edema [due to breakdown of connective tissues, fluid buildup in the skin), and blood chemistry changes.

Re: Summing it up

Canned monkey as a space food - tastes like chicken?

Re: How does this compare?

I think the comparison between veterans and rookies is compelling enough to suggest that it's not being in space, but dealing with the stress-related effects on the immune system, and YES compare this to other high stress professions like the military, police, fire, ambulance, and trial lawyers. Yeah, no kidding!

This is the kind of study that would make an _outstanding_ doctoral thesis for med students. The effects of stress and inexperience in a high stress occupation, not just space itself, on blood chemistry and the immune system, and *IS* space *REALLY* a factor?

Q. What do you call an IT admin for 20-plus young children? A. A teacher

correct horse battery staple

what could be so difficult?

Re: It's horrendous out there in local Ed IT

well it sounds to me like there needs to be some kind of RFID as the 'second factor' in a 2 factor method.

Back when i was a kid, they had these dog tags that parents usually bought for us (it was a school program as I recall, take home the ad and mom/dad mailed it in), that had a kids' name + address on it, maybe other info [I forget exactly], some kind of emblem or catholic saint or haiku or something on the otehr side.

So if a kid wears a dog tag, just make sure it has an RFID in it that can be used as the 'second factor' for 2-factor authentication. Or a QR code. Or bar code. Or whatever.

At least that way, the device would have to be within a certain distance of the RFID to work. Or the device would visually scan the QR code or bar code on it, same idea.

Anyway, it's something that kids would get used to really fast, "wear the key". And maybe a teacher override for occasional "I forgot it" usage.

I helped catch Silk Road boss Ross Ulbricht: Undercover agent tells all

Re: Tax avoidance

actually true, if you have ill-gotten gains you're supposed to declare it as "other income" or something like it. Well, in the USA, anyway. Otherwise, you'll end up getting 'tax evasion' charges like Al Capone.

Re: Life without parole

"A vicious and grossly disproportionate sentence."

It is likely that a chain of individual crimes, for which a jail sentence of 1 month would be appropriate, could add up to "one big sentence" worth of them, ya know? so someone who's guilty of 1200 petty crimes with a month sentence each could get 100 years... or I say, SHOULD get 100 years!

in any case, if they needed to lock him up for longer, the cops would find more crimes for him to be tried on and rack up the sentence. But this way, with 'life without parole', everyone's done with it.

Keep in mind that a sentence like this is *designed* to STOP OTHERS from TRYING what he did. 'Intimidation factor' among other things.

Re: So the moral here is

something _I_ have considered many times: never underestimate the ability of forensic teams to discover new ways of gathering evidence in a manner that nobody could have conceived of at the time a crime was committed, and so there's no way to know how to prevent such evidence from being collected and used against you. When fingerprints were first used to prove that someone committed a crime, nobody EVAR thought such a thing was possible. Same with DNA. What's next?

yeah, I don't like the idea of staying at the 'Iron Bar Hotel', so it's better if I stay honest instead.

Re: More Questions

ack on "bought it through amazon' - and if THAT is the case, computer vendors might have some additional info about the computer so they can verify it for warranty reasons... such as CPU IDs and default MAC addresses.

it's not that hard to subpoena information once you have enough evidence to get a judge on board for investigative warrants. I expect that your average vendor would have no trouble handing information over if the word 'search warrant' appears at the top of something signed by a judge...

Re: More Questions

"How did they find the server in Iceland" "How did they find connections from San Francisco to the server?"

yeah, pretty impressive, I say! Some of this was actually in the article, as I recall, though I don't really wanna re-read it to glean for details. But you have to allow for the fact that the cops don't wanna spill the beans on all of their secret tactics, so the bad guys can't take countermeasures.

Re: Interesting postscript to this long running tale.

so here's what you do... while the agent is describing what he wants, actually FILM the thing; while he's doing narration, you see "it" happening in the background.

The snark factor alone would be worth it.

You could also have fun with the blind man yelling at the Dutch cops that he won't open the door. Maybe add "I fart in your general direction" to the exchange... well, maybe not THAT, but still.