* Posts by Richard Boyce

443 publicly visible posts • joined 8 Aug 2007

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Running on Intel? If you want security, disable hyper-threading, says Linux kernel maintainer

Richard Boyce

Buying Intel

Is it time, or past time, to fire people for buying Intel?

We can go our own Huawei! Arm says it can flog chip blueprints to Chinese giant despite US trade embargo

Richard Boyce

Applying sanctions is costly to both sides

So I guess ARM will be making very sure that they exclude US input from future efforts, even if US sanctions are lifted. They won't be the only ones.

Hundreds charged in internet's biggest child-abuse swap-shop site bust: IP addy leak led cops to sys-op's home

Richard Boyce

Blaming the tools

I'm glad that these people have been caught. Despite the bluster about the size of the operation, I suspect it was just a tip of an evil iceberg.

However, blaming Tor and Bitcoin is just blaming useful tools that the accusers have yet to make use of themselves, or cynically, because they know that the majority of listeners have yet to do so. The same people might have blamed the Internet a few years ago.

Virtual inanity: Solution to Irish border requires data and tech not yet available, MPs told

Richard Boyce

Re: An interactive map of the border

Is there a danger that organised crime gangs from the two communities will start fighting over control over smuggling? Could that lead to the Troubles V2?

Talk about a calculated RISC: If you think you can do a better job than Arm at designing CPUs, now's your chance

Richard Boyce

Re: "I did not know that ARM actually prohibited adding instructions"

I guess you could add instructions that have to be used by each thread, to prove authorisation. Any use of the processor by unauthorised code would then be detectable.

Switch about to get real: Openreach bod on the challenge of shuttering UK's copper phone lines

Richard Boyce

Re: Minor technical nitpick

Well, below that individual electrons. You might call that digital, in a weird quantum way.

I guess whether it's digital depends on the resolution of the sensors. It's functionally digital if you are able to detect increments; if you're reading instead of just measuring.

Rolling in DoH: Chrome 78 to experiment with DNS-over-HTTPS – hot on the heels of Firefox

Richard Boyce

They'd be crazy to bypass the hosts file, so I think we can assume they won't.

Anatomy of an attack: How Coinbase was targeted with emails booby-trapped with Firefox zero-days

Richard Boyce

Re: Discovered 'simoultaneosly', or leaked?

I imagine that Project Zero are required to report their findings to other people/groups and need permission from those others to do anything with what they've found. In which case, there's plenty of scope for insecurity.

Former UK PM Tony Blair urges governments to sort out online ID

Richard Boyce

Re: SQRL

There is nothing to stop a SQRL user from providing other information such as name and address. When a government agency has this info, and has tied it to a SQRL public key, noone else can readily impersonate the user.

Richard Boyce

SQRL

SQRL is a decentralised authentication system that has now, after five years, reached the point where it's ready for widespread use. It trusts no government, no commercial interest, and gives the websites that use it for authentication no secrets to keep. It is not encumbered by IP rights. There is a reference client for Windows, and clients for other platforms. There is also a SQRL server API that can be used by existing websites to quickly add support. This should make FIDO dead in the water.

Details at sqrl dot grc dot com .

RIP Dyn Dynamic DNS :'( Oracle to end Dyn-asty by axing freshly gobbled services, shoving customers into its cloud

Richard Boyce

FreeDNS

My simple needs have been reliably met by FreeDNS (https://freedns.afraid.org) for many years.

Must watch: GE's smart light bulb reset process is a masterpiece... of modern techno-insanity

Richard Boyce

Re: They missed the obvious fucking solution

Apart from the fact that not everyone uses a screw fitting, you also have to consider that the bulb will have to remember without power that it has already reset itself, and you might want to reset that. The article's suggestion of electrocuting yourself with a paper clip is another good solution.

Frontiersman Cray snags $50m storage contract for 'largest single filesystem'

Richard Boyce

I like it...

but I think I'll wait until there's a buy one, get one free offer.

Own goal: $280,000 GDPR fine for soccer app that snooped on fans' phone mics to snare pub telly pirates

Richard Boyce

Re: Data Spoof

So many so-called privacy policies say at the begining that they will never take or sell any personal data without your permission. Many, many pages later, it will say that by using their software/service you're giving them permission to do anything they wish. That sort of professional dishonesty is still standard in many jurisdictions.

US Air Force probes targeted malware attack, blames... er, the US Navy? What?

Richard Boyce

Active emails

It's not unusual to recieve emails that attempt to download all or part of their content from a remote server, which implicitly gets to see all the IP addresses of the recipients, and to record the time when the email was read.

It's always good security and privacy practice to only use the plain text content of emails and to disable the fetching of new content.

'Nigerian princes' snatch billions from Western biz via fake email – Interpol

Richard Boyce

Re: Let's give them a hand

Our local police do this too. Google now treats their emails as spam.

One-time Mars InSight Lander engineer scores $1.5m redress over whistleblower sacking

Richard Boyce

Costs?

I imagine the legal costs were substantial. Did the plaintiff have to pay any of those costs?

NASA boffins show Moon water supply could – er, this can't be right? – come from the Sun

Richard Boyce

The numbers

The numbers are everything and, unfortunately, this article doesn't give us any.

We've had lunar rocks brought to Earth to study, so I would be surprised if we didn't have a pretty good idea about the level of hydration in the common minerals in areas that are exposed to sunlight, at least close to the surface. Perhaps a dedicated drilling mission would throw up some surprises. It would be fortunate if there were usable quantities of water in areas other than the poles.

Core blimey... When is an AMD CPU core not a CPU core? It's now up to a jury of 12 to decide

Richard Boyce

Recent security lessons

Aren't we now running processors that have had to be hobbled because of the resources they intimately share? Are the people who paid extra for hyperthreading and similar still getting the benchmarks they paid for?

Fake broadband ISP support scammers accidentally cough up IP address to Deadpool in card phish gone wrong

Richard Boyce

Re: Useful telephone number.

Better to direct them to your MP's home number.

DNAaaahahaha: Twins' 23andMe, Ancestry, etc genetic tests vary wildly, surprising no one

Richard Boyce

Re: Boffins or Bafoons?

I gave you a thumbs up because you're making people think and raising quality standards by playing devil's advocate.

If a lawyer defends a well-known criminal, the lawyer may strongly suspect that his/her client is guilty, but it would be in *everyone's* interest that the evidence be tested very carefully.

Phew, galactic accident helps boffins explain dark matter riddle

Richard Boyce

Re: Explains the riddle...?

At best, it just seems to modify the existing riddle. Why do most old galaxies have little dark matter?

We still don't know what dark matter is.

Q: If Pesky Pepper had a peek at patient papers, at how many patient papers did Pesky Pepper peek? A: 231

Richard Boyce

"I wonder how many of us here would not have done the same thing in that situation?"

Can you be trusted with medical information?

Holy moley! The amp, kelvin and kilogram will never be the same again

Richard Boyce

Scale

"The Planck constant, named after the physicist Max Planck, is incredibly small (it's 6.62607015 x 10-34 Js)"

I think we need to be careful about describing units as large or small, when the magnitude of the numerical parts of their value is a function of the units we've chosen to use.

For example, would it be reasonable to describe the speed of light as incredibly small because it's 9.71561e-9 parsecs per second?

Watch closely as NASA deploys the world's biggest parachute at supersonic speeds

Richard Boyce

Re: Good news

If we deployed a large sunshade near Venus, large enough to put the whole planet into shadow, the planet would start to cool and begin absorbing CO2 by chemical weathering. After some millions years, maybe even Earth-like tectonics may begin. Teraforming Venus is definitely a long-term project.

UKIP doubled price of condoms for sale at party conference

Richard Boyce

Close the border.

US sanctions on Turkey for Russia purchases could ground Brit F-35s

Richard Boyce

Flip-top lid

I cringe every time I see a picture of that flip-top lid. It just seems designed to break.

SpaceX blasted massive plasma hole in Earth's ionosphere

Richard Boyce

Besides other things mentioned, I guess it would rule out the use of cryogenic propellants such as liquid oxygen. By the time, you got the rocket up to height, it'd be covered in ice and a lot of propellant would have boiled of

Also, recovering the rocket and payload if there was an aborted launch would be a problem.

Richard Boyce

Unusual trajectory

Why was the trajectory unusually vertical?

The satellite required a near-polar orbit, but it still needed to obtain orbital speed, so one would think that building that speed early to reduce gravity drag would be important.

Was the desire to recover the booster a factor?

123 Reg suffers deja vu: Websites restored from August 2017 backups amid storage meltdown

Richard Boyce

Re: 123Reg ?

Rename to Reg321.

Bright idea: Make H when the Sun shines, and H when it doesn't

Richard Boyce

Re: carbon monoxide as byproduct???

I "guess" as you have put solar energy in you must get more energy from burning the carbon monoxide and hydrogen

I think the solar energy is effectively used to split water and the water is reformed at the end, releasing that extra energy. Doing that without the involvement of methane would be more difficult.

NASA finds satellite, realises it has lost the software and kit that talk to it

Richard Boyce
Trollface

Re: Future humans will only find

Would their own existence not provide all the evidence required?

Granted, there would be some people that postulated the involvement of a deity, and that plastic was HIs means of testing their faith.

Yes, your old iPhone is slowing down: iOS hits brakes on CPUs as batteries wear out

Richard Boyce

Battery shape?

Could battery shape, specifically a very thin battery with small electrodes, limit the power output of the battery such that it is manufactured with insufficient excess capacity to cope with ageing?

Could someone familiar with the battery technology comment on this?

Dark fibre arts: Ofcom is determined to open up BT's network

Richard Boyce

Re: The consumer would like some of Ofcom's attention too

Most people are not technology-sensitive. What they care about is cost, and what they can do with their Internet connection. Most are therefore still oblivious to the fact that their fast Internet is perfectly capable of handling their telephone traffic at near-zero incremental cost, even for many international calls, just as their visits to web sites are.

So they continue to think that they need something separate, and continue to be charged in the old way. I am not asking for FTTP to be universally installed. I am asking for more FTTC (which suffices for telephony). I do not want Ofcom to ask, as you do, what evidence there is that people are wising up to the new possibilities. When it comes to improving our national telecoms, they should be proactive, acting for the general good.

Ripping up the old copper wires to the exchanges would be a one-time cost that will have to be done eventually anyway. The sooner it's taken out, the sooner the ongoing maintenance costs end. This should be part of the process of rolling out FTTC to a neighbourhood.

Richard Boyce

Re: The consumer would like some of Ofcom's attention too

No problem. Just get your land line discontinued. I'm sure your ISP will find some other way of connecting you

In the UK most consumers who need a wired service are forced to use either a service that uses Openreach or Virgin Cable. With the former, you're required to pay for an ordinary phone line too. Virgin therefore makes you pay for a phone line whether you have one or not. Indeed, you're often quoted more for service without a phone line.

These days, we should be plugging our telephone handsets into our routers. We're well passed the point where we need to replace the USO for phone service with a USO for broadband that includes VoIP.

None of the big telcos will put the old cash cow at risk by offering a VoIP service that competes with it. You have to go to a company that specialises in VoIP service. That is why we need a regulator to act.

Richard Boyce

The consumer would like some of Ofcom's attention too

As well as more lit fibre, we need less copper in use, particularly in the local loop. Consumers are still being forced to pay for old-style land lines while VoIP is suppressed.

Logitech: We're gonna brick your Harmony Link gizmos next year

Richard Boyce

Re: Idiots !

Squeezeboxes were developed by Slim Devices. Logitech acquired them and things went downhill from there. I still use a lovely version 3 player, thanks to community support.

Parity calamity! Wallet code bug destroys $280m in Ethereum

Richard Boyce

Re: A tragedy?

If your physical wallet got blown overboard into the sea, would you be happy if someone within earshot laughed and expressed the wish that all your capitalist vapour-paper be snuffed and permanently inaccessible?

Apple hauls in $52.6bn in Q4, iPhone, iPad and Mac sales all up

Richard Boyce

Re: What is the point of the cash pile?

They've been considering making cars. Building the factories would require a lot of money, as Tesla has shown. Another option would be to create or buy a bank.

There are plenty of ways to further enter the lives of the well-off and status-conscious.

Giza geezers' muon-geyser visor reveals Great Pyramid's hidden void surpriser

Richard Boyce

Re: 'a particle usually found in cosmic rays'

Muons are very unstable, so don't travel very far before they decay. Better would be "a particle usually made by impacts with cosmic rays".

Apple Cook's half-baked defense of the Mac Mini: This kit ain't a leftover

Richard Boyce

Re: The 2011 one still works

I'm typing this on a 2010 mini with its original HDD. It's been running 24/7 since new. The only upgrade was to put 8GB of RAM in when new. I have long considered replacing the HDD with an SSD but have instead been waiting for a new mini because I also need more than two cores.

If my mini fails (likely to be the HDD) before a new mini is out, I will simply buy a new PC, transfer my existing Windows VM to that, and give up on running native Mac apps. I certainly won't spend a fortune on new Apple kit with a screen I have no use for.

SpaceX gives free ride to replacement for Facebook's fried satellite

Richard Boyce

Re: As Robert Heinlein once (nearly) said...

Will Mars be a harsh master?

Capgemini: We love our 'flexible, flowing' spade

Richard Boyce

Douglas Adams

Let's put these talented people to work designing the interior of the B-Ark. Obviously, this vital work will need to be done from the inside...

After seven-hour operation, the ISS has a new 'hand'

Richard Boyce

I think the term "any old gripper" is fair comment. Given the costs involved, this should be designed and operated to last the lifetime of the station, despite the harsh conditions.

You forgot that you hired me and now you're saying it's my fault?

Richard Boyce

Re: Had this from the IT tech side before

He was fired as soon as that was found out.

Instead of the manager who ordered him to do it?

BoJo, don't misuse stats then blurt disclaimers when you get rumbled

Richard Boyce

"Bojo has his faults but at least he's not Corbyn. Jesus, May's bad but Corbyn would be the ruination of us all."

I immediately thought, where's our Angela Merkel. Then I remembered the last chemist we had.

Sacre bleu! Apple's high price, marginal gain iPhone strategy leaves it stuck in the mud

Richard Boyce
Happy

Re: £1,149

"Yesterday's announcement feels like them attaching the milking machine to the cash cow's udders."

That's long been attached. They're now using a cannula to draw blood too. Dracula would be impressed.

Everybody without Android Oreo vulnerable to overlay attack

Richard Boyce

Re: "will need updating"

Always buy SIM-free, unlocked, and try to buy as directly from the manufacturer as is practical. The fewer middle men adding their own software and their own indifference to security, the better.

As Hurricane Irma grows, Earth now lashed by SOLAR storms

Richard Boyce

Re: Arithmetic

The NASA page linked to in the story confirms that it's linear.

I've got a verbal govt contract for Hyperloop, claims His Muskiness

Richard Boyce

Sadly, I think the security problem will also be the main obstacle preventing the contruction of a space elevator, even when we have materials of sufficient tensile strength.

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