* Posts by Two Lips

40 publicly visible posts • joined 15 Nov 2015

Google rebrands 'android' as 'Android' to remove any doubt about its affiliations

Two Lips
Devil

Re: I'm sure they will address that

Going forward dynamically avoiding low hanging fruit while pushing the envelope to gain traction and trim the fat off our silver bullet in order to leverage the paradigm fully by pushing the envelope past the pain point by moving the needle without moving the goalposts unless there's headwinds and we end up herding cats, so if we all get on board and we're good to go it'll be a game changer and with all our ducks in a row the deliverables will be a game changer unless we deep dive the core competencies by circling back and bringing to the table some bleeding edge blue sky thinking so we can throw our balls in the air and get some baked in actionable items on the back burner.

Two Lips

Re: Logos

Twitter's bird was redesigned five times before Musk went X.

Fedora Project mulls 'privacy preserving' usage telemetry

Two Lips
Thumb Up

Re: Why would anyone

Checkout MX-Linux or Pop!OS.

Two Lips
Linux

Re: "Fedora Workstation the premier developer platform for cloud software development."

Try MX-Linux. Better than Debian on which it's based, forked from AntiX.

Two Lips
Alert

Re: I rarely read news on a desktop...

iCab needs to have EasyList filters enabled in order to protect against tracking

Two Lips
FAIL

Vivaldi generates a unique User ID with no opt-out.

That's that you are missing.

Two Lips
FAIL

Another Clueless Comment from the Author

Spouting the main Linux distros without mentioning those that eschew tracking, and you're a Linux expert?

I don't think so.

Two Lips
Megaphone

Re: Stats please

Custom privacy respecting ROM's like Graphene, Calyx or Divest allow online banking without Google tracking.

Two Lips

Re: Stats please

Wow! You really have no idea!

Waterfox? Are you joking?

Waterfox Classic has multiple unpatched security advisories. The developer states that "changes between versions so numerous between ESRs making merging difficult if not impossible".

You've obviously also never heard of Fennec or Mull.

And you are positing yourself as some sort of privacy/security expert? I don't think so.

Compounded by this absolute garbage: "If you use a Chrome engine, at root, you are using Chrome."

Brave would like a word with you, as would Bromite, and DuckDuckGo.

Two Lips
WTF?

Re: Stats please

> Mr Williams here then provided some stats that some 75% of readers used Chrome based tools.

Where are you getting 75%? It's 52% Google Chrome + 6% Edge. That's 58%.

Furthermore you initially said:. "and yet WE are willing to bet that many of you will be reading this article in some variant of Google Chrome —- despite Google's well known data-collection habits."

How wrong can one person be? First of all 'they' are not *variants* of Google Chrome, 'they' are browsers based on FOSS Chromium, a chalk and cheese distinction. Google DOES NOT collect data in privacy respecting Chromium based browsers. Keep up!

> I reckon that backs up my point rather well.

No. It does not. Chromium and other privacy respecting browsers use the same user agent as Google Chrone. These stats tell you nothing about the privacy habits of El Reg readers. Nothing.

> How come you don't? How come you take this as a personal attack while at the same time implying we are some kind of borg hive mind or something? Do you not see the inconsistency here?

Whatever about other staff, YOU are the author stating:. "Every distro has attempted things like this before. It's really no biggie,"

That's about as clueless as you can get. There are many ways to protect your privacy. Just because YOU are clueless about how to go about it does not mean that WE are.

And you've stated WE twice in your article. As Tonto said to The Lone Ranger when surrounded by Indians: "Just who is this WE paleface? ".

Then YOU add: "yet billions of people use Android devices. Unpopular as it was, WE still think 'You have zero privacy anyway - get over it.'"

Really?. WE for the Second time. So who is this WE then?

What if everyone just said 'Nah' to tracking?

Two Lips
FAIL

Re: We see that you're using an ad blocker

>"I'm gonna guess 20:1 downvote ratio"<

Try x:0. Immeasureably *against* your points of view.

Advertisers want exemption from web privacy rules that, you know, enforce privacy

Two Lips
Thumb Down

Prove it.

The mod firing squad: Stack Exchange embroiled in 'he said, she said, they said' row

Two Lips

Stack Overflow

Duh!

Sinister secret backdoor found in networking gear perfect for government espionage: The Chinese are – oh no, wait, it's Cisco again

Two Lips
FAIL

Re: "they do not favour the Americans"

"Nevertheless, better the NSA than the PRC."

You must be joking. Have you heard of Edward Snowden? Have you heard of Noam Chomsky? We don't see China meddling militarily, economically, politically in more than 200 countries affairs for more than half a century. No, only one country is guilty of that.

"they're still better off with Cisco than Huawei."

Get off your patriotic bike Tex. Huawei are streets ahead of ALL the competition, Americans are not even in the race. Huawei will be the networking monopoly globally within the next ten years. No wonder all Americans are shitting themselves. it has nothing to do with espionage either.

Oh, and another thing, Qualcomm tells court: Apple handed Intel our chipping source code

Two Lips
Alien

Re: Qualcomm is desperate

@AC: Aforementioned DougS is under-informed as soon as he types regardless of the subject matter.

New Zealand border cops warn travelers that without handing over electronic passwords 'You shall not pass!'

Two Lips
Mushroom

Fuck them all (Five Eyes)

Never going to the US (again. Managed to pass through a couple of times 20-30 years ago) for any reason. Even if it's the last safe haven in WWZ. They have nothing that mitigates the downside of going to their shithole.

Been to NZ a few times, seem most of it. Now it's: so long and thanks for all the fush.

Been to OZ, never liked the place. Good riddance.

Never been to Canada, but don't have any foreseeable reason to. Won't be missed.

Trips to the UK becoming less and less likely due to pending BreakIt. Again good riddance anyway. Always was, and always will be a shithole.

That syncing feeling when you realise you may be telling Google more than you thought

Two Lips

Re: Plenty of Google Chrome alternatives

Palemoon on Windows and Android. More stable than Firefox, less pulling of the carpet out from underneath you.

It walks, it talks, it falls over a bit. Windows 10 is three years old

Two Lips
Boffin

Re: Traditional stuff

Disagree about Windows 98. Less stable than 95.

Disagree about Me, a heap of crap.

Vista was terrible, I tried it and reverted to XP.

W8 was shocking, but W8.1 is to-date their best effort. Most stable, once you get the drivers. You can configure everything, switch off metro, add a start menu, HAVE COMPLETE CONTROL OF UPDATES. Faster than W7 in my experience. The last true OS that the user owned and controlled.

W10 is WAAS and for that reason alone should be avoided like the plague. Not least but for out of user control updates.

Microsoft's Windows 7 Meltdown fixes from January, February made PCs MORE INSECURE

Two Lips
Thumb Down

Re: No surprises

WRONG. 23 bit W7 DOES have meltdown patches.

Apple: Sure, we banned VPN iOS apps in China, but, um, er, art!

Two Lips

Re: A non story

"Better to submit to the will of the government so that iDevices can still be sold in China - otherwise the only option for the Chinese will be Android devices which are locked down to the dictatorship approved specifications and which are worse from a privacy point of view."

Bullcrap. Any Android device can be unlocked and reflashed to alternative versions with far MORE privacy than anything Apple. Furthermore ANY android device is far more sideloadable than ANY iOS device.

The only non-story is your comment.

Soz fanbois, Apple DIDN'T invent the smartphone after all

Two Lips
WTF?

Re: Why did anyone say Apple 'invented' the smartphone?

"For those who care, here are some highlights of the 'smart' phone lineage. It DOES begin with an Apple device, the Newton, whose design began in 1987."

WRONG. The lineage of smart portable devices DOES NOT begin with Apple. It begins with Psion.

Touchscreens do not define the lineage of smartphone design. Ability does.

Psion released it's first Psion organizer in 1984. Apple didn't even begin to research the Newton until 1987, and it wasn't released until 1993. The Psion Series 3 was released in 1991, the Series 3a was out at the same time as the Newton. The Series 3a utterly trashed the Newton. I owned a Series 3 and 3a which were groundbreaking at the time. There were very few Netwons to be found anywhere, and if you eventually found one, they absolutely sucked. No wonder Jobs pulled them.

Psion predated both Apple AND Palm chronologically and were far superior in ability. Touchscreen was not on their agenda. Psion's OS EPOC became Symbian which allowed Nokia to create it's own smartphone hardware designs long, long before an iPod or iPhone was even a glint in Jobs eye.

Regarding the iPod, I owned an Archos French made 20GB hard drive MP3 player four full years before the first iPod. It could play 192kbps VBR MP3's up to 320kbps, better than any other device available at the time. Roll forward many iPod iterations before they got anywhere close to that capacity or quality.

The only thing Apple genuinely brought to the table was the iPod wheel, which is now redundant.

Apple in no way invented or perfected touchscreens. The first portable computer touchscreen was the Casio PB-1000. I used touchscreen monitors myself in the early 1982. Apple built upon other touchscreen advances, but they cannot take the credit for pioneering, or inventing it.

It seems that Apple and their fanboi population still would have you believe that Apple invented any nifty technology which they stole or borrowed from other inventors and competitors.

Apple's market share is now down to 12.5% from 18% a year ago. And rightly so. Hardly owning anything at the moment. More like struggling to stay relevant.

The world has long since woken up to the failed American technological dream, and Apple's marketing department's part in it. Apple's forte was, as with many US tech companies: marketing and sales. Nothing more. The rest they beg, steal or borrow.

So my ISP can now sell my browsing history – what can I do?

Two Lips
FAIL

Re: Dual VPN?

Opera? And you think your data is safe in their hands? Think again.

Windows 10 will now automatically download and install on PCs

Two Lips
Flame

The Golden Rule is: Manual Updates only - click for More Info...

If More Info doesn't clarify an update then it doesn't get installed.

This applies to: Every. Single. Update.

All w10 related updates have been removed. No changes are allowed to the update program itself.

Any legitimate update is well described in the update module itself, and self explanatory.

The real problem will be when MS start to blatantly lie about what is in an update. And when they start to say it is required rather than optional.

At the moment they are just not saying what is in the updates that you want to stay a country mile away from.

I use w8.1 (desktop mode only) over w7 as it is faster and more memory efficient by a huge amount. I doubt w10 is much more so than w8.1, and even if it was, there is no way I would allow any OS manufacturer, distributor or anyone else access to my data and control of my computer. Unless of course Intel and MS have already done that unbeknownst to us all.

European human rights court rules mass surveillance illegal

Two Lips
WTF?

Cameroon wants information extracted under torture used in trials.

Forget about the ECHR. Ever heard of the Geneva Convention of Human Rights Cameroon.

Trend Micro AV gave any website command-line access to Windows PCs

Two Lips
FAIL

TM never had a heyday.

They had a huge marketing budget used to bribe semi-literate IT managers

Ever since I first encountered their kerrap on a work PC I was unimpressed. After having multiple work PCs hosed while TM was installed and up-to-date, I became fully informed about their sub-standard products. Wouldn't touch them with a bargepole even if their products miraculously scored top marks. You cannot change a company culture.

Confirmed: How to stop Windows 10 forcing itself onto PCs – your essential guide

Two Lips
Stop

Re: Just my two penn'orth

I remember the Apple Lisa prototype just after I left university. We had the ZX81 kits, but since we were using real computers(PDP & VAX) at the time, the ZX line were just toys at best.

Regarding W8, you should've tried it, and upgraded to W8.1 Pro. Better than Windows 7 by a country mile. In fact so far the best OS they have done, although you have to reverse out the MS spying updates the same as W7.

I never use the metro interface. Ever. I use W8.1 like a W7 desktop with the only change being that I didn't bother adding back the start menu, and got used to searching to find any program I need. Far quicker that way anyway. The desktop mode is otherwise virtually identical to W7 for all intents and purposes.

In terms of resources W8 and 8.1 are leagues ahead of W7 in terms of efficiency and resource use. Especially RAM. Your 'didn't bother' comment is quite common with many people who missed the peak of MS OS offerings.

Bloke sues dad who shot down his drone – and why it may decide who owns the skies

Two Lips
Mushroom

America bases civil rights upon ballistics...

No change there then.

I shot and killed him, therefore he must've been guilty. And subsequently had no right to life.

Ethics and logic from the most aggressive nation on the planet.

Two Lips

Re: A suitably modified Kärcher?

Try Draper. Far superior to Karcher.

GCHQ can hack your systems at will – thanks to 'soft touch' oversight

Two Lips
Stop

Re: Yawn.

@BRYANT: STFU you useless tw@t.

On the odd occasion that you make an intelligent suggestion, you subsequently and regularly completely undermine any hope of your redemption in the eyes of any sane, thinking person. Your asinine, repetitive non-joined up thinking with respect to human rights and civil liberties vs overreach by the authorities makes Cameroon look like Ghandi.

Only a complete cretin could keep repeating the verbal diarrhoea that you insist on excreting in your posts and replies.

France mulls tighter noose around crypto

Two Lips
Coat

Re: Another ridiculous law that will fail, even if it passes

@Bronek: "Give me the man and I will find the paragraph" is one lesson that Western governments have taken from Stalin.

Actually the original quote is from Cardinal Richelieu: "If you give me six lines written by the hand of the most honest of men, I will find something in them which will hang him."

Two Lips
FAIL

@AC: 20 years ago, three guys killed 160+, 14 years ago, some 20 guys killed 3,000...

And there were others.

On the other hand domestic gun crime in the US in ONE YEAR outnumbers the total killed by all terrorists. Do you see any slow down in their gun death related figures? The opposite is the case. Dramatically, and yet there is no sign of any decent gun control in that country.

Road traffic deaths in every country outnumber all of these statistics, yet we are not banning cars, in fact we are not changing laws as they were sufficient in the first place. Driver education is the way to go.

In the case of terrorists, education is the best solution to the home-grown types, and decent foreign policy is the best solution to foreign-grown. Changing laws and making enemies of the entire citizenry will only lead to one thing for certain, and French history is steeped in it.

Sneaky Microsoft renamed its data slurper before sticking it back in Windows 10

Two Lips
WTF?

Re: Tinfoil hats - @Daniel Hall

"You're all over this with extremely little proof or anything solid to back up your concerns"

Excuse me?! The telemetry has been explicitly documented if you had even half a clue about what you spout about.

Over on inforworld every W7 update that tries to install telemetry is analysed. Contributors watching network packets going out using Wireshark. W8 onwards is worse, and W10 is worse again.

Just because a fool cannot (or will not) uncover what's going on, doesn't make the fool into a wise man. In your case. QED.

Two Lips
Mushroom

@MatthewSt: No affiliation with Microsoft apart from being a customer

Lying Bar Steward...

Microsoft chief Satya drops an S bomb in Windows 10, cloud talk

Two Lips
FAIL

Re: "Nadella spoke about trust as both at the core and central to Microsoft's mission"

"What is it with you guys, do you think google / apple / facebook et al are any better?"

Google, Apple, Facebook et al are NOT your OS provider. You can use alternative search engines, email etc and replace Google completely quite easily. Same is true of Apple products and services. Facebook is entirely optional and there are plenty of other social media outlets. You can actually run all of the above in such a way as to prevent any real information going their way.

With an OS your choice is far less, and quite probably is locked in.

Another comparison is that your OS functionality is being overstepped by MS here. People generally may want the free goodies, but not at the price being asked, if they were to be asked.

Google's, Apple's and Facebook's products are not mandatory, alternatives are available, and methods exist to deny them the very information they attempt to slurp. Not true with W10.

Malware caught checking out credit cards in 54 luxury hotels

Two Lips
WTF?

Re: Cash - Never had to deal with hire car companies had you?

The subject is POS in hotel chains. What has car hire got to do with the subject being discussed?

Furthermore you pay for car rental up front. Deal done, or no keys. Whereas you pay your hotel bill after services have been rendered, therefore the onus is on the hotel to take your payment or be out of pocket.

Apple's Watch charging pad proves Cupertino still screwing buyers

Two Lips
Mushroom

Re: Lightning chargers are clearly better. They are blah, blah...and more robust than micro-USB..

NO. They are not.

I have dozens of micro USB connectors from all sorts of products and a few Amazon purchases. All bar one are still working perfectly and have done since the day they were bought many years ago.

Every lightning cable I've had the displeasure of trying to use was flaky. Half were broken, and the other half were on the way out. A useless pile of kerrap.

Badware in the firmware all over the place

Two Lips
Childcatcher

Re: As an expat Kiwi many things tug the heartstrings

when I lived there, first weta encounter putting on a wetsuit to go surfing, trying to catch up with my surfing buddies, in a rush, got one arm in the wetsuit, over my shoulder and then the other arm... a bit of loose thread or something right down at the bottom of the arm, pushed my hand through to look at my hand and the loose material, only to see a two inch weta in my palm articulating wildly menacing gestures. Cue scream, heart attack, jump five feet in the air much to the amusement of my mates.

second encounter, driving to distant surf spot, on the last 100km leg of the journey which was largely metal (gravel) roads with sections of dirt track. Stereo blaring, sun shining, windows down, cruising at 80kph, then in it came, only an inch long this time, flew straight into the side of my face, then bounced off the inside of the car into the windscreen, then panicked and started articulating wildly menacing gestures and flying into the windscreen and bouncing back into my face, as they do. Cue scream, freak out, attempt to stop the car in a straight line with dust clouds going everywhere, then let the friggin thing out into the wild.

The Edward Snowden guide to practical privacy

Two Lips
FAIL

Re: He missed one.

1. No wonder you're androgynous

2. and a cupboard

Two Lips
Thumb Down

Re: TAILS - Do you lot really think you're that important?

Fools rush in, where wise men fear to tread...

You cannot predict the future, and also cannot turn back the clock. Once you tell them everything, they will have it forever, for ANY eventuality.

Fools like you live in the fantasy that spooks are somehow not abusing many ethical boundaries, many democratic principles, many rules of law etc.

Two Lips
FAIL

Re: Facebook

>>"2nd sim card, PAYG, works a treat. You can use it in any throwaway, but allows you 2FA."

>"the phone still uses the same IMEI number... "

No it does not. It IS a separate "throwaway" phone...

>"So you really need cheap 'burner' phones."

Which is EXACTLY what he said... "you can use it in any throwaway..."