* Posts by Someone_Somewhere

336 publicly visible posts • joined 2 Sep 2015

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Apple assumes you'll toss the Watch after three years

Someone_Somewhere

Apple assumes you'll toss the Watch after three years

Oh, I think they'll be doing it a /lot/ sooner than that; iWatch wearers aren't going to be able to resist the urge for /that/ long - they're /born/ tossers.

Linux command line mistake 'nukes web boss'S biz'

Someone_Somewhere

> rm is avalaible to all users. <

Well, that rather depends upon whether the BOFH has decided to make rm require privileges ordinary users don't have.

> Deleting stuff in the root directory does require root access. <

Unless you're in the 'wheel' group.

Or some other group that has been granted that privilege.

Or simply granted that privilege as an individual user for some incomprehensibly foolish reason.

Or, for some even less comprehensible reason 'rm' has been applied with a setuid/setgid on '/'.

Or, even less comprehensibly than even /that/, '/' has been shared via samba and your user has elevated privileges thanks to an administrative cockup - this /is/ samba we're talking about here.

> Isn't this a tech site? Don't ya'll know this sort of thing? <

Erm, I think that's the whole point of the joke - pretty obvious really (somebody already remarked upon it above).

Except, of course, for the 88%+* market share Windows users, who have no idea what we're talking about.

* I might be being a bit charitable in assigning 10% to Apple - but I think 2% is correct for Linux.

AMC sobers up, apologizes for silly cinema texting plan

Someone_Somewhere

> What are they going to do? Patrol the isles and ask people to leave? <

Why not?

You bought your ticket.

You didn't read the TOC.

You got kicked out.

So sad.

They got your money.

No refunds.

Too bad.

Daft Punk: Snowden goes electronica

Someone_Somewhere

Pukey: "Somewhere, out there in the depths of the universe.. far beyond the outer reaches of pitiful, lies this comment."

There, ftfy.

Mac hinge may change

Someone_Somewhere

Re: metal injection

9mm Nails

The future of Firefox is … Chrome

Someone_Somewhere
Stop

Re: Vivaldi

Firefox: almost usable as long as you don't overdo the addons - unfortunately, without the addons it's almost useless.

Internet Explorer: you won't just /think/ you've been fucked by a train.

Chrome: simply terrible but, even if it weren't, I'd still rather install Windows 10, turn on every slurping feature I can find, disable my firewall/antimalware and use Internet Explorer to visit sites known to deliver driveby nastiness of the kind that would make Satan himself blush.

Opera: the experience is so bad I'd rather use Chrome!

Vivaldi: my therapist says sitting in the dark and cutting myself would be less injurous to my psychoemotional wellbeing.

Someone_Somewhere
Black Helicopters

The FBI May Be Sitting on a Firefox Vulnerability

https://motherboard.vice.com/en_uk/read/the-fbi-may-be-sitting-on-a-firefox-vulnerability

Someone_Somewhere

Re: When do the users of the product get asked what they want ?

I was gonna say "When they pay for it" but then I heard myself and fell off my chair laughing at the silliness of the idea.

Someone_Somewhere

Re: BURN THE HERETICS !!

> In fact, as they'd then be in control they wouldn't have to spend their lives chasing the latest whatever-Mozilla-have-done-now.

Yes, but they've already said that they're going to - so that's that blown out of the water before it really even had a chance.

Someone_Somewhere

Re: don't get it

> .. just so long as it doesn't phone home to Alphabet/Google?

Chromium contains binary blobs by Google - I wouldn't touch with /yours/.

Someone_Somewhere

Check out the Self Destructing Cookies addon.

No, no, no, no, NO!!!

WHY do people insist on recommending this waste of time?

That's just locking the door after the burglars have long since made off with everything of value.

Never mind the pathetic SDC features, Cookie Monster stops them getting onto your system in the /first/ place.

You can set a default policy and then selectively modify it on a case by case basis: whitelist, accept from domain or (subdomain only), accept temporarily, accept session cookies, delete upon changing policy, delete upon refreshing page, delete upon leaving domain, delete upon exit, delete upon closing tab, view individual cookies/by site/by domain (or subdomain).

I have no affiliation with Cookie Monster in any way but it's the only cookie manager I would recommend - after NoScript and RequestPolicy. it's the first addon I install.

Zuck: You're still using non-Facebook websites ... I'll put an end to that

Someone_Somewhere

Interesting set of posts

> mostly by people who don't use FB at all/regularly who never will

That's a big assumption you're making there.

I have no choice but to use it because one of my roles requires me promote myself and others. As a result I have a lot of people on my friendslist whom I've never met and, likely, never will. Some of them, however, are people I've met IRL and will meet again. Some of them are even real friends.

I don't use it personally any more though - no personal account activity only page/group administration and updates. And if it weren't for those I'd delete my account altogether: real friends can get in touch with me in other ways, as can compatriots/colleagues, clients and fans. Fans as a subgroup are made aware of my activities in other ways as well and, if it weren't for the tautological insistence by everyone that "But you've 'got' to be on FB to be successful," it would be completely unneccessary.

So, no, not everyone decrying Failbook has no experience of it - we do; we jsut don't want it /any more/.

Someone_Somewhere

Re: And the tracking it does

'Facebook Disconnect'

Install it now.

Along with 'Disconnect', 'Google Disconnect', 'Twitter Disconnect' and 'Remove Google Tracking For Copy'.

Someone_Somewhere

"The second plank of Facebook's strategy to get everyone onto its social network

is the use of artificial intelligence, or rather, throwing AI at people and hoping it impresses them."

Before you know it, half the people on your friendslist won't be real people and none of them will really be friends.

Wait..

Someone_Somewhere

Re: Credit where it is due....

> Facebook does not actively try to install onto your system.

Of course not: it's preinstalled on your new smartphone when you buy it - the only thing you can /actively/ do with regards to installation is UN-install it.

Cash, fear and uncertainty: The Holy Trinity of Bitcoin and blockchain

Someone_Somewhere

Re: It's all fun and games until

> What about devaluation via inflation?

What about it?

That has nothing to do with currncy: it's to do with Capitalism/Moentarism - name me a currency that /isn't/ subject to it.

And do you think BC's wild commodity-value fluctuations are somehow better?

Someone_Somewhere

Re: It's all fun and games until

> those metalsmiths, accountants and security guards still need to be paid.

Yeah, but not by you or me - we take our hard-earned home at the end of the day and the only deductions we have to worry about are those taken by the taxman.*

* who doesn't pay those metalsmiths, accountants and security guards either.

Someone_Somewhere

It's all fun and games until

you remember that you don't have to pay for the privilege of using cash, so why then would you want to pay for the electricity required to use bitcoin? It makes no sense whatsoever.

Furthermore, "most people get very excited about it and run around with a hammer thinking everything they see is a nail."

If all you have is a hammer, pretty soon everything starts to look like a thumb.

> In reality, it's hard to find good use cases for it.

Nail + head.

Hey, tech industry, have you noticed Amazon in the rearview?

Someone_Somewhere
Devil

Re: Simple v Complex Infrastructure

No, no, no ... haven't you been paying attention? DevOPs will fix it!

Someone_Somewhere
Happy

Re: You are kind of in the same boat as the reps who sell you infrastructure.

No, I'm not - I saw the writing on the wall a /long/ time ago and got out of /doing/ IT - I'm a consultant these days and get to go to interesting places and help people do stuff with IT instead.*

* audio/visual mostly - it's /loads/ more fun and it pays better too :D

Someone_Somewhere

Re: Nice Rant

> This whole thing reads like it was written by a person with a meth problem that some company put in charge of IT security. This guy needs to put the sentences in order before hitting submit instead of just frantic scatter shot "things that annoy me" tweets in paragraph form. Ironic that an IT security guy is complaining about unnecessary and cumbersome processes which add little value. <

This whole thing reads like it was written by one of the retards in Sales/Marketing - you know: the people who barely understand their /own/ jobs never mind the thing they're selling/marketing.

I look forward to the day when they're replaced by A.I.s - I only hope it happens before I die, so that I can witness their pitiful attempts to sell me their children's/mothers' kidneys for a drag on my cigarette.

IP address clerks RIPE: Feds, come back with a warrant, er, web browser

Someone_Somewhere

Re: A U.S. subpoena is only legally effective within the jurisdiction of U.S. courts.

Why do you think they're so keen on TTIP?

Plotting 'mass damage' in Australia? SMBs' crappy login hygiene really helps – hacker

Someone_Somewhere

Soon XP will be the safest OS in the world

Because the skiddies will be too young to have ever heard of it, let alone write code for it!

And any code they /could/ write wouldn't run on their 256bit backwardly incompatible .Net platform anyway.

"windowz xp? iz thatz 'droidz or applez appz, homez?"

Uber hands over info on 12m passengers, drivers to US officials, cops

Someone_Somewhere

Re: Taken for a linguistic ride

> The way things are going, riding a bicycle while not carrying a mobile phone is going to get you arrested as a suspected terrorist and economic subversive. <

http://resources.mhs.vic.edu.au/shortstories/downloads/The_Pedestrian.pdf

US bus passenger cracks one off for three hours

Someone_Somewhere

Re: a career in porn beckons.

You're a consumer, not a producer, aren't you?

Time is money in porn, as in every other commercial enterprise - the quicker you come up with the goods, so to speak, and get to the 'money shot', the less the producer has to pay for crew, electricity, the location, etc. and the quicker they can start the next production.

The rest can be made up with previously recorded material and/or cheaper 'actors' whose faces needn't be seen for the close-up gnarly.

So guys who come quickly are in demand, not guys who take forever to get the job done.

EC cooking up rules change for aggressive tax avoiders

Someone_Somewhere

Re: Aggressive Tax Avoiders

Avoidance seems more passive-aggressive to me.

Someone_Somewhere

Re: It is not companies which are the problem

Not /exactly/ what you're looking for but it's a start at least:

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/members-interests/

Sweden 'secretly blames' hackers – not solar flares – for taking out air traffic control

Someone_Somewhere

Hyperbole

> Sweden secretly blames

no-one at all. *

* if they'd done it /secretly/, you wouldn't be writing about it.

Script-blocker NoScript lets in ANYTHING from googleapis.com

Someone_Somewhere

Re: Google are the third biggest threat

Actually I'd put them at least joint first with FB, if not outright first - thanks to Google, the NSA don't need to hack and track because Google have already done it /for/ them.

Someone_Somewhere

Re: browser? adblock? whitelists?

> Of course I use startpage.com

I prefer ixquick.eu myself

Someone_Somewhere

Re: Google

Don't forget 'Remove Google Tracking For Copy' for those sites that include Google results.

Someone_Somewhere

Re: Use it correctly and you're golden

Especially if you use RequestPolicy/Continued.

7/10 times, allowing the cdn (and possibly the *static) is enough to see everything I need to - no need to enable /any/ scripts!

Chuck in DecentralEyes as well and you're sorted.

I'm taking some sort of adblocker and a cookie manager (like Cookie Monster and BetterPrivacy) for granted of course.

Someone_Somewhere

Re: Ah, so I'm not paranoid after all

> Same here. When I install it, the first thing I do is clear the whitelist.

Ditto.

In fact, I seem to recall being surprised the first time I saw the whitelist prepopulated.

Which would seem to imply that:

ai) there was once a time when it wasn't.

aii) I am, therefore, an old bastard.

Half of people plug in USB drives they find in the parking lot

Someone_Somewhere

Re: Or . . . perhaps . . .we've all been misled by A-V and O/S claims of protection?

The thing about Conficker was that it didn't matter that you had autorun turned off, the fact that a call to the autorun routine had been made was enough for the payload to be launched.

So ... no ... we haven't.

Someone_Somewhere

Re: so why not have a look, could be something interesting

You'd be happy playing Russian roulette with an AK-47 because the odds are pretty good you'd survive, is that what you're saying?

You only need to get unlucky once for the odds to be academic.

Someone_Somewhere

Re: Nevermind all those preventative measures....

> like a university one

N.B. not a university you attend yourself.

Someone_Somewhere

Re: I'll plug one in...

> Laugh at the lame-o attempt to write a virus/trojan to a read-only filesystem

Get royally screwed after the next harmless USB device gets infected by opcodes that wrote themselves into the optical/usb contoller firmware this time. A good one will distribute itself across the firmware of /all/ onboard controllers to give itself room for more sophisticated routines - and lurk in your GPU registers too.

Someone_Somewhere
Devil

Re: A good file name

By far the most successful approach I have taken when engaging in (relatively harmless*) mischief has been to label it 'Do Not Open This'.

People just can't help themselves, it seems. :D

* prank executables and the like, nothing malicious.

Read America's insane draft crypto-borking law that no one's willing to admit they wrote

Someone_Somewhere

Re: Intelligible non-decryption

> Because I'm the Autocrat

Ah, I see.

Am I to take it that I won't make it across town without a cavity search and the USB key I have hidden in my rectum will be discovered then?

Any day of the week?

Any week of the year?

I suppose I might get away with it once only then, if you're using something like Red Star Linux.

However, what if I write the code, as I suggested, on my own machine, direct to my USB key and don't take it anywhere until the due time?

Then there's nothing /to/ intercept.

At least not until the day I travel (rather uncomfortably) across town.

Someone_Somewhere

Re: Intelligible non-decryption

Why would you sanitise it in the first place?

It's the source-code that you will subsequently feed into a whitespace compiler/interpreter that knows to expect code written in whitespace and won't, therefore, sanitise it but compile/interpret it.*

You then run the resultant binary (if one is necessary**) - which generates the desired 'plaintext' (so to speak) output.

It's only an n>1 party that would be likely to mistake it for a corrupted 'document' - you (and any other parties privy to it) know otherwise and won't make the mistake of doing anything else with it.

Or have I misunderstood the point you are making?

* assuming, of course, that there are no syntax errors.

** which, of course, it /wouldn't/ be, if it were being interpreted.

Someone_Somewhere

Re: If A -> B, B -> C then A -> C

> I've got a Wookie over here.

Would you be interested in trading it for a tiger-repelling rock?

Open-source vuln db closes – plenty of taking and not a lot of giving

Someone_Somewhere

Re: See icon

Oh, alright then:

C: Every time you make love to your girlfriend your penis points in a different direction but you don't notice until, one day, it points up your own arse.

C++: Because she's cool with it, you get to make love to both your girlfriend and her cousin. Unfortunately they both learned their love-making technique from their uncle and you end sporting an anus like the Japanese national flag.

VB: You proudly unveil your erection before your girlfriend. She says "It looks like you want to wee. Would you like help with weeing?"

ActiveX: Some bastard keeps making love to your girlfriend but you can never catch the fucker at it and don't know how to make him stop."

SQL: You want to make love to your girlfriend but, unfortunately, only one couple is allowed to make love at a time and you have to wait for the whole street to finish first. Afterwards you pretend it never happened and she pretends she was never committed anyway."

WordPress pushes free default SSL for hosted sites

Someone_Somewhere
Thumb Up

Re: Once again

Ah, right - so not quite as drastic as I thought after all.

Thanks for the clarification.

Someone_Somewhere
Facepalm

Once again

I read about some long-standing and popular service provider and think "Thank goodness I never signed up with them!"

They weren't offering https?*

And people signed up with them?

* at whatever was considered the most secure version at any given time, of whatever was considered the most secure protocol at any given time.

Spear phishers target gullible Brits more than anyone else – survey

Someone_Somewhere

Perhaps

its the revenge of the tech support pit ponies who had to put up with inane-to-outright-insane-to-just-plain-rude support queries over the years - they realised just how vulnerable UK lusers are and are now getting some payback.

In fact, I foresee the development of ransomware that doesn't actually demand a ransom - it just fucks you up without offering even a glimmer of hope.

Windows 10 debuts Blue QR Code of Death – and why malware will love it

Someone_Somewhere

> If MS know in detail what caused the crash, why not just display that information on the screen at this point? <

Because Windows isn't a static collection of bugs - with time, some of them get fixed and new ones get introduced.

You might as well ask what the point of CSS is - why not just write the relevant code in individual pages?

Also, an enduser isn't going to be any the wiser to learn that the crash was caused by a segmentation fault in thread xxx of module yyy of weirdly named process zzz.

> If they don't know then the web page isn't going to be any help either (unless it's a problem which has only just been uncovered, since the last windows update). <

The QR code won't tell you what the problem is, it will just start an automated remote fix tailored to the unique device identified by the unique QR code.

The only time a user will read anything more than "Please wait while we try to fix your computer" will be when the message is "It's not /our/ fault, talk to your hardware/app vendor."

Someone_Somewhere

Re: Come on MS. Please tell us who thought that this was a good idea?

> You're obviously not a millennial. They love QR codes. They just scan those things all day long.

Find me a milennial with enough technical knowledge to know what a QR code is /for/ and I'll take this comment back - if they're 'scanning' [sic] them all day long, it's because they want to show their friends the 'sick' graffit they've been seeing all over the country.

Someone_Somewhere
Devil

Re: Penguin

> When trying out a recent Ubuntu I got it to kernel panic what I deserved for running the *nix analogue of Windows.

There, ftfy. :P

Sorry - couldn't resist ;)

Seriously though, I'm not normally a distro basher - each to their own say I and it has its place - but, over the years, Ubuntu really has morphed into the lowest common denominator version of linux: fine for people who just want a free version of Windows but encouraging exactly the same kind of mentality that Windows does.

If you jusat want to turn it on and browse the interwebs/play a move/listen to some music/maybe do a little light graphical tinkering, it's perfectly okay, but, to achieve that, it has to take the same one-kitchen-sink-fits-all approach, so you can't expect it to offer the same degree of stability/reliability as your own hand-crafted install.

Tbh, I'm impressed it's as stable as it is under the circumstances and hats off to Canonical for achieving something that's nearly as good a consumer distro as Mint.

Couldn't be doing with it myself though: it's buggy, unstable and there's just no real facility to tweak and tune it to the degree I require - and there's /way/ too much bloat.

Tl;dr

Each to their own but /I/ wouldn't touch it with /yours/. ;)

Popular cable modem vulnerable to remote reboot/reset flaw

Someone_Somewhere

Arris

An appropriate name - given that their customers have been kicked right up it.

Citrix asks you, yes you, to write its certification exams and courseware

Someone_Somewhere

goes back to the team and says "Okay people, what open 'Citrix' tickets are in the queue?"

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