Posts by DuncanLarge

Ofcom waves DAB radio licences under local broadcasters' noses as FM switchoff debate smoulders again

Re: Complete the migration to DAB+ before faffing with FM

That would be forwards compatibility

Re: DAB is terrible quality due to low bitrates

> in general the quality of sound is very good

As long as you are deaf in one ear or only listen lbc or talk radio, like me.

> Perhaps we should just scrap DAB and push for internet radio instead

For free, no access payment or subscription or infact any account. Complete anonymous free access and coverage nationwide, then I'd consider it a replacement.

Brits swarm Dixons Carphone for laptops, printers, games consoles, fridges, freezers to weather out COVID-19 storm

Re: ... and catch Coronavirus

All those points are totally logical and correct.

Do you want us to add accidental deaths to it as well??

Use your common sense.

Forget toilet roll, bandwidth is the new ration: Amazon, YouTube also degrade video in Europe to keep 'net running amid coronavirus crunch

Re: Excuse me...

> I think the numbers change substantially once you factor in the energy that goes into manufacturing the disc and moving it around.

All of which only happens once till it rests on a shelf generating nothing further.

And no need to consider the blu-ray player, it uses enough energy to light a couple of led bulbs.

/me

Looks around at shelves full of blu-rays

/me smiles

Drones must be constantly connected to the internet to give Feds real-time location data – new US govt proposal

Re: Turn it round

> My guns

A question that most gun owners fail to answer adequately: Why do you need a gun?

I can understand someone needing a hammer, but not a gun. Unless one of these are true:

- You shoot competitively as a sport

- You are a farmer and need to shoot to scare away vermin and ramblers (thats a joke btw)

- You live in an area that are infested by invading aliens or Triffids

Otherwise, you simply have totally no need for one. It's like having a boat when landlocked.

Wi-Fi of more than a billion PCs, phones, gadgets can be snooped on. But you're using HTTPS, SSH, VPNs... right?

I suppose that would only work if they were to assume that a key is required.

Chips forming an open network wont use a key.

Re: A lot of WiFi traffic may be local....

Some local connections can be encrypted. My router uses a self signed HTTPs cert for access to its config pages.

I use SSH/SCP to transfer files.

SMB can be encrypted as can NFS, in fact anything can be sent over an SSH tunnel.

Re: We all should keep a link to this article...

> For the next time our respective governments all tell us that only criminal types use a VPN

Or Tor.

Re: Unpopular opinion

This is not a MitM attack anymore than stealing my car when I'm not in it is a hijacking.

Apple drops a bomb on long-life HTTPS certificates: Safari to snub new security certs valid for more than 13 months

Re: There is a way around compromised certificates

I dont use chrome

> maintenance contracts

You get an upvite for having maintenance contracts .

I work in a brewery and the number of times the production teams have asked IT for help only for us to ask normal questions like "who has the maintenance contract" and "when was the last update" and "what company provided this"? Only to be given confused shrugs to the first two questions and the third question is answered by a long waffle on about some now long defunct company that was based in the next town where there now are bulldozers reclaiming a brownfield site.

And when the company still does exist in the next town over, offers a more upto date and totally "drop in replacement" product that will replace the 20-30 year old version with little to no operational changes other than offering support for USB printers and PC control along with all the features the 20 year old unit offered via its buttons and LCD screen you get told: "its too expensive!" and you reply "but this unit blew up after 20 years of not being serviced, £3000 for a fully compatible direct replacement from the same company seems a good investment for the next 20 years" and they replay "we are taking this to the top! Bloody IT!"

That actually happened.

Re: Ludicrous

Totally agree. If you want to keep the pool of certs out there strong detect the ones that are weak and target those.

Whats next? "Oh this wikipedia page about glass blowing has not been updated in over a year, thus all the information about an activity that is as old as the hills is now out of date?"

Or

"That program that was written in the 80's with the last update in the late 90's is too old to be used. Even though its well documented, does not do anything that needs modern encryption (lets say its a compressor like gzip, not saying gzip is unmaintained lol). Even though the source is available and it runs just fine on our system even without recompiling its too old. The bits must have rusted and the bytes values have changed over time that will probably cause errors in DRAM."

"Wait what? you're running it on a system that uses DDR3? My god man, DDR4 is out, DDR3 is a terrible ancient danger to life now that its several years out of date!"

Re: There is a way around compromised certificates

> It’s called a certificate revocation list (CRL) and it works just fine.

Unless you are using Chrome, which ignores certificate revocation instead relying on a built in list. Everyone else uses a standard method of checking for revocation but chrome removed support.

So if you dont (or cant) update chrome, youre stuffed.

https://scotthelme.co.uk/certificate-revocation-google-chrome/

Re: What's the benefit?

They would have to steal your hopfully protected private key...

Or steal a CA signing cert. And if that happens, there are bigger problems.

Re: Commercial Products

TBH those have been an issue for a long time before this. I have a HMC for our AS400 that rarely need to be accessed. When it is however its a right PITA to connect to. It supports HTTPS but a version that chrome and firefox refuse to connect to. So, I should use IE?? Nope, even IE says NO WAY!. Only Edge works funnily enough. Then the actual login process and interface that is loaded is not HTML with CSS, but Java. So I have to convince the browsers to load Java 8 and run the thing which requires me to add exceptions to Java also because the Java being loaded isnt signed.

Its a right PITA to do on a saturday morning over a VPN and all you want to to is reboot the AS400 into a restricted state so you can manually initiate a full system save to tape. And all of this can be avoided by connecting to the HMC using the AS400 terminal client but IBM's new terminal client, that is Java based, does not support HMC's yet so you have to use the older System Navigator client which would work just fine if only the new VPN that you were asked to test was not blocking the ports.

Okay

Who the hell uses Safari? The internet explorer of apple products?

I doubt anyone will care to renew their certs this frequently till Google and Firefox join in. Users who complain that Safari is popping up warnings will be told:

"Our website is secure and designed to work with modern browsers like Chrome, Firefox and Edge. Sorry to inform you that we do not specifically support Safari".

Vodafone: Yes, we slurp data on customers' network setups, but we do it for their own good

Re: "Our service helps overcome these issues"

Well the only thing that comes to mind is if you have several devices that have the same IP they would be able to detect that.

But for that to happen al least one of your devices would need its address set to static, so you probably would be able to debug such a situation yourself.

We need to make it even easier for UK terror cops to rummage about in folks' phones, says govt lawyer

Re: Wipe Password

Unfortunately this may be of limited use. Rule one when trying to analyse a suspects drive is to image it and work on the image. If the drive then wipes itself al thats happened is the curent image is wiped. As you keep an unaltered original image sitting around you can just spin up another copy for a second attempt.

Cache me if you can: HDD PC sales collapse in Europe as shoppers say yes siree to SSD

Re: Dropping the things

Yes. Sales reps destroy everything from a laptop HDD to the screen as they hold the laptop by the open screen as they walk.

Re: 'Primary storage'

No

My cheap BIWIN chinese 256GB M.2 SSD locks up the system when I sequentially copy data off it. Oh, it copies fast, but dont expect to be able to use the PC till its finished. My Ryzen 5 1600 B350 12GB DDR4 2400 system shouldn't freeze and become non responsive t user input while it copies.

None of the internal or external HDD's have ever done that.

Re: Define primary

You mean HDD storage, not SATA. All my SSD's are SATA.

I did go an use an M.2 for a bit. Bloody thing was a bit of chinese **** that stole 2x SATA ports that I actually wanted to use and locked up the PCIe bus when sequentially copying. I could have moved to a decent PCIe M.2 card but considering that I would still be denied my 2x SATA ports I though bugger it and replaced the M.2 with a faster and less **** SATA SSD.

Lesson leaned for when I upgrade my MB in 5 years, DONT get one that steals ports just to support the M.2.

Re: Been a long time coming

> Given the crash in SSDs prices

I'm still waiting, till that "crash" meets my requirements.

I may even hold out for the tech that will replace SSD (NAND) as I tend to think its a bit backwards (*) and a stop gap measure. Give me memristors...

* Backwards in that its unable to update a small bit of data without rewriting several megabytes of data needlessly. HDD's (modern ones) only use 4KB sectors. NAND will probably not reach that so I'll wait, mostly.

Excellent

Gimme all those cheap high capacity HDD's.

You can pay me to take them, I wont complain.

Gimme gimme gimme. I'll build a raid array out of all those unloved 500GB 2.5" drives, hey throw in those 3.5" WD reds too when you chuck them.

I feel a data hoarder in me...

Thunderbird is go: Mozilla's email client lands in a new nest

Re: I've stopped using it

> and the UI is absolutely outdated

I always wonder how people manage to decide a UI is outdated (besides from its ability to display many colours).

I find recent UI's unnecessarily full of white space while lacking user feedback elements that have been standard for years, for good reason.

I also fail to see house decorations as outdated (apart from the glaringly obvious). Maybe its just me.

My preferred window manager is Window Maker and I love the Motif widgets oooh yearh...

Re: I've stopped using it

> Managing Office 365 is the same as or easier than managing any IMAP server

A 14 year old can manage an IMAP server. I know, I did it.

> Managing Outlook endpoints (not just PCs, but phones) is definitely easier than managing IMAP endpoints.

No. Only in an admins dreams.

> Managing end users that use outlook is easier than managing thunderbird users (mostly).

I manage O365 every day.

Its a nightmare of:

- sync issues

- "password required" but no password box is being displayed

- Apple iPhones getting emails before the laptop resulting in VIP users getting really pissed off and asking IT why that is

- users calling up saying they cant send as this mailbox or view that mailbox only for IT to find that they are configured correctly in the cloud but their outlook is buggered and must be reinstalled

- Outlook failing to install the latest updates with a useless message saying why

- The office 365 installer that downloads the installation from the net will get to 75% then fail saying you should try again later. IT bod (me) then downloads the offline installer which is comprosed of an xml file and an executable I HAD TO WRITE IN C# myself just to install it.

Sure, office is easier...

Re: I've stopped using it

> other than from familiarity

Over the years I have worked in IT the only familiar thing about Outlook today is the name.

Re: I've stopped using it

> I'll take Seamonkey's even older design over TBird's.

Give me a choice between Outlook and Mutt and guess which one I will chose.

Hint, "I'm a mog. half man, half dog".

Re: I've stopped using it

I really cant stand Outlook. The thing is too ugly and usability sometimes vanishes, the re-appears and then vanishes again.

Re: "Around 0.5% of emails opened in the 'bird today, apparently"

> I don't remember seeing anything like that in emails on Outlook

You have to turn it on.

I only view plain text in Outlook unless I need the HTML formatting which unfortunately is fairly often :(

I use thunderbird at home after I got tired managing all of it on my phone.

At work I'm forced to use Outlook.

I also like using Mutt.

Remember that Sonos speaker you bought a few years back that works perfectly? It's about to be screwed for... reasons

Re: ACL Guarantee

> Sonos 5 have not been sold for around 8-9 years

Neither has my car, but its still expected to work.

> It's odd that we've got used to hi-fi/stereo systems lasting decades and are unhappy about this

Speak for yourself. Personally I would preffer my devices to last and not add to the insane pile of e-waste we all have to help create because marketing.

> yet we're used to having to replace our PCs/Laptops/mobile phones/TVs every 3-5 years when they become out of date or die on you

I have never understood what people do with their computers to cause them to die so prematurely. Most of my laptops are made in 2012 and my oldest is a netbook from around 2009. Apart from speed and being limited to only 2GB of RAM, that netbook still lasts approx 7 hours on a charge and runs all the software I would ever need to run on it. And its 32bit only :D

My 2012 laptops are all lenovo's with various ports etc. They will run 64 bit just fine as they are either core i5 or i7's.

I did upgrade my PC a couple of years back. My 10 year old Athlon 64 3 core system got upgraded to a Ryzen 5. This was only done to let me decode HD youtube and twitch after they switched codecs. There was nothing else the old system couldnt do, the 3 core athlon just didnt have the grunt of a similar Intel chip so maxed out all 3 cores decoding the video. It also didnt help that at the time Debian did not have any hardware acceleration support for HTML 5 video so the CPU had to do all of it.

I expect to be running this 6 core Ryzen for at least 10 years, maybe I will move to a faster processor if its cheap enough otherwise I see no need to change anything when my cores are barley ticking over when decoding the HD video without hardware acceleration.

'I am done with open source': Developer of Rust Actix web framework quits, appoints new maintainer

Oh dear

Sounds like a case of:

"I wrote the code, stop asking me to do it properly".

In this day and age, when given a language like Rust that actually works hard to make code safer, you'd think that a developer of a web framework would work hard to ensure the safety of this code.

Ditch the performance and interoperability. Thats a problem for others to sort, such as fixing their browsers to work in a more interoperable way and do we really worry about performance now? We are spoilt with huge amounts of memory and processors with 64 cores. I remember the "breaking of the 1GHz barrier" being a big thing, on a single core machine which MIGHT have 1GB of RAM.

Security is everything when concerning the web these days and if this developer was acting in this caviler way regarding using the features of Rust to provide what should have been a good attempt of bringing a secure development platform to the web then I say bye bye and good luck to him. Your users were demanding something that basically was common sense these days, you had a chance to create a platform that developers would flock to knowing that its secure and hardened but instead you seem to have got in a sulk about an entire community because they demanded you stop taking shortcuts.

Thats the thing about Free Software and Open Source. Other people can see your code and change it for the better. The communities tend to try and keep things centralised, although they dont need to and in many cases they didnt, creating a fork. Here they were telling you what the problems are. Perhaps they were wrong, Linus frequently find many who are, but here they seem to all be saying the same thing and have a point. So instead of telling them to create a fork, that would likely be better, more secure than you version, you decide to call the community toxic and quit.

Perhaps your code was toxic. Of you go now. Give the keys to the person taking over from you, maybe they will sort out the mess.

EU declares it'll Make USB-C Great Again™. You hear that, Apple?

I dont care about inter-device charging other than from a laptop,considering it has a large power reserve.

If you really need to do it (why would you) then the solution is simple. The device with the least change gets the power.

Are you getting it? Yes, armageddon it: Mass hysteria takes hold as the Windows 7 axe falls

Re: Microsoft Win10 Specs

I have a whole stack of HDD drives to be tested in the PC computer I built for the job. My other computer isnt a PC computer but an Acorn one which has 12 MB or RAM memory and 1MB of video memory and a HDD drive which spins loudly. It run on the RISC OS operating system and looks great on an LCD display. I have a gool ol' CRT tube monitor that I cold use but the LCD display is lighter to move about.

Hopefully I will be able to put a CD writer in it because burning CD-R recordable discs would make a good way of transferring data without having to faff about trying to get enternet working.

Many of my other electronics use not LCD displayes but VFD displays.

At work I'm currently moving data to a SAAS service which is pretty boring hence why I'm here.

Re: Time to grab the book ...

> I bet some bastard stole it.

Oh BELGIUM!

Re: Panic? What Panic?

NetSurf also

Re: Panic? What Panic?

Like windows 10 today, hmm consistency. Well done Microsoft.

Step away from that Windows 7 machine, order UK cyber-cops: It's not safe for managing your cash digitally

Re: Win 10 can still be had for free.

And sit through all the major updates needed to bring 10 up to date.

I pity you.

What about all the automated stuff out there in the tubes?

Even old worms are still about.

Re: F.U.D.

I still use a Risc PC for a few things. The ancient software does not rot, although the bits on the ancient drive may do so. The ancient software also does not mutate and gain viral powers, reaching out over my network to find a way to infect my brain and gain sentience...

The solution for ANYONE needing to run an old version of quicken (as an example) is to simply unplug the machine from the network. George R.R Martin happily runs DOS just so he can keep using his fave wordprocessor after all.

I grew up in the 90's and home networks and the internet were novel back then and when you really look at it they are still optional for many tasks.

You should be able to grab a new or recent secondhand machine (which could also open a can of worms but lets ignore that for the sake of the argument) to use for stuff that does need internet access like banking.

If you cant, walk into your branch and bank there. It will stop them closing and keep some people in work ;)

Re: F.U.D.

> Keep your browser up to date? Fire up an XP VM and try to install the latest version of Chrome or Firefox.

Ahem

Why would you do that? Dont browse from these operating systems.

Ahem

There are more browsers in the world than Chrome or FIrefox. NetSurf will work fine.

Ahem (again)

Why would you do that? Dont browse from these operating systems.

Re: Upgrade from Windows 7

> the compatibility of LibreOffice is not anywhere close to 100%, which I need

Even if you save to ODF?

Re: Upgrade from Windows 7

> As long as no one e.g. uses a browser with security defects

Find me such a browser.

However, how are you going to ensure that the font renderer is also free of defects? And the libraries that decode jpg's. What about the sound subsystem?

And then you have the TCP/IP stack itself, although that would require another machine to be attacked or maybe the router that hasnt been updated for years.

Re: Upgrade from Windows 7

> To be honest, the days of direct connection from a modem are quite a way behind us. How many people have machines that are genuinely "on the Internet"? They might be able to access the Internet through a router, but so long as you set things up sensibly they're not going to be visible on public Internet for all and sundry to see.

Its important to make sure that the machine does not pull down random data from the net, like while you are browsing in a browser.

Re: Upgrade from Windows 7

If you require win 7 to run some software that wont run on win 8, 8.1 or 10 the the answer is keep your win 7 box on a separate network and off the internet.

There are no updates coming, no need for the internet. Software updates you need installing can be transferred over via USB from a safe machine. Run the win 7 machine as a VM preferably so you can snapshot and recover should you have an infected usb stick or image it regularly using cloezilla.

Basically get it off the net and any network connected to the net and enjoy.

It's a no to ZFS in the Linux kernel from me, says Torvalds, points finger of blame at Oracle licensing

Re: The problem is not Oracle (for once)

> the BSD licenses, somehow makes it *more* free.

Let me enjoy the extra freedom by removing yours. I can be free, you had your chance. Now beg for permission, beg for updates,, beg for your data.

Re: The problem is not Oracle (for once)

> the license chosen is more free!

Ah but that is not a benefit. Its not a benefit to leave hour house unprotected is it? Well, it makes it easier for you to get in and out, considering there are no locks but its nicer and safer to add locks to prevent the nasty people getting in.

Thus the GPL gives you the protection from nasty people taking advantage of you and removing your freedom.

I'd like to stay free, I'd prefer to infringe on the handcuff owners freedom by locking up their handcuffs so they have no choice but to behave.

Re: The problem is not Oracle (for once)

> to make any external code they use also GPL.

No, it merely needs to be compatible with the GPL.

Re: Hypocritical

Maybe he works for SCO?

Tumbleweed....

SCO?

Another tumbleweed...

Surely someone remembers SCO??

Crickets...