Posts by Prst. V.Jeltz

Tech rookie put decimal point in wrong place, cost insurer zillions

they did it in superman 3 ....

WannaCry reverse-engineer Marcus Hutchins hit with fresh charges

Re: Some poeple accept their duty

"People aren't being paid more or less"

Yes they are, I'm off to look at the job pages...

Re: Some poeple accept their duty

Ask not what your country can do for you, but what you can do for your country!

Re: Doctor! Doctor! I can’t feel my legs

This would seem to indicate that the Wanna Cry was targeted on the NHS.

It wasnt targeted at the NHS, we just have the shittiest I.T practices , (especially patching) so got hit hardest.

p.s.

Whats a Patient Computer screen?

What would seem to indicate it was targeted? the presence of jokes?, the ability to access jokes? or the lack of tech knowledge of Nurses?

...because if any of those things can down your system it has other problems.

-He wasnt extradited , he was arrested while visiting.

-I'd imagine he probably could use the American "Public Defender" for free if he felt suicidal.

-His charges are completely unrelated to the wannacry ransomeware - something that seems to have been missed by a lot of the commentors (rtfa! :p )

specifically doing a DNS lookup for a non-existent name. If it got a positive result the assumption was that it was in a researcher's sandbox

Why? because the researcher would simulate the domain and have it reply?

Re: Some poeple accept their duty

"Do they incur an equal loss of earnings"

Possibly not but if some guy on 100k per year is going to get his normal rate , for sitting next to me doing the same job as me whilst i'm getting the same "shitty-end-of-the-stick-recompense" that I get in my day job , I would be pretty affronted.

You shouldnt have to pay the rich more to do their civic duty.

Oddly enough, when a Tesla accelerates at a barrier, someone dies: Autopilot report lands

You cant rely on the stalks to be consistent from one car to the next. I think your instructors in the wrong job!

"While we can assume Huang did not notice the Tesla was in between lanes and heading toward a crash barrier, neither did the Tesla"

Very telling, you'd think if you were even half paying attention , youd notice your car had driven off the road , and maybe press the brake before some off road obstacle appears

Don’t talk to the ATM, young man, it’s just a machine and there’s nobody inside

Re: Blue Thunder

"You know he checks his sanity with his wristwatch?"

"What do you check yours with? a dipstick?"

That line always cracked me up :)

Help, I'm being held prisoner in a security camera testing factory. So please read this...

Re: Missing vital information

Is it compressed? I had a camera that i had to restrict to taking jpegs when it saw something , because when set to ftp video to my NAS it would send Huuuge files! and that was at 640 not HD.

Re: Onboard storage? Live WiFi streaming?

I think they mentioned you can put an SD card in it . would that help?

'Moore's Revenge' is upon us and will make the world weird

Re: A chip in everything...

Ive just put my phone down on my desk . Does that mean I've created the smartdesk?

No? how about if I tape it down?

I can now do all sorts of things with my smart-desk tm

Stream movies

arrange meetings

play spectrum games

go shopping

book holidays

buy drugs on the dark web

Re: A chip in everything...

Its not that smart:

" Requires compatible smartphone and download of compatible apps"

"Port tack gives way to starboard tack: If two sailboats are approaching each other and the wind is on a different side of each boat, then sailing rules are that the sailboat which has the wind on the port side must always give right of way to the other." This could apply to a head on scenario, and there would be a clear right of way.

If a motor vessel is experiencing some kind of difficulty restricting its maneuverability, it is given right of way.

a restriction like "being a 550,000 DWT oil tanker" presumably counts

Re: A chip in everything...

Like he says , as long as it can carry on without the online bullshit.

Does this fridge really exist? Its become like the standard iot joke. Its like on of those urban myths that are repeated so often most people swear its true. like ... um ... well these:

https://www.rd.com/culture/false-facts-everyone-believes/

Did you test that? No, I thought you tested it. Now customers have it and it doesn't work

Re: Had a close call

@Jake

Have you just left Retro Computers Ltd??

Re: Well ...

Vint? Bob? is that you?

Indiegogo grants ZX Spectrum reboot firm another two weeks to send a console

Re: Quote from RCL

Borrowed from the House of Commons excuse calendar?

Experts build AI joke machine that's about as funny as an Adam Sandler movie (that bad)

Re: Major Overreach

"If I were them, I would try to learn to walk before attempting to climb the north face of Mount Everest."

While it does seem a herculean task , nobody said AI would be easy . Voice recognition and playing chess just dosent cut it. You're virtually creating life. I'd say the 20 odd % success rate mentioned in the article is a win!

Its a good test of AI is what i'm saying , maybe we're not ready yet as you say.

After all - it was this very concept of humour test that finally convinced the scientist that:

Johhny5 is ALIVE!

---------------

"AIs are good at processing data, not at understanding it."

Well thats not an AI then is it?

Mirror mirror on sea wall, spot those airships, make Kaiser bawl

Re: It was....

"when some manager has some grand masterplan!" it wont be Alien beating technical innovation , i guess it might be productivity enhancing in theory , but most likley that will be down to whipping the slaves harder , rather than anything innovative like storing the giant stones nearer to the pyramid build.

Most often though it'll just be reverting to the previous masterplan before the current masterplan , which will involve a lot of people swapping desks and renaming the open plan office which is currently named "Centre of Excellence #1" to " Innovation Station #1"

Re: It was....

"Individuals had an idea, built their own prototypes, went to a government office and pushed for official acceptance" and "dicking about with something that might never work"

Thats a big part of that film* about the birth of radar with Eddie Izzard (Article tie-in!)

Imagine dicking about with something that might never work , during a war where lives are lost everyday that could have been saved , had you got your idea working yet ....

Thats pressure!

*and , no doubt , reality.

Softbank's 'Pepper' robot is a security joke

Good pointy. If its not an IOT , does this matter?

If someone has to actually walk up to your robot and stick a serial cable up its bum to do this , and its not online so cant join a bot net ...

is it a problem? My Alarm clock can be hacked - if someone breaks in my house and changes the alarm time ... that dosent mean i want cofigurable user accounts and passwords on it .

Its a TOY!

Sysadmin's PC-scrub script gave machines a virus, not a wash

autoexec.bat

Back in the days of win3.1 , dos 6.22 I started work at a college. They had just started "getting organised" cos 'puters were a thing now that everbody needed , not just tech students , so , very forward thinkingly , they centralised things and divided the IT staff into server and desktop ( IT / grunts ) and put a wall between them . So the job went from a groovy chilled "hey! try this" , "learn about that ... " , "heres a new thing we bought - youre the one to master it" to:

"Stick this floppy in and reimage it" . I was on the wrong side . I should have left a lot earlier (did 8 yrs).

Now in my corner of the college , the PCs were booting up , and then failing to "Find the network" quite often , but not all the time .This didnt seem to unduly bother the only people with the ability to do anything about it - the server boys , as they dont face the ire of the users. A fact still true today at most places. And so this went on for months. with much , quite justified , complaining from the users - at me.

In desperation i re-rewrote the autoexec.bat so that when it had loaded the multiple files necessary to connect to the network (novell) it checked if it had worked , and if not loaded them again. This worked as a workaround , but performance still bad.

One day one of my higher-ups and betters was passing through , sees the problem , looks at the switch up in a cab in the corner that we had No Access To and says "Ooh , look , this is all set up to be as shit as possible - its all 10mb half duplex , no wonder its slow ...

only coppy on a floppy.

Back when i worked in a college , all the students would store everything on a floppy , and regularly lose it due to the well known durability of floppies , of any format.

When asked why they didnt have a copy of this important work on their home drives on the network they would say "Teacher told us to store our stuff on these disks"

When the teachers were asked why they told the students to use floppy disks they said:

"Its on the syllybus that students need to know how to use a floppy disk".

I think we can all see the numerous facepalms and ironies here.

I suggested the teachers inform the students what a Home Drive is , and that they should use floppies for transferrring files they had other copies of on the network or at home"

That was the start of nobody ever listening to my ideas no matter how sensible. Not much has changed.

You know that silly fear about Alexa recording everything and leaking it online? It just happened

Re: What is the voice recognition version of "butt dialing" called?

the article didnt seem to go into much detail about what route and format the employee recieved the message in

Re: Most of us knew that this was going on

giving you functionality or a price break or both in exchange for insight into your personal life

Hey , if personnel data is the new currency then fucking great - I havent got much actual currency so if retailers and manufacturers are going to start taking bits of data instead, then great! Ive got loads of that - i generate it all day long , and even better you can spend it more than once , and even better better you can make up or forge the data and they dont mind!

Re: How naughty have Amazon been?

To further elaborate:

What I'd like to know is:

- How did the employee receive the recording? Voice mail? Direct call? E-mail attachment?

Apparently there is a feature to record and send a message as audio

- Why did the employee think they had been hacked, as opposed to assuming they had butt-dialed?

cos when the boss sends you a recording he clearly doisent know he's doing it - someone else dit it . possibly.

- Is it normally possible for a user to command Alexa to send a recording to one of their contacts? If not, then it implies the presence of an undocumented (and therefore disturbing) feature.

Apparently It is , and although documented , Its still alarming to me and should be removed , or at least diabled by default.

In the absence of information like this it is hard to know whether to sharpen my pitchfork or not.

RTFA! lol

Contrary to what you read in the el Reg comments section this gizmo isnt Always recording everything you do and storing it on Jeff Bezos DVR.

It operates a 1second audio constant audio buffer ( according to the article) which if hears its name it will increase to record the command - send that to "ze cloud" to be understood.

Hence in theory , when not going off the rails , alexa only listens when u talking at it .

We know this not always case due to tv triggers etc ,

BUT if they refrained from apps that record you and transmit that - i guess it would go a lot smoother.

stick to: "Switch light on" , "play music" , "put beer on shopping list"

AVOID: "take this down and email it to {random person badly voice interpreted}"

President Trump broke US Constitution with Twitter bans – judge

Re: Seperation

"Because he doesn't separate them. "

Thats not what i was getting at - i look at both those accounts as his.

Why should anyone not be able to control who writes on *their* thing?

Anyone he's excluded can go say whatever they want on *their* thing.

I dont let Donald Trump write on my facebook page, but some other people can.

This is probably the issue with the POTUS deciding to run the country through twitter.

If he talked to the country the old fashioned way via press release , we could all discuss it in the comments section in the newspaper. In fact cant we still do that?

Re: Work/Life Separation

Look , its his sounding board he can invite friendly voices only if he wants. Since when did every citizen get the right to write on governmemt announcements?

If the consevatives put up a big billboard saying "We the conservatives promise to blah blah blah , if elected" Its not my god given right to scrawl "Bullshit" on it, but if they want to put some quotes from other people on it they can 'cos "ITS THEIRS"

I do have the right to put my own billboard up next to it with an arrow saying "That other billboard is bullshit"

Re: A ruling full of holes that will go nowhere

"If the decision fails to stand, it won't be because it's stupid. It'll be because politics doesn't respect justice."

No , its stoopid. Jims right. The judge is saying that everybody has the right to go spmamming whatever they want where they want .

Hey - I think ill start a business and advertise all the products on trumps twitter - that should get some coverage!

Look , a Landlord can deny you entry to his pub - whats the difference?

The Trump cant stop discussion of him anywhere except on his own personal account, which is his , so whats the problem?

Astronaut took camera on spacewalk, but forgot SD memory card

Re: Fors sale IT warez, IT warez for sale

just have to enjoy the moment while you work.

Its the selfie generation's worst nightmare: In space with camera but no sd!

Re: The man is 53, for god's sake!

wow you touched a few nerves there with the 53 thing!

Now that's old-school cool: Microsoft techies slap Azure Sphere IoT chip in an Altair 8800

the size of that box you could put half a dozen computers in there.

In fact retro youtuber LGR has already done it.

Sysadmin hailed as hero for deleting data from the wrong disk drive

Re: what form of madness?

...or possibly some BOFH advice

I do seem to remember a user / OS2 bofh article ...

"So they inserted a floppy, "format A:" and then once it was finished - backup complete!"

You've gotta wonder what form of madness led them to arrive at that procedure!

It'd be nice if fdisk / ghost / the bios / all these types of programs identified the drives a bit more clearly , admittedly i cant think how , as they may not have volume labels at that point.

I'vs come close to doing similar things as in the article and to this day , I unplug drives not involved in the operation for the duration to avoid confusion.

Want to know what an organisation is really like? Visit the restroom

I still dont understand why women want the toilet seat down - if its up it means it wasnt pissed on.

Re: It's not a sink

can we start on the dinner / tea debate now?

Off with e's head: E-cig explosion causes first vaping death

Re: Vaping is NOT smoking...

So whats the default vape smell?

Also , even if not aimed at them , dakidz take great delight in trying the different flavours.

Re: Just some good old smokes...

The Long Dark Tea Time of the Soul .....

Re: limit vaping to 20 watts

Trying to kick a 60 a day roll up habit with the thin vapour on offer even three years just didn’t do it for me. 120 odd watts, a couple of Uwell Crown tanks and some decent liquid got me off the fags for good last summer, and now I’m back down at 20 watts with a couple of Kayfun 5s. You can’t emphasise enough that if you don’t find vaping sufficiently satisfying, you just won’t take to it.

Firstly - how the hell did you have time to roll and smoke 60 a day?

dosent the satifying just come from the amount of nicotine in it or vp or whatever?

I am migrating at the moment, trying to find the right formula

Russian malware harvesting Telegram Desktop creds, chats

Auto IT malware? good grief!

Zuck to meet Euro MPs for ‘please explain’ session

Re: We need a "European Great Firewall", to promote local competition and avoid global monopolies

Google and Microsoft created their own software to replace SYSTRAN

Another great service google provide - for free.

and yet they get nothing but hate in return ?

"but another unconvincing performance could make things interesting"

Another? from what I heard he ran rings round the crustys in Congress who were ill equipped intellectually to interrogate him beyond "Please explain the information superhighway and what you do there".

John McAfee ‘goes underground’ in motorcade to flee SEC

bit of recon ....

Posts by StargateSg7

87 posts • joined 12 Jul 2017

mostly wid mad CAPZ

Julian Assange said to have racked up $5m security bill for Ecuador

the 5m Ecuador have spent on wifi , is peanuts compared to the money it apparently costs us to have a bobby stand outside the place for the last few years.