Posts by bombastic bob

Googlers, eggheads urge web giant's bosses to kick top conservative off its AI ethics council

Re: "Voicing their opinions" and other fairy stories

"Fascism is all about totalitarian control."

Definition of fascism: a militant form of socialism that does government takeover of nearly all industry.

It's a form of totalitarianism, yeah.

Communism in its worst form is very much like it, except that ownership has been removed and substituted with a rude form of 'collectivism', managed by an 'elite' group of 'leaders'.

In both cases, a small oligarchy benefits, while the masses suffer under the thumb of mediocrity.

Funny how fascism and communism must be FORCED upon the masses, whereas freedom has a life of its own and typically "finds a way". It's human nature to be free. It's AGAINST human nature to be SOCIALIST or COMMUNIST.

Re: "Voicing their opinions" and other fairy stories

"They do however put out false information, such as 'smoking isn't bad for you' and 'climate change isn't a thing'"

MAN MADE climate change isn't a thing [this would be accurate]. And I don't know where you got this information about their attitude towards smoking, but I expect it, too, has been taken out of context.

more 'fake news', yeah.

Re: "Voicing their opinions" and other fairy stories

" It is about time we showed a bit of intolerance towards intolerant people"

I already do that. It seems to me that the vast majority of these "silence the opposition in the name of tolerance" hypocrites are ON THE LEFT.

Re: Snowflakes

"The job of the Heritage foundation is to ensure that the point of view of the extraordinarily wealthy is heard and obeyed"

Do you have proof? I call 'fake news' on THAT one.

Re: Snowflakes

to whom do you direct this? I think the left NEVER allows differing opinions to be heard, by shouting them down, calling for firings and resignations, and being as disruptive as possible.

So I'll have to agree with you: NOT allowing different opinions to be heard, a favorite tactic of the left, is a VERY bad thing.

Re: Articles of Faith

"Name one good thing the Heritage Foundation have done"

JUST EXISTING, in opposition to LIBERALISM and POLITICAL CORRECTNESS. I think that is a VERY good thing!

Re: Articles of Faith

yeah that guy won't just be FIRED, he'll be BANNED, and BURNED AT THE STAKE! After all, he *DARED* to NOT swallow the LIBERAL COOLAID!

There is business, and there is politics. Too many people in business *FEEL* (not think) that they can use it to control other people's POLITICS, too, by use of threats, firings, "suggest you resign", or what-have-you.

Didn't the President of Mozilla have a SIMILAR situation, because his name was found on a list of contributors to pass a particular state proposition?

I think a giant clue-bat, and a BIG FAT LAWSUIT, is in order, for OUTRIGHT DISCRIMINATION!!!

"trigger word" indeed...

[isn't the whole idea of freedom and tolerance to NOT create a 'look over your shoulder' and 'chilling effect' environment for people who MIGHT have different opinions on things? The 'brown shirts' of Silicon Valley are AT IT AGAIN, and some of them apparently work at GOOGLE!]

Microsoft reckons the accursed Windows 10 October 2018 Update is finally fit for business

There should be a 'Frustration' channel

for forced updates like this one has been

I suppose other channel names, such as 'Agony', 'Bend Over', and 'What, AGAIN?' would do as well...

As Red Hat prepares to become part of Big Blue, its financials look as solid as Linux kernel 2.4

I google'd and found pcworld and computerworld articles [appeared to be the same article] saying that RH was taking a more active role in CentOS. So probably, yeah.

This is probably like Microsoft assimilating github - I'll play "wait and see" before making any real judgements, but so far I'm not disappointed. I still have a lot on github. Not gonna stop using it any time soon.

And so with RH and I guess CentOS too, I suspect that nothing bad will happen any time soon. If anything it puts them in a position to become an alternative to Windows for _EVERYTHING_. I could see IBM doing that. Yep.

2.4 was used in a lot of wirless access points a decade or so ago. It was pretty tiny, fit inside a 4M flash on broadcom-based systems. I think OpenWRT started out with 2.6 as I recall, and a lot of Linksys routers used 2.6 rather than 2.4 at that time. But yeah, that was the last time I did anything with 2.4, on wifi routers, 10+ years ago.

2.4 had the advantage of being extremely stable, yeah, in operation as well as development. It wasn't "a moving target".

Re: Wise move financially? Perhaps. Culturally? Nope ....

"Let's see what happens to RedHat's innovative drive - and revenue - once the standard IBM management techniques regarding (or better: disregarding) their human ressources kicks in."

yeah, "big company" H.R. is pretty bad in my opinion. Theyll start by having clueless mooks filtering all of the resumes for the right key words and tricky phrases (or something equally moronic) which is likely to filter out the best people in favor of those who know how to milk the system...

(yeah I have a pretty low opinion of H.R. droids)

What I wonder, however, is how the 'culture of IBM' will affect some of the things that SOME call "innovation" but _I_ call "in the way". You know, like:

a) systemd

b) wayland

etc.

I have a strong suspicion that IBM may use RH as a vehicle towards providing an alternative to Win-10-nic. One can only hope...

But we hired a consultant, cries UK pensions biz as it swallows £40k fine for 2 million spam emails

A good start

now to see the REST of the "no excuse" spammers get fined and punished into non-existence.

OK fat chance, right? But I can have wishful thinking and hope. Until it's dashed... as usual.

Ethiopian Airlines boss confirms suspect flight software was in use as Boeing 737 Max crashed

Re: The Best Analysis Of What Really Happened

it's a fair bet they'll be compelled to retrofit planes with the $80k warning light option/upgrade. If not, they should be. THAT and some updated training materials, better software. Probably won't be done with it for a little while...

Aussie engineer accuses 'serial farter' supervisor of bullying, seeks $1.8m redress

Re: To jump to a philosophical issue

"if everyone farted Chanel No5"

More like 'Chanel Number 2'

Re: To jump to a philosophical issue

I once had chili for lunch at work, a big can of it, and sneaked a 'silent but deadly' one out an hour or two later, and a lady nearby [about 10 to 15 years older than me] smelled it and wondered what was cooking, "smells kinda good". I carefully avoided laughing...

(yes, this really happened)

normally my ass-gas clears the room. But, rarely, it will smell like what I ate.

Re: Strike a light!

this whole thing reminds me of that 'Crepitation Contest' recording from the 40's or 50's (or at least some time before I was born) featuring Paul Boomer of Oz vs Lord Windesmear of UK [or something like that]

NASA's first all-woman spacewalk outside ISS cancelled – due to lack of spacesuits that fit

"Does this space suit make my ass look big?"

I absolutely could _NOT_ resist!

NASA 'nauts do what flagship smartphone fans can only dream of: Change the batteries

Re: Replaceable batteries.

the thing about LiPo and LiIon batteries is that they tend to wear out faster than NiMH (from my experience, anyway) although their weight is significantly lower.

That, and the tendency to catch on fire if you don't treat them right.

(Being surrounded by a vacuum might make LiPo/LiIon safer, though)

Lithium, next to hydrogen, is the most reactive material, and is the most reactive metal. And lithium batteries have a charge/discharge behavior curve that you need to be very careful with. Over-discharge them and they start outgassing, which greatly reduces their performance and life expectancy.

And for some reason, I never seem to get a typical LiPo or LiIon to last NEARLY as long as an NiMH battery can last. Laptop batteries in particular seem to fail more readily when they're lithium based, but I still have old NiMH batteries for old laptops that work just fine, even 15 year old batteries (with reduction in capacity, but still holding a charge). Go fig, yeah.

(worthy of note, I was deeply involved with charge cycles on a LiPo battery for a customer project a short while back, from charging circuits to undervolt protection and why I needed to design that in)

Anyway, lithium batteries are a bit overrated in that regard. But as it's only for another, maybe 5 or 6 years, I can see (because of weight alone) why NASA would swap in lithium batteries for NiMH.

imagine what air travel would be like if only government had been in charge of air travel...

Hey, what's Mandarin for 'WTF is going on?' Nokia phones caught spewing device IDs to China, software blunder blamed

Re: no excuse....

so here's the scenario:

a) (alleged) China requirement, make phones 'phone home' in plain text

b) tracking sniffers everywhere

c) plain text makes it easier for the tracking sniffers to track you

there ya go!

icon because it smells like a gummint conspiracy

Pre-checked cookie boxes don't count as valid consent, says adviser to top EU court

Re: blocker

sort of blocker: a plugin (like the 'cookie white list with buttons' plugin for firefox) that allows you to accept all cookies but put non-white-listed ones into memory only, not on disk. Then when you turn off cookie acceptance (and maybe right back on again), or close the browser, they go into the bit bucket.

Re: Let's report every case of this to the ICO

For Firefox, there's a plugin (or was, I'm using version 56 still) of 'cookie white list with buttons' or similar title. In short, you can tell it to accept ALL cookies, as long as the button enables cookies. But only whitelisted cookies are stored on the hard drive. The rest go into 'write only memory' when you disable cookies or close the browser. Dumping all cookies is basically "turn it off, turn it back on again" [except for whilte-listed cookies, of course]. So it doesn't SOLVE the problem, but it sure keeps it under control.

In fact, if this were a standard browser feature (HINT HINT) to ONLY store non-white-list cookies IN MEMORY, and give users the ability to "dump all" or shut off their acceptance with a button or a menu option, it might actually solve 99% of the cookie tracking problems. In many cases you'd get those irritating "someone logged on to your account" e-mails but so what. The entire point is to eliminate the tracking, and flushing cookies periodically (yes, obvious reference to "the loo") would really screw them up. And what would happen if EVERYODY did it? they'd have to do something ELSE.

and 'tick boxes' on a permissions page would no longer matter. And, maybe the browser/plugin could prompt you with "do you want to store this cookie permanently" (with the options to block it [black list] or keep it in memory until you flush/exit [normal handling]) so you can see what they're up to and have some additional choice.

Re: Let's report every case of this to the ICO

"OK and More Info"

like this: https://aqua-teen-hunger-force.fandom.com/wiki/Www.yzzerdd.com

(from the article's title, I'm glad to see at least SOME common sense in application of the law)

Don't have a heart attack but your implanted defibrillator can be hacked over the air (by someone who really wants you dead)

Re: The workaround...

how about a tinfoil T shirt? (I suspect the antenna is in the chest, and not the head).

As for this: "with a range of roughly 25 feet without any signal boosting"

An extremely high gain antenna, low noise receiver, and higher than normal power transmitter, could [in theory] extend that range for MILES... (you'd probably need 40db gain, which is not impossible, but would be really really cool and innovative to 'get there')

[think sophisticated satellite communications equipment, and that's what I mean]

This ain't AI, it's a goddamn arms race – but US shouldn't get too heated, Congressman warns

I suspect the word AI does not mean what they think it means

Just sayin', it's like politicians say AI like they want it. Do they even know what it means?

But they'll WILLINGLY sink ZILLIONS of taxpayer dollars into it. Because, "doing something".

getting to what they REALLY mean

seems to me it's (once again) about H1B and importing cheaper "salt miners" that can be roped in and locked in and used to depress the average wages...

yeah, yeah, of course, Silly Valley and George Soros and others are behind it. We know. So typical.

If they want to TRULY reform immigration, they'd a) stop the "insane asylum" loopholes [bad pun I know], ONLY allow immigration based on MERIT [not a random lottery], and kick out all of the ILLEGAL immigrants. The LEGAL immigrants who are left will help to make America Great. Again.

but yeah that's not what THE DEMOCRAT meant. He wants an open/porous border so that "Big Contributors" can keep their wage costs down. So transparent...

Android clampdown on calls and texts access trashes bunch of apps

Re: When enough apps abuse it...

If all they're doing is forking stuff, that's not "development' really. More like "re-branding".

I'd hope they'd at least have the intelligence to change the object names from "com.example.whatever" to something THEY own... and if they can do THAT much, they can ALSO modify the 'manifesto' to have the correct permissions in it.

Re: When enough apps abuse it...

well, like the title says, "when enough apps abuse it" - but not ALL app authors want to invade privacy. But too many apparently do, so that they can make something "free" and still monetize it.

Personally, I would like to post some free stuff in order to demonstrate my skills, "see I wrote that". Helps when getting new contracts, sometimes.

Don't forget, Apple has removed applications "they do not like" from their store. It's like censorship.

Apparently in 2017, an iOS application for use in China was removed because it helped users to get around 'the great firewall' - apps from the New York Times, no less - that's ONE example, many others exist. Doing a search shows that applications have been removed "for not being updated in a while". Come on, if you get it right the FIRST time, WHY does something need UPDATING? 'At a whim' may be an understatement.

And I really don't like it when "big data" or manufacturers start DELIBERATELY limiting what you can do with your OWN device...

Re: The trouble is...

I think on Android 8 you can individually control which applications have location ability... because I remember turning it OFF for one (a game/art application - yeah why did THAT need location data?), and the application complained. I suggested to the phone's owner that it be left OFF, "do not show this again" etc..

So there may be a way of dealing with it on newer phones, but 8 isn't the newest, so who knows any more...

Re: The trouble is...

stopping applications from doing things is good when you DO NOT WANT them to do it. but if the application needs access, and you don't blindly say "ok" to everything, then you lose whatever functionality you really wanted.

And that's the point.

It's YOUR phone, so YOU should be in charge of it.

Re: Enterprise apps? We've heard of them.

"I guess you can still install apps from outside the playstore which can access these features"

Yes, and in some ways the 'new method' (individual approval of each application NOT certified by 'Google Play') is better than the old one (wildcard enabling of any application install from outside of 'Google Play') though I have had to jump through hoops a bit to get it to work so far.

But this might not be possible if the Android OS is updated to simply exclude ANYTHING that wants access to 'certain features' (from permission flags in the 'manifesto' let's say, similar to now) when those feature requests are on 'a list' and there's no cert or other 'permission mark' from the Play store's signage info to allow it....

I also don't know what affect this will have on any legacy home-brewed and locally signed APKs, which [for now] can be made available via a web page or be directly copied into the Android's file system via USB. Enterprise applications needing access "to everything" might STILL be possible, doing it this way. (edit: someone else calls this 'side loading' I guess; not a term I'd used before, might have seen it, didn't stick)

Google is (wishful thinking?) *trying* to protect end-users from themselves, without becoming TOO much like Apple with _THEIR_ store (bans because "Apple just don't like it"). Well, I hope so. And apparently it's a reaction to rogue applications. No surprise, but little excuse for THIS kind of "solution".

Google could offer a better method, using something similar to 'Firebase' for authorization keys (let's say) that are verified at install time from the Google Play store. That's not ideal, but at least it would help to control the "rogue" behavior by adding some extra 'permission steps' and not outright BANNING functionality.

And, it COULD get worse... they could become 'Apple'. Or even MORE like them.

For some reason it reminds me of Firefox making changes from 56 to 57...

Re: Why on earth would Google have a problem with BlackBerry Hub?

I think Google is becoming more like Apple with their store. But as long as I can install "any APK" so long as I enable that on the device, it's less of a problem. It's just that the user will be prompted with a "scare message" during the install.

Android's sandbox for user applications is a bit irritating, more so NOW. A more 'open' platform would be much easier to work with, but then would expose users to being duped and spied upon. However, when you have to go through the list of applications on someone's phone (friend, relative, BYOD) and specifically DENY access to the phone's location (or in this case, SMS and call logs) for a GAME or ART application, which has NOTHING to do with the capability they claim to "need", then it's kind of obvious why Google did this.

I don't like it because it sets a precedent, requires "permission" to do what you've been doing all along, etc.. I thought the 'permissions' stuff in the 'manifesto' was supposed to take care of this, make sure the end-user knows what the application is trying to, etc. but apparently NOT any more...

Conclusion: Google things users are REALLY STUPID now, just like Apple.

In a humiliating climbdown, Facebook agrees to follow US laws

What about shadow-bans and censoring conservative voices?

It seems to me they're only "fixing" _PART_ of the problem...

College student with 'visions of writing super-cool scripts' almost wipes out faculty's entire system

Re: find is your friend

oh good point - so swap in 'ls' or 'echo' for the 'rm' as a dry run...

Re: find is your friend

yeah this is where you need to investigate the '-print0' and '-0' options for find and xargs, respectively

Re: We've all been there

worst case scenario: the boss does it

a) prototype device being tested at the last minute, several engineers doing hands on stuff on a weekend or late at night

b) no other device available for the test except for that one prototype (i.e. no spare). And we're gonna fix the firmware problems as we find 'em.

c) The test required comparison of 2 devices, though, one of which had 5V power, the other 3.3v power. And both had the same shaped power plug, and only one could be plugged in at a time.

d) after an hour or two of tests, the boss plugs 5V into the 3.3v unit, which had no voltage regulator. we all went home. Yes, we saw the blue smoke. No, we couldn't put it back.

Super Cali optimistic right-to-repair's negotious, even though Apple thought it was something quite atrocious

Re: Why should apple care?

normally, the kinds of specialized diagnostic equipment that you would need to rework a laptop motherboard (as an example) make it impractical to repair them on-premise.

Most likely they'll swap the motherboard, then send your old one back to be repaired or analyzed for why it failed by techs that have the right equipment.

the spoonful of sugar only works when the "medicine" is going down your throat...

Re: Oh shush!

When I see the 'Super Cali' headlines I

a) try to get the song cadence to work

b) laugh somewhat pathetically because I have to *live* here in Cali-Fornicate-You

c) occasionally happy if they actually get something right (like in this particular case)

So yeah a big thumbs up to El Reg for the entertaining titles

Welcome. You're now in a timeline in which US presidential hopeful Beto was a member of a legendary hacker crew

no I'll stay because of my "fan club". you're welcome.

strangely a good number of posts seem to involve me. I guess O'Rourke is a pretty boring topic.

Re: Nice

I routinely reject "life advice"

Sorry, Linux. We know you want to be popular, but cyber-crooks are all about Microsoft for now

Re: Really?

Bill Gates _LOVES_ BASIC !

(that's why it was there in the first place. Now, legacy, I'd guess)

Re: Oi! Keep quiet

some Linux flavors are already WAY too permissive with 'sudoers' and one Mac exploit used an Apple API of some sorts that is (in many ways) very similar to a permissive config of sudo...

keep THAT up and there will be exploits for it

Microsoft buffs up its open-source halo to fine sheen with PostgreSQL GUI in Azure Data Studio

It used to be called MS Access

when using MS Access with an ODBC database back in the 90's, for example, you had GUI schema tools available...

(I have yet to really see anything in the open source world that does what MS Access did in its day)

But I'm not going to go out and get MS Office just to have Access again. And Access in Office '97 broke when I installed a patch for MS Word. Totally screwed up. I use Libre and/or Open Office now, and haven't seen a good MS Access equivalent there.

PuTTY in your hands: SSH client gets patched after RSA key exchange memory vuln spotted

yeah it's good for regular serial port too, on windows.

For Linux etc. I typically use 'cu' or my own program [which is open source and can be searched for if you're interested, also works in windows last I checked]. But for windows there used to be a decent terminal program built in [hyperterminal] but it stopped being included either in XP or Vista. And, of course, there was no ssh support as I recall.

I can't recall what Cygwin has for a terminal program. Maybe it works, maybe it doesn't. I generally don't do serial port things from windows anyway.

(using serial comms programatically in windows is unnecessarily painful, and I've been doing it since Win '98 and NT 4, starting with this one customer project that used TAPI to dial into remote devices and download data from them, etc.)

Re: "but the availability of the source code means that anyone can."

With open source, it's also easier to:

a) apply your own patches

b) apply patches someone else published to get a fix in right away

c) get the patched version compiled and installed in your system before a package has been made available

Re: PuTTY's days are numbered

Ack. He was spoiled by a GUI front-end, I see. "the ones I was used to". Yeah I think I had to spend at least a minute learning the ssh command line when I first used it, too.

Hint: "man ssh" (this works on OSX as I recall - I don't have a Mac handy to verify it with). I use this (literally) ALL of the time (a remote shell to a VM running Linux, to test stuff - left logged in on one of my desktops on a FreeBSD machine). That and scp also, making backups etc.. And sftp works really well with my web site. Who needs "authoring tools", am I right?

One thing I _LOVE_ about Mac OSX is that its userland was forked from FreeBSD 5 and so I can just jump in there and do stuff and it WORKS.

Re: PuTTY's days are numbered

this is a pathetic reason to "up" (read: down) grade to Win-10-nic or windows server 2019.

Whatever happened to compiling OpenSSH (etc.) and just installing it? And put all of the DLLs where other programs can access them?

Isn't there an open source version of OpenSSH available that compiles on windows?? OK there's a Cygwin version, yeah. I suspect that making that a MinGW version wouldn't be all that difficult...

So why not just do THAT if you need an open source OpenSSH ??? And it wouldn't have restrictions on it, like "only Win-10-nic" or "only server 2019" or "only if you have a Pro version" yotta yotta.

Re: PuTTY's days are numbered

on windows I prefer to use Cygwin's ssh implementation.

on POSIX systems, I just use the built-in ssh.

Seriously, PuTTY could have wrapped the existing ssh program with a simple GUI and probably would have avoided most of these problems. If it were to ship with a portable version of ssh, and maybe a handful of patch files to put the magic into it more easily than dealing with Windows' pathetic handling of console applications and stdin/stdout/stderr re-direction, then a lot of these problems wouldn't be problems any more.

Just a thought - maybe PuTTY could get a re-write to do it this way... [then you just need to maintain the GUI and keep the back-end up to date with all of the relevant patches]