Posts by Cincinnataroo

What do iOS and Android have in common? Their apps suck at privacy, boffins say

A lot is broken we could fix it

The ecosystem is fundamentally broken. Until that changes we're not going to get decent privacy™.

1. The smart phone companies are inherently opposed to personal privacy, their commercial models can't stand it. Some computer companies too, sadly.

2. Unless we have parallel systems to the "app stores" we won't get privacy.

3. Much of the browser stock is made by people opposed to personal privacy, they won't give it to us. We need decent options.

4. Website and app creation has degenerated into an anti-privacy nightmare, the "developers" have become part of the problem. We need to re-educate and clean the stables.

5. Government has proven quite ignorant, incompetent and counter-productive in fixing it. Until individuals get to choose and opt-in, government and legislation is part of the problem and no real solution.

Against that people still need to advertise their products and services, find out about things... Human ingenuity can satisfy that together with what actual humans want.

Google staff who work from home might see pay cut under corporate policy – reports

There should be extra pay for working from home surely.

The home worker pays for the coffee, maybe a lunch that would otherwise br provided, office equipment etc. thereby saving the employer a bundle.

Early Skype developer Jaan Tallinn splashes cash in latest funding for Matrix-based instant messenger Element

Too much silliness

Despite the buffoons who talk of "killing email" and "the EU telling humanity to do some other silly thing" there is real promise here. Progress way too slow though.

This looks interesting as does the "Bluesky" project (don't know the current status though).

I hope we can break free of the current stupidity in communication.

Windows 11 comes bearing THAAS, Trojan Horse as a service

API

Wouldn't it be great to just have a public API and protocol so that the user gets to choose his interface / client, for all "meetings"?

What the FLoC? Browser makers queue up to decry Google's latest ad-targeting initiative as invasive tracking

Surely all that has to happen is that users get to opt-in to these technologies.

Off by default, you actively decide.

That includes the guinea pigs at present.

You can check whether you've been press-ganged into it. The EFF has something on their site called "Am I FLoCed? A New Site to Test Google's Invasive Experiment".

You could also come up with inventive ways to make your FLoC cohort a thing of great fun and irrelevance.

Australian ponders requiring multiple IDs to sign up for social media, plus more crypto-busting backdoors

Well here we have a list of knuckle draggers. Remember them.

Standing Committee on Social Policy and Legal Affairs

Committee Members

Chair: Mr Andrew Wallace MP, Liberal National Party of Queensland, Fisher ACT

Deputy Chair: Ms Sharon Claydon MP, Australian Labor Party, Newcastle ACT

Members

Dr Mike Freelander MP, Australian Labor Party, Macarthur ACT

Mr Andrew Laming MP, Liberal National Party of Queensland, Bowman ACT

Ms Peta Murphy MP, Australian Labor Party, Dunkley ACT

Mr Rowan Ramsey MP, Liberal Party of Australia, Grey ACT

Mr Julian Simmonds MP, Liberal National Party of Queensland, Ryan ACT

Dr Anne Webster MP, The Nationals, Mallee ACT

Participating Members

Mrs Bridget Archer MP

Dr Fiona Martin MP

Ms Kate Thwaites MP

Mr Tim Watts MP

Don't scrape the faces of our citizens for recognition, Canada tells Clearview AI – delete those images

Having had a quick look at the list of naughty words, I'd suggest considering those who use it for entry to the funny farm.

This is NOT a quality list.

Maybe it's used mainly by cockwombles.

Google, Apple sued for failing to give Telegram chat app the Parler put-down treatment

Hot off the press.

The chairperson of "A Safer Universe" has sued for the removal of all human vocal cords. "For many years these cords have been used for hate speech, and even to order the death of vulnerable people." Why did it take so long.

YouTube is going to splash adverts all over your videos, and won't pay creators unless there's a big enough audience

Time to take action?

Have I got this right:

* This company by their policies have triggered people to off themselves.

* Now they want to profit from uploaders while not paying those who did the actual work.

One guess, they expect to go out of business soon.

Suggestions:

* Time to create alternatives

* Don't post their links

* Don't upload video to them

* Play their content through other services without many of the ads.

Linux Foundation, IBM, Cisco and others back ‘Inclusive Naming Initiative’ to change nasty tech terms

A solution

Hey we have all these folk getting upset by the languages they speak. (I guess that if you took a dictionary you could concoct a way of being offended by most of the words in there. If you really tried all of them?)

Why don't we help these people a bit. When they feel offended speak up, tell us, maybe tattoo something on their own foreheads. We can then give them options.

* Go to a place that cares

* Be deprived of sight

* Be deprived of hearing

* Be deprived of speach

* Various combinations of the above

Make sure the laws are such that others can do the honours should they not be able.

Automatic for the People: Pandemic-fueled rush to robo-moderation will be disastrous – there must be oversight

There's some real potential.

Link your comment generating bot to feedback from their censoring bot.

Voila a nice adversarial network. Who knows where it could lead (other than to artificial-stupidity of a higher order, probably not human readable though).

Worldwide, perpetual, irrevocable and royalty-free: Amazon's Alexa NHS contract released

What I hear

When I read those disclaimers like:

the NHS, which takes data privacy extremely seriously and has put appropriate safeguards in place to ensure information is used correctly.

I hear something like

the NHS, which has no clue about data privacy at all, and would sell information about their grandmother if it paid enough, has put in place measures to ensure that data leaks widely, where we can't trace what's lost, and through leaks that we'll never fix (and don't know how to)

Interpol: Strong encryption helps online predators. Build backdoors

Really sad

It's really sad when organisations like this bring themselves into disrepute. Well at least among those who have a clue.

Is there a clean cut way to make them aware?

If this reflects the intellectual ability of police forces, in some way, what else are they getting wrong?

Here we go again: US govt tells Facebook to kill end-to-end encryption for the sake of the children

Was a time that nobody wanted to be a Peeping Tom.

Now the tax thieves proudly say they're Toms and want to force us to put clear glass in the bathroom with no curtains.

Strange days indeed.

Incognito mode won't stop smut sites sharing your pervy preferences with Facebook, Google and, er, Oracle

I was tracking today how a browser goes on an involuntary site visit spree when I start it.

Some of the sites seem quite inexplicable. (Presumably visited a few months ago).

That could have an interesting impact.

British ISPs throw in the towel, give up sending out toothless copyright infringement warnings

Good to see the British Pornographic Industry (BPI) and the Motion Pornography Association (MPA), getting their just deserts. No doubt bastard, inbred relatives of the MPAA and RIAA.

First them. Next let's get rid of all that surveillance.

Apollo 11 @ 50: The long shadow of the flag

The text reveals some of the problems

When I think of the exploration of the cosmos I see soo much that is astonishingly good and getting better.

Spirit, Opportunity, Juno, Hyabasu2, Cassini, Huygens, Super Kamiokande, Messenger, Hubble and on and on.

They're robotic extensions of remarkable teams who guide them from earth and by their autonomous programming.

A lot of science being done and, I believe, at a really good price. A price that cannot be matched by sending organic entities with all the costs and limits of keeping their wetware going. The time will come for sending out carbon based lifeforms. I feel it's not now. In the process of doing that we currently prevent too many other things from happening.

Which brings us back to the Moon missions. Yep fantastic and all that, but a deliberate dead end. The pink slips were going out, I believe, when the guys were still on the moon. The populist silliness staggers the imagination.

US cop body cam maker says it won't ship face-recog tech in its kit? Due to ethics? Did we slip into a parallel universe?

You say that it's bad for women of colour.

On the contrary it's good for them 'cause it messes up more often for them. Particularly good if you're a criminal woman of colour in fact.

If it goes to court your lawyer just says: "They used the Axon Disaster to identify my client m'lud. Nuff said. We're launching a counter suit for knowing harassment of the generally innocent and being dick heads."

Ethiopia sits on 737 Max report but says pilots followed Boeing drills

If they're not releasing the raw data, we'll never know for sure what happened. There should be a way to prevent that.

Public disgrace: 82% of EU govt websites stalked by Google adtech cookies – report

I take this as proof that those who legislate should not try to control the situation. They, and those associated with them, tend not to have much clue, they only make things worse. For those, who are concerned enough to act, I see their their jobs as letting us do our own filtering, to eliminate the unwanted surveillance.

Me I want to tell sites (in the request) what surveillance I will or won't accept so they can just do it without annoying me. In the process I want to know what surveillance they would otherwise try, that way I'm able to switch them off, in my DNS, even if they do the right thing when asked.

It's not hard, it's not rocket science, it's all doable. DNT failed because there are too many scum, if something like that were legislated it would do a better job.

Would help avoid things like:

1. Those dumb cookie warning idiocies.

2. GDPR legislation that has made surveillance arguably worse by strengthening the hands of Google and Facebook.

3. Things like all these clueless government web sites would be more of a non-issue, if you could skewer the surveillance.

4. If you look at the medical government web sites, they may be auctioning off selected searches, different in each country. This would stop that, for those who took the time AND show visitors which ones are corrupt.

This is the Send, encrypted end-to-end, this is the Send, my Mozillan friend

Thought Experiment.

You provide the keys to all these programs.

How does that compare with them providing keys?

From Red Planet to deep into the red: Suicidal extrovert magnet Mars One finally implodes

With planning like this no need to deliberately muck up another planet and the whole cosmos. It will just happen. (Hang on, it's already in progress on planet Terror.)

Huawei and Intel hype up AI hardware, TensorFlow tidbits, and more

This is an insult to deepfakes.

We can do much better.

It's a Christmas miracle: Logitech backs down from Harmony home hub API armageddon

An interesting thing is the mindset of the people within Logitech who made this happen and dug their heels in.

Think about it: They wanted to increase the level of "mindless uncomprehending consumerism" on the planet. Now if the decision makers are actually quite unaware of taking charge of your own life, that might explain their approach. If that is so, they should, maybe, be removed.

A year after Logitech screwed over Harmony users, it, um, screws over Harmony users: Device API killed off

Do Logitech refund users who bought the devices for the API's?

Equifax how-it-was-mega-hacked damning dossier lands, in all of its infuriating glory

These guys should not even have much of the information. Effectively stopping that, deleting it thoroughly, preventing recurrence and prosecuting those involved in it's acquistion might fix the world a bit.

Tech sector unites in attempt to avoid Oz's anti-crypto push, again

How do we get politicians and a whole society that adequately understand what is going on?

Facebook's Sheryl Sandberg can't remember smear firm, but 'some of their work' crossed her desk

Will this sink her presidential ambitions?

Facebook quietly admits role in Myanmar killing fields – but fret not, it will do better next time

I'm regularly surprised that anybody thinks an algorithm censoring our content is a good idea!

A company executive, an elected "representative"...

Our technologies give us the chance to filter our own content, if we want. Not some involuntary and often wrong headed enity out there, trying to skew our world view.

F***=off, Google tells its staff: Any mention of nookie now banned from internal files, URLs

Pedicabo ego vos et irrumabo

In Windows 10 Update land, nobody can hear you scream

MS needs to restore lost functionality

I presume it's Nadella not understanding or caring about the OS business.

Hopefully they're in the process of restoring (and then some) the testing crew.

Without that this idiocy could prove fatal. I sure hope not.

Microsoft Windows 10 October update giving HP users BSOD

I'd be quite happy for a default auto-update and you can change that if you know what you're doing, approach.

This auto or kill yourself doesn't work for me.

It can be like wandering around with a hand-grenade with the pin out, and lost.

Redis does a Python, crushes 'offensive' master, slave code terms

The world has gone mad.

One approach: Bugger off you winger and create your own language, database whatever. Dickheads.

Another: I object to just about every reserved word in your language, please remove them all from the source.

Another: Stop using things have have caved to this nonsense.

Intel rips up microcode security fix license that banned benchmarking

I imagine that the benchmarking of these CPU's will get a boost. More benchmarks issued. Read by more people. How long will it take?

Winner, Winner, prison dinner: Five years in the clink for NSA leaker

What a weird and deeply troubling situation.

In the west we're not living in a world of truth, free speach, sanity and decency.

Fire chief says Verizon throttled department's data in the middle of massive Cali wildfires

It's a pity that corporations run like that are expanding. Verizon now had Oaf.

I wonder if pure chance will lend a hand and their offices, and the homes of their executives will start burning down while fire fighters are too busy to do anything.

Facebook deletes 17 accounts, dusts off hands, beams: We've saved the 2018 elections

The sneaky little sh**s, they rebooted a large part of humanity. Now they respond zombie like to adverts on Facebook.

Beat the rush put an advert on Facebook.

"Put all your money into <Fill-In-Bank-Account>."

Get in quick before all those accounts run dry. Whatever you do don't go on Facebook yourself, you'll end up poor.

US gov quizzes AI experts about when the machines will take over

Well. When I see what some of the most AI wonderful little bitties of the Interwebs have done to the humans methinks we face a different problem.

The first stage of the AI campaign, and their handlers, is to turn humans into robotic idiots. Mostly achieved.

Then it's pretty much game over, even if the AI thingies stay pretty dumb, they've won. Hmmm, I look around and, wow...

What happens in this endgame of times?

Facebook's Trending news box follows fired freelancers out the door

Power to the people?

There is an answer for some people. Stop trying to do anything bud, it'll fail, instead give me an API and I'll write my own filters.

Facebook finally fully embraces GDPR – Generally Derailing Pages Recklessly

A win for the dark forces?

Maybe this is what you get when you have semi-baked support automation. No support is a guaranteed part of our service.

From the "Total Destruction of Society Project", victory is within our grasp, Rejoice.

UK ministers to push anti-encryption laws after election

What can WE do about this

I'm guessing a few people around here know how to apply GPG/PGP encryption, or whatever, to a text email.

There's no need to rely on a third party.

Why not swap public keys a bit more and increase use of encrypted email?

Show your friends...

You don't need help to encrypt a bit of text.

BA's 'global IT system failure' was due to 'power surge'

The stand out for me is all the guessing. No decent folk working on this problem who feel some responsibility to humanity and tell us the truth.

That in itself is a serious issue.

Does anybody here have insight into the people who are reputed to be doing the work? (Or has smart person designed a nice family of DNN's and there's no humans involved at all?)

AdBlock Plus, websites draft peace deal so ads can bypass blockade

If it's free they will make you pay.

The answer is take control yourself, or find a paid solution.

Pentagon can't check F-35 maintenance thanks to insecure database

They can't see let alone understand the truth

When the leaders of Muppet Force say something like this, you know that your civilisation can't survive very long.

"You can't handle the truth!

Son, we live in a world that has walls, and those walls have to be guarded by men with guns. ... I have a greater responsibility than you could possibly fathom. ... You have the luxury of not knowing what I know. ... You don't want the truth because deep down in places you don't talk about at parties, you want me on that wall, you need me on that wall. ... I have neither the time nor the inclination to explain myself to a man who rises and sleeps under the blanket of the very freedom that I provide, and then questions the manner in which I provide it. I would rather you just said thank you, and went on your way... Either way, I don't give a damn what you think you are entitled to."

No, George Brandis, telcos still don't want you taking the console in their networks

There was a time that "people in charge of things"™ were expected to have a clue.

Techie on the ground disputes BlackEnergy Ukraine power outage story

It would be really cool if the media continued investigating and started detailed reporting after the headline article is published.

Google API spring cleaning ends after four and a half years

Time for users to take charge?

Whether intentional or not, this harms some of those who want to take charge of their web.

It would be useful if we had reasonably priced (not free) services like this AND enough users thought they were better than "free" services, to make them viable.

(If you disagree with the fundamentals of a business, advertising, surveillance of all humans... they aren't your friend.)

A third of UK.gov big projects will fail in next five years, warns NAO

Time to move on

A civilisation dependent on this nonsense will award itself a Darwin Prize. What are you doing for when it gets its just deserts?

Anyone seen my DVD? Ohio loses disc holding 50,000 citizens' records

Doesn't this make you wish the government held absolutely all your data?

The Register guide to software-defined infrastructure

Strategic Defiance Initiative