Posts by Sloth77

Will passkeys ever replace passwords? Can they?

There are cross-platform 2FA apps that will sync across multiple devices such as Authy or Microsoft Authenticator. Don't use Google Authenticator lol

After 3 years, Windows 11 has more than half Windows 10's market share

Re: Support

"No more pesky Windows Update messages that can ruin your day"

Ransomware can ruin your day too....

250 million-plus unused IPv4 addresses should be left alone, argues network boffin

Re: Elephant

"Inconvenient truth: there just isn't enough IPv4 to go round and there never will be."

Another inconvenient truth - the vast majority of hosts don't need to be directly addressable, and in fact shouldn't be.

Re: "Extensive use of IPv4 NAT"

"By preventing just any host from talking to just any other host, it caused massive centralization and concentrated a dangerous amount of power in a few companies, which routinely abuse it."

Thanks, I'll stick with NAT and the fact that my devices *dont* talk directly to other devices (and yes I'm aware of firewalls).

We know 'Linux is a cancer' but could CentOS chaos spell opportunity for Microsoft?

Re: $

Well, the GPL forces Redhat to provide the sources for packages it distributes.

CentOS simply rebuilds them and changes any Redhat branding.

So cheap yes, but no more "dirty" than Redhat. And now Redhat have killed CentOS, I would say *they* are the "cheap and dirty" ones!

Uncle Sam to inject $50M into auto-patcher for hospital IT

Dear God

Possibly the lamest acronym I've ever seen.

Drivers: We'll take that plain dumb car over a flashy data-spilling internet one, thanks

80 percent of respondents pair their phone with their car anyway...

"And 80 percent of respondents pair their phone with their car anyway, allowing data and details of activities to be exchanged between apps and the vehicle and potentially its manufacturer."

But does the Bluetooth interface allow transferring of data outside of media and address lists?

I suspect not.

Windows 11 unable to escape the shadow of Windows 10

Re: It's not difficult

I agree with every one of your points.

Consider though - how would that benefit M$, other than perhaps a less grumbling power-user base?

Most of those points you raise are mandatory because they provide M$ an indirect form of income, or reduce their costs.

Three signs that Wayland is becoming the favored way to get a GUI on Linux

Not sure what you mean by "Apple never have done a native X11 driver for their display silicon for MacOS".?

They certainly have ported XQuartz, which is their X server implementation, along with client libraries.

Nuclear power is the climate superhero too nervous to wear its cape

"Well, an extinction-level event is on the horizon..."

Slight hyperbole there. I would guess that even the worst case scenario would not result in the "extinction" of the human race. We are like cockroaches, the planet will never be completely rid of us.

Trying and failing to update Visual Studio? You aren't alone

Yep, just uninstalled after naively assuming that the issue must be at my end.

When will I ever learn.....

Happy birthday Windows 3.1, aka 'the one that Visual Basic kept crashing on'

elephant-on-a-traffic cone

Brilliant!

The web was done right the first time. An ancient 3D banana shows Microsoft does a lot right, too

Re: Maybe Windows 3.1 was a sweet spot?

Just checked and I'm still (as of 5 mins ago) running v6, on Win 10 21H1

Broadband providers can now flog Openreach's new IP voice network in bid to ditch UK's copper phone lines by 2025

Thats an interesting point. I was intending on getting a little UPS for my router, but not much point if the green boxes don't have a backup supply.

Indeed, an inaccurate article title "ditch UK's copper phone lines".

Fix Reg?

Thought Macbooks were expensive? Dell UK unveils the 7 meeeellion pound laptop

I told them about this months ago....

Can't believe they still havn't fixed it.

FBI boss: We went to the Moon, so why can't we have crypto backdoors? – and more this week

if we can put a man on the moon, we can...

- cure cancer

- solve world hunger

- divide by zero

- have crypto backdoors

- <insert other ridiculous claim here>

UPnP joins the 'just turn it off on consumer devices, already' club

Re: Doctor, where have you been all this time ?

"P.S. No... I do NOT have any problems playing games, talking on Skype, etc. etc. etc. Never have had. And I forward precisely ZERO ports."

Most likely you are playing games that do not require peer-to-peer access between players. Some games, particularly Xbox games, but also PC (eg. Elite Dangerous) do require it however and won't work without either uPnP or manual port fowarding.

As regards Skype, I suspect it falls back to a centralised server (ie. middleman) approach if it cannot establish a direct connection between users.

Android P to improve users' network privacy

Great, there go the useful Wifi utilities

Yet another nail in the coffin, after the process listing API got nerfed.

A smartphone recession is coming and animated poo emojis can't stop it

> 2. Retina displays - are these really neccessary?

Yes IMO. Look at the difference between an iPhone 3GS & 4 (or newer). It is night and day (providing you have half decent eye sight). Anything beyond Apple's "retina" pixel density is less arguable.

Agree with all your other points tho...

The Gemini pocket PC is shipping and we've got one. This is what it's like

Re: I can't help feeling...

It's $600 not £600 - and that is for the Wifi+4G version. The Wifi only version is $499, which is actually only about £350 in GBP.

And I got it for £236 as an early backer :-)

44m UK consumers on Equifax's books. How many pwned? Blighty eagerly awaits spex on the breach

Ironic...

The UK equifax site offers a "Equifax Protect" service:

"Equifax is ideally placed to help businesses if they experience a data breach"

https://www.equifax.co.uk/data-breach/react.html

They *really* should take that page down....

'Invisible Man' malware runs keylogger on your Android banking apps

Re: I'm confused

"I'm not sure why more banks don't give customers hardware gizmos Like Nationwide BS or Barclays in the UK do. Can't cost more than a fiver and must pay for themselves with fraud prevention?"

Because they're a royal PITA? I carry enough crap in my pockets without a separate gizmo for each service requiring 2FA.

'SambaCry' malware scum return with a Windows encore

Enough with the cute names already!

Do we really need 'cute' names for vulnerabilities? Seems to me that security research these days is more about showmanship than actually securing software....

</rant>

UK ministers to push anti-encryption laws after election

Re: The encryption horse is free

"Did you join up today to astro-turf on behalf of the Home Office?

Lets look at what you forgot:"

No, you are missing the subtlety here. They are not bothered about end-to-end encryption between customer and service, ie me -> Google, because Google is able to decrypt the information and simply pass it to the goverment. As they do already.

What they are bothered about is end-to-end encryption directly between users. Because then the only people that can decrypt it are the two users. And as it was previously pointed out, this type of encryption is fairly rare.

So:

Online banking.

Placing orders online with Amazon, eBay, Tesco etc etc.

Paying for anything via PayPal

Securely sending your password to your email provider to get your mail

Logging into pretty well any other service.

Are all perfectly safe. At least in theory. Unless the government change their mind....

Good luck securing 'things' when users assume 'stuff just works'

I'm not sure that's a valid analogy as the first two examples are of something you "have" and the last is something you "know". Once the person has returned the keys, they are no longer able to access. But giving the password gives them permanent access until you change it.

Thanks, IoT vendors: your slack attitude will get regulators moving

Yes, every piece of software has bugs. But not every piece of software is directly accessible from the Internet. And a "horrendous UI" is not a security issue (normally).