Posts by m-k

Maybe there is hope for 2020: AI that 'predicts criminality' from faces with '80% accuracy, no bias' gets in the sea

5 violent burglars on a BBC one programme yesterday and they all had "the look@

I share the view that there are people you meet first time, passing, etc, and your internal bell just rings for no apparent reason (sometimes quiet, but persistent, background noise to be weary). On one hand, I'd love to see research into this and intuition as well, on the other hand, re. research results, I hear this quiet, but persistent, background noise that tells me the outcome won't be used for anything good.

As to mugshots shown on media though, I'd be VERY careful. Whoever is paraded for a mugshot opportunity, they won't be in a good mood, and our own bias tells us that they must be bad, bad people. And even if they grin stupidly (because one moment they were having a good night's sleep, the next they found themselves in a police cell and what the f... just happened?!) to us they're not just bad, they're evil monster with an evil grin, etc. Media illustrate text with a shot that is put there to reinforce the message, which is manipulation, but there's hardly any news that isn't.

Scottish biz raided, fined £500k for making 193 million automated calls

it's 2020

and the fine is still up to £500,000.

Your ugly mug may be scanned yet again – but at least you'll be able to board faster at Gatwick

more time enjoying the shops

BINGO! Although it's not about people enjoying the shops, it's the airport enjoying more profit from people enjoying the shops.

Electric vehicles won't help UK meet emissions targets: Time to get out and walk, warn MPs

this could be delivered at a cost of £800m

wait, this is only about 2.5 weeks' time when we're out of the EU! I mean, fuck the NHS, they can wait a couple of weeks, eh?

btw, how much did they spend on HS2 until now? 7bn?

One click and you're out: UK makes it an offence to view terrorist propaganda even once

re. SAS Survival Handbook, this was one of the first books I bought when I came to the land of the free (as it was). To paraphrase, no one would have believed in the last years of the twentieth century that a book bought off a high street would land me in jail, in the same country, 25 years later. And then, when I think of all the stuff we used to hover off the internets... those manuals to fly passanger jets, terrorists cookbooks and "how to make a better M-coctail", and what not... With proper incentive, I could be locked away for life...

The only hope is that, by the time the law becomes law, there won't be any plods left to actually round people up. Anyway, what I was going to say was:

Long live democracy! Long live freedom of speech!! Long live Our Glorious Leader!!!

We did Nazi see this coming... Internet will welcome Earth's newest nation with, sigh, a brand new .SS TLD

I find it puzzling

if not deeply disturbing, that a piece on nazi / ss domain future is drawing more commentardation than the usual suspects, i.e.

- apple / iphone / screen / charger / customer service / is shit / ripoff / apple fanbois suck

- google is evil / shit

- facebook / Zuckerberg is shit

- Windows 10 is shit (likewise, Office, etc.)

followed, by, much less frequently:

- amazon is evil (they exploit people and don't pay taxes and we love them)

- ebay is evil (they exploit bots and don't pay taxes)

- wikipedia masters are evil scumbags sponsored by shady deep pockets (choose from the list above / below),

- mozilla is run by evil lizards intent on destroying our ways

(all true, more or less)

Alternatively, SS goes along nicely with, er... Friday?

...

ok, vaguely on the subject: a "war" movie, Der Hauptmann...

Dutch cops hope to cuff 'hundreds' of suspects after snatching server, snooping on 250,000+ encrypted chat texts

re. BlackBox Security's server

eh?

Google logins make JavaScript mandatory, Huawei China spy shock, Mac malware, Iran gets new Stuxnet, and more

a tiny minority of our users (0.1%) choose to keep it off

who cares about the tiny minority (was it up to 50%?) who run one (or dozens) of ad-blockers, including java-killers!

UK.gov to press ahead with online smut checks (but expects £10m in legals in year 1)

re. it could cost up to £10m in the first year alone

well, with BREXIT dividend (very soon, hurrah!), it'd take... lemmethink.... 350 million per week that's got to be... no more than a couple of hourse. Yeah, we can afford it! And the benefit is priceless: eternal bliss knowing that our children are safe. Fuck yeah!

UK space comes to an 'understanding' with Australia as Brexit looms

Re: RE: Banging your fist on the table and talking tough

remember the cousin's advice:

"speak softly and carry a big stick

Unfortunately, in this case, it's the EU side that's been implementing this policy (because they can). And it has been painful to watch UK's puffing and huffing when both sides know _exactly_ there's no ace up UK's sleeve. No ace, no stick, nothing. Other than the gentlemanly message from the highest echelons of British establishment: FUCK YOU, WE'RE NOT PAYIN' THAT BILL! And you're no better than Soviets anyway, so yes, fuck you!

But... no stick, so it's easy to guess what the EU side says quietly to that.

Quit that job and earn $185k... cleaning up San Francisco's notoriously crappy sidewalks

re. mayor London Breed

shit, surely some mistake, a typo perhaps (London-bred?!)

:D

Google risks mega-fine in EU over location 'stalking'

Google risks mega-fine

20 years later: the latest Google appeal in the 2019 EU "location stalking" legal case has been heard today...

Time to party like it's 2005! Palm is coming BAAAA-ACK

Re: The mistake of a non compatible OS....

re. sony, I remember asking a rep about the price. It was around £1000. I said "oh", and then made a dash for a philips nino (and it served me for a long, long time as a digital notebook while travelling.

Emma's Diary fined £140k for flogging data on over a million new mums to Labour Party

so how much fine

for experian and labour party?

What?!

Oh, it's not illegal to handle and buy stolen goods... Well, all's well then!

Game over for Google: Fortnite snubs Play Store, keeps its 30%, sparks security fears

millions of children

if milions of parents let milions of children install anything without parental oversight... well. (and yes, I do have kids, with phones, what else :)

Y'know... Publishing tech specs may be fair use, says appeals court

the State of Georgia won its 2015 case against PRO for publishing the state's laws online

somebody in Georgia (more than one body) must have lost their mind. Unless, of course, PRO did what they they for profit.

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

Re: Windows Update on 10

as to not being able to block when W10 downloads, I'm confused (sorry, still on W7) - I thought you can block any specific up/down traffic via firewalls?

No, seriously, why are you holding your phone like that?

re. why are you holding your phone like that?

you might laugh, I might quote the beeb:

"It can be how quickly do you type the keys, are you holding the device in your right or left hand. How an individual uses a device acts as a second layer of identity and a different kind of fingerprint."

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-44438808

Think BIG (data!) Think all the TERRORISTS we can catch now (which politician's not going to bite this!), because we know that when they hold their phone with their right hand, they tilt it at this unique angle. Think of the CHILDREN too (Crapita certainly does!). Is your dahling really working hard with that pen, or is he / she dicking around, literally? There's an app to verify that (soon, if not yet).

p.s. is the way you're holding your phone covered by the GDPR? Spooks and your local council don't want to know, they already do.

UK privacy watchdog to fine Facebook 18 mins of profit (£500,000) for Cambridge Analytica

Re: fucking useless cunts

but we're toothless sir, we're lame, don't blame us, guv, blame the... ehm... take a guess.

And once you found the oh-so-f-obvious-answer, ask yourself "why"? And once you found the oh-so-f-obvious-answer to "why?", ask yourself "what can I do about it?" And once you found the oh-so-f-obvious answer (democracy, blah-blah-blah-blah-blah-blah) - don't you even DARE thinking about alternative solutions, cause those you put in the comfy chair, will do _exactly_ the same.

Audi chief exec arrested over Dieselgate car emissions scandal

funny

how there's been talk of "EVERYBODY'S DOING IT" well before that VW pimple broke. OMG, could it be that the "everybody" bit was ever true?! Nah, just one bad apple... ok, maybe two... or three... the rest are as shiny as polished... well ;)

Europe dumps 300,000 UK-owned .EU domains into the Brexit bin

Re: And there it is.... playing the racist card...

whoosh, and whoosh again :)

what?!

WHOOSH :)

BOOM! Cambridge Analytica explodes following extraordinary TV expose

Less than an hour after the program aired...

THAT was CLOSE, boys! But let me tell you (off the air), you all deserve a huge pat in the back for tidying up the house on time! And please tell me again they can't recover anything from the recycle bin on my desktop?! Good!

Techies building UK web smut age check tools: You'll get a spec next week

re: Wanted: 12year old boy to come round to my house to help me watch porn.

these days even JOKING about it might get you in trouble, never mind the actual ad :/

We all hate Word docs and PDFs, but have they ever led you to being hit with 32 indictments?

It looks like your browser is unable to display ads …

and the options are:

Whitelist us

Purchase ad-free access

...

where's the 3rd option?!

THERE!

"those (...) who (...)

done.

The Reg visits London Met Police's digital and electronics forensics labs

biometric data? people who have been convicted of crime?!

"If they are not, then the data is not retained."

?!

I was under the impression the current state of affairs is that such data for people NOT convicted of crime SHOULD NOT be retained, but IS RETAINED and it is EXTREMELY HARD to get it removed, and the good old plod DON'T HAVE to remove it, even when there's no conviction?

TalkTalk banbans TeamTeamviewerviewer againagain

apparent scammers pretending to be TalkTalk representatives and trying to fool users

Hello, I'm from TalkTalk, no, really, and we've got this fantastic broadband offer for you! Did you know that we're the top bestest favouritest UK's broadband provider? But don't take my word for it, try it out yourself!

Brit film board proposed as overlord of online pr0nz age checks

development of age-verification products is "out of BBFC's hands"

I think this should be handled by another widely-known and acclaimed board of mumsneters! Surely they wouldn't shirk from their life-long responsibility to keep our children safe?!

p.s. never mind the gov funding!

UK.gov delays biometrics strategy again – but cops will still use the tech

until next year

given the brexit (and the hiccups around it), make it five. Not that it matters for the plod, eh?

Budget 2017: How to make a downbeat forecast sound better. Say 'tech' a lot?

set aside an extra £3bn to prepare for Brexit

great, so you'll get that £350 Million per week on NHS after all!!!

...

what d'you mean "From your money, you f.... idiot!" How dareyou!

London mayor: Self-driving cars? Not without jacked-up taxes, you don't!

could harm government tax revenues, reduce the number of cyclists

...

on second thoughts, f...the cyclists - TAX REVENUES!!!

Microsoft says Win 8/10's weak randomisation is 'working as intended'

Re: Windows 7 / Security roll ups make it harder. I've not got the time. :(

that was part of a plan (feature). And it works :(

Commuters' phone data could be tracked to save megabucks on census

cut the cost of producing population statistics

I wish they cut down on electricity usage around Whitehall. All those lights on all night...

USB stick found in West London contained Heathrow security data

Having plugged the stick into a computer

isn't it a variant of a trojan infection that went around a couple of years ago? Some cheapo usb sticks "lost", and then plugged in by the founders, only to be infected?

Another day, another cryptocurrency miner lurking in a Google Chrome extension

an alternative to displaying ads

were they REALLY that naive to think websites would run this as an alternative to ads, rather than on top of?

Your data will get hacked anyway so you might as well give up protecting it

Walt Disney

was cremated. Sorry, only found out the other day, when one of my children asked about cryogenics (well, she didn't use that word, just mentioned some people who get frozen after death. So, naturally, we said: WALT DISNEY. And, to back up this claim with real evidence we went to wikipedia, what else. There, cremated. But then, the verdict comes with a tiny question mark, as the reliability of wikipedia is known (to us all) to be somewhat... questionable. To prove that, I had once gone with my daughter to edit a wikipedia page, and she did put in something silly, saved - not a trusty source, see, qed. Only that we got distracted and only remembered, a few days later, that, bugger, we didn't reverse the change, but at that point we already forgot what wikipedia page it was, of course. Pretty embarrassing. So, multiply that by a few (hundred) milion parents eager to teach their kids how unreliable wikipedia is, and there you have it. Cremated, frozen, might even be still alive. Or never existed in the first place.

A library you say? Well, they have access to the same wikipedia pages, gocha there!

Windows 10 Fall Creators Update tackles IT's true menace: Cheating gamers

Windows Windows Defender

seriously?

...

well, given the previous track record of goode olde MS...

Oh, Lenovo! 1,000 staff strapped to redundancy cannon

worldwide resource action

this must be a new phrase in the scumbag dictionary, never seen it before :/

EU: No encryption backdoors but, eh, let's help each other crack that crypto, oui? Ja?

hard to fault the idea of sharing expertise

sharing data with hackers, be it willing or accidental is likewise hard to fault.

Stealth web crypto-cash miner Coinhive back to the drawing board as blockers move in

this freely available tool has been abused

let's be frank, human beings are scum. Has there been ANY tool in the world, ever, that's not been abused, if not in step one, than in step two?

Ex-TalkTalk chief grilled by MPs on suitability to chair NHS Improvement

her suitability for the appointment

why, what's wrong? Failed at talktalk, now proudly continues the proven track reckord with NHS!

btw, It's not HER who should be grilled, it's the people who offered her this job!

uBlock Origin ad-blocker knocked for blocking hack attack squawking

Ahhhh, but "99.99999 per cent of users aren't even going to know about CSP" so it's allright then ;)

...

I suspect that the percentage is "somewhat" different when you consider 99.0000% of adblock users, but hey, what counts is the 99.9999 of internet users, who don't give a flying about anything :/

IRS tax bods tell Americans to chill out about Equifax

already had their information

this, combined with the latest contract award has a certain smell. But then, he wouldn't be THAT stupid to draw attention to their "special special relationship" (if any) with equif(...)s, would he?

Future of Misco UK hangs in the balance – sources

I'm warning you. If you say 'brexit' once more...

Right. Who threw that?!

Man prosecuted for posting a picture of his hobby on Facebook

Re: Police Scotland = Morons with time on their hands

to which she would reply (off the record): Do I care? And please, don't tell me SHE SHOULD. My point is, this blatant attempt at inflicting injustice goes unpunished. Hence "Do I care".

Twitter: Why we silenced Rose McGowan after she slammed alleged sex pest Harvey Weinstein

publicly slammed rampant sex fiend

me to, me too!!!!

...

oh why is NOBODY looking at me?!

El Reg is hiring an intern. Apply now before it closes

Re: "Stop trying to talk like a teenager, grandpa. It's hella embarrassing"

methinks "embarrassing" is way too (2) long for the current gen(eration). Don't they just say "oh, FO!"?

¡Dios mío! Spain blocks DNS to hush Catalonian independence vote sites

re. Franco would be proud.

many advanced democracies would be proud. And they're watching closely, learning how to do likewise. I would say, it's being watched by UK glorious leadership too (re. Scotland) , but then, I'm pretty sure "appropriate action plan" is already in place, should it be necessary...

RIP Stanislav Petrov: Russian colonel who saved world from all-out nuclear war

re. utter bullshit

there's a rational thinking behind the claim:

Nuclear weapons are only viable as a deterrent if the person in charge of them is perceived to be non-rational.

(even if it was just made up for the comment).

If, when in charge of nukes, you are perceived as rational (never mind the real you), then your opponents might believe you will _not_ launch a counterstrike, because, rationally, fewer deads is better than more deads (the argument that was touched upon in that para-documentary by the BBC last year, and for which it was criticised here and there).

Only if your opponents believe that you are mad enough to counterlaunch, regardless of the consequences (irrational), will this deterrent work, i.e. will (hopefully!) prevent them from launching in the first place. Unless they are mad enough not to care about consequences. Or reasonably informed about your rationality, to give them a good chance of non-retaliation if they do launch. Etc ;)

Users shop cold-calling telco to ICO: 'She said she was from Openreach'

re. Drag them through the courts.

I have a nasty feeling that the courts (the law) are as toothless, as the ICO, and the company will quickly disappear (if it hasn't already)...

Dartford-based True Telecom fined £85,000

surely a misprint, it must have been £850,000...

...

oh :(