Posts by steviebuk

Chrome on, baby, don't fear The Reaper: Plugin sends CPU-hogging browser processes to hell where they belong

Odd

The zip file on Windows 10 & Windows 7 is showing as invalid and empty. Something happened to this already?

Re: At least it uses processes

I believe Chrome runs as a broker service and then all the tabs run under that. So if you look in Process Explorer each tab is an instance of Chrome each with it's own PID.

Hell hath no fury like a radar engineer scorned

Very nice

Bully cocks or just simple cocks need to be shown a lesson, especially arrogant cocks.

It's happening, tech contractors: UK.gov is pushing IR35 off-payroll rules to private sector in Finance Bill

BUT!

They also don't get the same fucking rights. No paid leave or holiday you cocks.

"It is intended to ensure that two people working side by side in a similar role for the same employer pay the same employment taxes."

And I also, could be wrong, they don't get the company paying into a pension for them either.

Farewell to function keys and swappable SSDs in the new two-port MacBook Pro

Re: Function keys are useless, good riddance

They were going that way under Jobs as well.

Marriott's got 99 million problems and the ICO's one: Starwood hack mega-fine looms over

Pullman London St Pancras

They need to check that hotel next. Jan or Feb 2018 its security was shockingly shit. They weren't even isolating the WIFI network. They attempted to fix some of the issues while I was there when I reported it. But how long it had been insecure is anyone's guess. And unless they've sorted it since I suspect they probably have other issues.

Oh good. This'll go well. Amazon's Alexa will offer NHS advice

You question..

...Matt Hancock about this on Twitter and he just ignores it. I bet he wouldn't if it was someone big on Twitter.

Trump: Huawei ban will be lifted!
US Commerce Dept.: Yeah, about that…

Can't they just..

...speak to China. Take some of their own company money to setup a legit business in China, registered only in China. So a company the orange one can't dictate too. Then they sell their electronic part to the Chinese company, who then sells those part to Huawei. All the orange one could do when found out is put the new Chinese company on a ban list.

Serious Fraud Office fines Serco £22.9m over electronic tagging scandal

Re: Why are they still in place?

Unfortunately it probably will be seen as a cost saving to keep them and they'll justify it because all the people "apparently" involved no longer work there.

White House mulls just banning strong end-to-end crypto. Plus: More bad stuff in infosec land

Another payout...

...another infection. It will continue the more you keep paying out. Yes it's costly to restore but surely paying out means they know it's profitable to will try again. And will more than likely target you again.

"Knowing you possibly can't afford to have a knowledgeable IT team, means you'll probably still have a hole somewhere. And because we know you pay out, we'll carrying on picking away at you until we find something."

A Register reader turns the computer room into a socialist paradise

I like this one

Having a keen interest in virus' back in the 90s in college, they always fascinated me.

The first virus I managed to get on floppy was the Form virus. Used to mess around in a hex editor looking for the messages that it never displayed. Can't remember what they said now. Always infected the boot sector.

Found it

"The FORM-Virus sends greetings to everyone who's reading this text. FORM doesn't destroy data! Don't panic! Fuckings go to Corinne."

Could an AI android live forever? What, like your other IT devices?

If they were made by Apple

They'd break just outside of the warranty. The Genius Bar would say it would work out cheaper buying a new one that fix the old one. And you wouldn't be allowed to fix it yourself or take it to an independent repair shop.

This is why we won't have AI robots in my life time.

NHS Wales flings £39m at Microsoft for Office 365 and Windows 10

Re: They should of gone

It's a London fing, innit.

They should of gone

Infrastructure Free.

:) I jest. But better move than shit GSuite. Tell Microsoft you're thinking of moving to them and they throw in the migration for free. Shame the place I worked at ignored that, and ignored that 365 was cheaper than GSuite. Now they are stuck with GShite and still require some Office licenses for certain departments. What a fuck up that has been.

You're not Boeing to believe this, but... Another deadly 737 Max control bug found

Clearly, it fucking isn't

"The safety of our airplanes is Boeing’s highest priority,"

Jesus.

McAfee sues ship-jumping sales staff over trade secret theft allegations

Bit ironic?

That it suggests they hadn't/haven't locked down their own network and systems. So they didn't have Google Drive and other cloud storage sources blocked by default? And they didn't have e-mail interrogation software to check what was being sent (which should of then blocked that .xlsx document going out).

Oh dear.

Cases like this also confuse me. "We're hiring you as sales. When/if you leave you can't take any knowledge of sales techniques you've learnt over the years while with us. So essentially you can't make any carrier progress as all you've learnt is void if you go elsewhere. So essentially if/when you leave, you just have to get a job in a totally different field." How is that lawful.

Lets hope the case exposes how shit McAfee actually is.

BGP super-blunder: How Verizon today sparked a 'cascading catastrophic failure' that knackered Cloudflare, Amazon, etc

So...

...would it be possible (as my network is mega basic) for a 'bad actor' to break into a local, small ISP to cause this. Then take the data dump from the small ISP? To make it all look like an internal fuck up instead of a state sponsored attack?

Just curious. I have no doubt this is an internal, American cockup, but would it also be possible to do the above? Be a sort of, slight of hand/misdirection type of hack?

Biz tells ransomware victims it can decrypt their files... by secretly paying off the crooks and banking a fat margin

Bit of an odd one

Because recently you had an article about security consultants suggesting companies do just what the article mentions, paying the ransom. Mainly by Paying an IT consultant to get the key off whoever and restore data.

So this doesn't seem all that nuts:

"We do not recommend dealing with the 'hacker' directly (see advice on our home page). In many cases, paying the ransom may be the only option to get your data recovered and it is best to get an experienced consultant to assist with this process."

Bill G on Microsoft's biggest blunder... Was it Bing, Internet Explorer, Vista, the antitrust row?

The browser market

Listening and watching the Bill Gates deposition lately its funny that it has been 20 years and they have yet to make a decent browser that anyone wants to use.

Bloody vultures! Cheeky Spanish paraglider firm pinched El Reg's mascot

Re: Good artists borrow...

When will we be able to edit our posts so I can stop looking like an idiot*.

*Actually it won't stop me looking like an idiot but just a little less embarrased by the inability to proof read.

Re: Good artists borrow...

Google Richard Prince. One of the many reasons "Art" annoys me. I liked it at school but what others saw as shit, lots more would see as AMAZING and said shit would sell for millions but some great art would be ignored. Richard Prince has somewhat proved my point. Making millions by copying others work and making slight alterations. Look at his work on Instagram feeds. So he makes millions from it, the original owners for some of the pieces get no recognition.

We ran a 'not very scientific' experiment back in school in the late 80s, early 90s. We got a piece of our art and a piece of the "Favourite" art teaching in the art department art. Another art teacher who was incapable of controlling any of her classes (even confirmed by the head of art as I think she didn't know what to do with her, cause she couldn't very well sack her), thought the "Favourite" was great. So we took his work and told her it was arse. She said it wasn't very good. We took our art and said it was his, she said it was great.

She proved my point that day. I've been annoyed with the perception of art ever since. I see the amazing pencil drawings done by people on YouTube, that look photo realistic but they get no recognition. Yet art by the like of Jackson Pollock is deemed AMAZING! and worth millions. One of his "drip" paintings sold in 2006 for £140million. What the actual FUCK!

Out of Steam? Wine draining away? Ubuntu's 64-bit-only x86 decision is causing migraines

Hmmm...

...getting ready with my sheild for the downvotes. I've always liked Windows but I like the idea of Linux. I like its free and gives people the option if they can't afford a Windows license or decide they just don't want to use Windows. Or if you're a system builder, you can at least give away an OS with no extra cost in the form of Linux. At least there are options. But Linux doesn't make it easy. You see posts from people over the net saying "Why use Windows, move to Linux" or "Linux is my main system, I only go into Windows if I'm desperate for something that doesn't work on Linux" or "Everyone should start moving to Linux what with Windows 10 intrusiveness". But the problem is, not everyone is a tech. People just want stuff to work, and unfortunately Windows 10, for the most part, does just 'work'. But Linux can be an arse to get working for a non technical person and now this. Hmmm.

Having bank problems? I feel bad for you son: I've got 25 million problems, but a bulk upload ain't one

I've also learnt...

....to do what Scotty from Star Trek said to do. Say it will take longer than it actually will, makes you look better when you do it in less time. That would of also helped out with the "edit".

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

Re: Child-proof reset operation

Rob Brydon said on a recent interview that he found a ladder and put it at a 45 degree angle against a wall, to use as a taboggan. He'd made the mistake of putting the hooks at the bottom. He slide down it and ripped open his new trousers. He then noticed he'd also ripped open his leg.

Very, very, very....

...funny (should that be 5 very's). So funny because it's annoyed you so much you wrote "fucking" in the article, so we can all picture how annoyed you must of been typing it up, which is good because this is FUCKING madness. This is why I hate IoT stuff.

But I'd like you to make a correction. There is a way you can tell what firmware you're on...."Which is designed for C by GE bulbs with this package". What! The fucking packaging that you'll have fucking thrown away as there is no fucking reason to fucking keep it anymore. Or the house you've moved into has the bulbs already fucking installed.

Jesus fucking Christ!

Now you can have a twist of 2019 in your 2012: Microsoft goes back to the future with Edge on Windows 7/8

Its funny...

...because I've been watching the United States v. Microsoft Corp. vids recently of Bill Gates deposition. And then reading all the old articles as the case was happening, on the Reg.

And in all these years, Microsoft have still never made a successful Internet Browser.

We knew it was coming: Bureaucratic cockup triggers '6-month' delay of age verification block on porno in the UK

What a prized.....

...cock

"Age verification for online pornography needs to happen and I believe it is the clear will of the House and those we represent that it should, and in the clear interests of our children that it must."

Not up to you to save "The children" parents can do that themselves. Besides, this will save no one. Magazines still exist. VPN still exists. The same very penis will probably say "Next, we will be looking to ban VPNs".

Tools. What a waste of pissing money. This is what annoys me most. Someone has clearly lobbied this and they've obviously ignored all technical sense on why this is pointless and waste of money. Yet because some clueless cunts have said "Think of the children. If you don't push this through, me and all my friends will campaign to vote you out". And that's all the PMs care about. They don't care that it's a waste of time and money, they just want to keep their PM job.

Cock.

Blighty's online pr0n gatekeepers are begging for a regulatory beating, says digital rights org

Will we see an update today from the reg?

This has been delayed indefinitely due to legal reasons from the EU :)

And watch out with NordVPN. From testing, it looks like the double VPN option leaks the first connection it goes through. Normal VPN is fine and doesn't leak DNS. But if you use double VPN option, it appears to leak the first connection it makes but not the 2nd connection.

Lets hope

There is a big breach and lots of Tory members end up being on the "leaked list" then the law will be scrapped.

The latest FCC plan to boost US broadband? Prevent competition in apartment blocks

The sooner..

...Pai goes the better. Someone needs to find a genuine scandal on the knob. Although with Trump in charge of everything another knob will no doubt be appointed.

Parliament IT bods' fail sees server's naked OS exposed to world+dog

Re: it's probably

We can't all afford to be outside of IR35 and work for ourselves. Some of us hate travelling and want steady work, doesn't mean we're shit. I've seen plenty of "outside of IR35" contractors who are also shit. You get shit on both sides.

All appears gone. I get nothing :(

Brit hosting provider tsoHost takes needleful of 'unauthorized code' to the servers, suffers week of outages

All the small players end up being bought out.

Is the sad truth. These sounds like they are Happy Shopper hosting. I suspect being bought up by GoDaddy and the others slowly killed them off. With staff being forced into working how the new owners want. It annoys me as some small hosts are really good with good customer service. That is what you're buying, so why then force them to work how the parent company does, the parent company that lots of people hate.

I used to be with ariotek hosting but, alas they had a massive outage with two of their servers. Bare metal backups didn't work so eventually, with a heavy heart, Colin had to sell the business to Krystal who offered to help. I believe he went to work with them at the end of it. Everyone was shocked but Krystal have turned out to be really good. I had an issue with my site not working the other day and couldn't work out if it was their firewall or not. Raised a low priority ticket asking if it was the firewall. It wasn't. It was a plugin for Wordpress that had failed. They disabled them all so the site worked again and I was able to get in and find the one causing it. Something they didn't have to do, so they are all good. But I fear, they'll get bought out at some point. The owner is young and I wouldn't blame him for selling. If someone offered me several million for a business I'd started, I'd take it so I'd never have to worry about money again. Bit like Mark Russinovich and Bryce Cogswell. Got bought out by Microsoft. I think part of the contract was they both had to carry on working for 3 years I think it was, then were free to continue or leave. Bryce decided to retire and enjoy his new wealth. Mark carried on and now runs Azure.

I had more of a point but started to ramble and forgot what the point was. Still posting this anyway :)

'AI is not the cause, it’s an accelerant. The pace of change is challenging' Experts give Congress deepfakes straight dope

Re: OpenAI

This has to be some sort of AI chat bot test.

Exodus: Tech top brass bail on £1bn UK courts reform amid concerns project is floundering

Re: A raft of senior techies

They probably bought in the ideas. Hipster, bullshit ideas that were never going to work. Sold it as a cost saving. Other incomptents fell for this bullshit and hired them and allowed them to run the show. No doubt the people actually doing the work would of pointed out "This is a stupid fucking idea and is bound to fail", would of been ignored and due to needing work just got on with it.

Said higher ups finally realise they have been discovered as being shit and I jumping before being pushed and fully failed. So they can stick on their CV "Began a large project to digitise the court system, to cut costs in software and staff. This will save blah blah blah, cloud, blah blah, digital, blah blah blah." New employee will fall for said bullshit and they'll begin to fuck up elsewhere and put more needlessly out of work.

Anyone else find it weird that the bloke tasked with probing tech giants for antitrust abuses used to, um, work for the same tech giants?

Didn't work on the United States vs Microsoft case. One of the DoJ lawyers on that wasn't that technical but still annoyed Bill Gates and won. David Boies was the lawyer but now just reading about him in relation to Harvey Weinstein doesn't sounds like he's a very nice man.

ALIS through the looking glass: F-35 fighter jet's slurpware nearly made buyers pull out – report

What happened...

...to just hiring engineers to look over the planes. I would hope that aren't totally relying on the software so they can make a group of engineers redundant to "save costs"

UK Home Sec kick-starts US request to extradite ex-WikiLeaker Assange

But surely he could of rejected it and said no. Sweden first. Or is he just bending over backwards for Trump.

Meet the new Dropbox: It's like the old Dropbox, but more expensive, and not everyone's thrilled

They forgot to add on the end

"a single workspace designed to bring files, fragmented work tools, and teams together".

And a place where phisers put their bent PDF files.

People then follow the link cause "Oh its dropbox so must be legit" sign in and then follow the bent links in the bent PDF stored on dropbox.

Its amusing to see this exploit happen as I learnt that day I was asked to check if it was legit or not. That you can put comments next to the file which I wasn't aware of. Over 20 people from different companies had fallen for it leaving such comments as

"Hi Jane. I wasn't expecting this file from you. And it doesn't appear to be working".

To simply

"Hi Jane. File doesn't work"

So you weren't expecting the file but you logged in and tried to access it anyway?

"Fucking 'ell John."

But if there weren't people like that, I'd have no job.

Wondering where that upcoming meeting with 'Cheap Viagra' came from? Spammers beat Gmail filters by abusing Google Calendar, Forms, Photos, Analytics...

It's not new

Happens elsewhere also. Which is why this responds is bollocks

"In addition, we offer security protections for users by warning them of known malicious URLs via Google Chrome's Safe Browsing filters."

Because the other day when checking the quarantined emails (I like to collect samples) one was allowed through because it was linked to Microsoft forms. So that part looked legit. They'd just exploited the fact Microsoft forms is free and shows as https. Stuck their malware crap and links on that.

Please be aliens, please be aliens, please be aliens... Boffins discover mystery mass beneath Moon's biggest crater

Image

You get sent of a mission to Mars or even the Moon and all shit breaks loose on Earth while you're stuck up there, alone. Or even worse, stuck in the ISS with no communication but can see the destruction happening.

Weird, pointless thought of the day.

When it comes to DNS over HTTPS, it's privacy in excess, frets UK child exploitation watchdog

True. There is that case of the police woman that was arrested for murder I think it was on fingerprint evidence. Turns out when they had another expert examine it was only a partial print that just happened to match hers but wasn't actually her print.

I think it was this one

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shirley_McKie

Cynical?

To me this smacks of someone thinking

"The government knows they can snoop on DNS queries and this also helps us censor the net and helps our brown envelope friends the movie and music industry. However people want these DNS leaks to be plugged which will annoy our brown envelope friends. What can we do to stop this encryption happening? I know. We'll say we use these queries to block child porn, that'll get them. But how? Well isn't it obvious. If you're not in agreement with us, then you must be in agreement with child porn. No one wants to be associated with that, so we'll indirectly get more backing. There will still be some that will be able to argue their point better than us and point out the above argument is bollocks, but a lot won't because of the fear it makes it look like they support child porn (even though we know they don't) so they'll keep quiet and we'll get our way"

Or is that too cynical of me?

There's a reason why my cat doesn't need two-factor authentication

So security...

...didn't seem bothered about the hold up at all then? Not one of them venturing out into the rain to help? Bit of a problem when you don't explain to the security how a system works either. They probably wouldn't of know what to do despite them being fucking security.

Could you just pop into the network room and check- hello? The Away Team. They're... gone

Had an engineer...

...go out to a GP Surgery who, for some reason (was still studying I think), had forgotten what the voltage switch did on the PSU. So switched it to 115v to see what it did. Then turned the PC on.

BANG!

A staff member came running to him to ask what had happened. He made up an excused and got it replaced :)

Bad news from science land: Fast-charging li-ion batteries may be quick to top up, but they're also quick to die

And the reason...

...we need swappable batteries back. Apple starting sticking them in place and others annoyingly followed!

Still sniggering at that $999 monitor stand? Apple just got serious about the enterprise

Re: Shiny, shiny

You can say "It needs this and that" all you want, but if they pay the wage and are high up enough you have to warn them of the risk in writing (to cover yourself) and then let them have it anyway. Then hand in your notice. Because if they aren't going to listen then no point being there.

Apple strips clips of WWDC devs booing that $999 monitor stand from the web using copyright claims. Fear not, you can listen again here...

Re: Streisand Effect

So true. Has their PR department never heard of that?

Uncle Sam wants to read your tweets, check out your Instagram, log your email addresses before you enter the Land of the Free on a visa

Really...

....?

So the so called "Terrorist" is flying in to be a terrorist cock. They begin to fill in the form.

"Hmm, shall I be honest or just lie".

I wonder what they'll choose.

Who comes up with these stupid fucking ideas.