Posts by iron

War on Section 230 begins in earnest as Dem senators look to limit legal immunity for social networks, websites etc

Re: What, exactly, is 'free speech'

No, this site knows a name and a valid email address you provided. There is nothing forcing you to use your real name or an email that can actually be proven to be you.

Oops: Google admits failing to wipe all Android apps with location-selling X-Mode SDK from its Play Store

So how many infringing apps were still in the Play store?

The article mentions several figures:

"a report identifying 450 Android apps"

"hundreds were still available "

"25 privacy-violating apps remained"

There is one hell of a difference between 450, hundreds and 25. It would help if security researchers and journalists would quote semi-accurate figures instead of lying to sound more important.

Chrome zero-day bug that is actively being abused by bad folks affects Edge, Vivaldi, and other Chromium-tinged browsers

Other V8 Users?

So how does this affect other platforms that incorporate V8 like Electron and Node.js and all the software built on those platforms.

Do they have patches available?

Japan’s COVID-19 contact-tracing app hasn't warned users of encounters with carriers since September

Re: can't believe you missed...

I knew people under 60 who have died leaving young children.

I know a man of 62 who has been in intesive care for over a month, he is unable to breathe without a ventilator and is still improving one day, getting worse again the following day. He is a former athlete and was in good condition when he caught the virus.

I also know a man in his early 60s who had the virus during summer 2020. He is still struggling to breathe and can't return to his job as a lorry driver.

Tell me again how it only kills the old and infirm.

UK Test and Trace chief Dido Harding tries to convince MPs that £14m for canned mobile app was money well spent

For the record, Ms Harding is either misinformed or lying. Google and Apple had their decentralised Track & Trace apis published before the NHS even had their first app on GitHub.

As for adding the QR code feature... wow scan a barcode & update a database! That must have taken 1 day max to implement.

ESA signs off on three more service modules for Moon mission – despite agency boss casting doubt on 2024 landing

Do you like non-stick pans? How about scratch resitent lenses, insulin pumps, artificail limbs, laser eye surgery, life support equipment for firefighters, solar cells, clean filtered water, air purifiers, smoke detectors, modern tyres, digital cameras, CAT scanners, memory foam, modern home insulation, infrared thermometers, LEDs, your laptop and a mind boggling number of other things? They were all invented as part of the space race.

Re: The more I hear

You don't need a BFR if you don't launch an overweight, overcomplicated boondoggle of a capsule called Orion with fuel, lander, etc in a single launch. Using a lighter capsule like a deep space varient of crew Dragon and splitting the mission into multiple launches it would be doable with a smaller rocket like Falcon Heavy. We would need to solve in-orbit refueling but we are going to need that to do anything more than repeat Apollo anyway.

Location tracking report: X-Mode SDK use much more widespread than first thought

Re: Why ?

Google Maps does not need to know your location. It works perfectly well if you type location(s) which may or may not be where you are. I don't even let Maps have location permission.

Rubbish software security patches responsible for a quarter of zero-days last year

> barely available with a 56K modem

ROFL. Apparently you never had the joys of 28.8, 14.4 or BBS over the venerable 2,400 baud. In comparison 56k was lightning fast.

How much is this Google's fault?

To limit the impact of zero-day vulnerabilities, perhaps Google could stop publishing them before people have a patch ready? Perhaps those patches would be better quality if the devs were given a few extrra days to work on them rather than being blackmailed by Google into releasing early? You can't have it both ways Google.

Going underground with Scaleway's Apple M1-as-a-Service: Mac Minis descend into Paris nuclear bunker

> repurposed fallout shelter... channels responsible for draining excess Parisian water from behind the walls

I'm confused. How can a fallout shelter not be waterproof? Surely radiation would leak in and kill the people inside, or at least cause nasty mutations. Or was this Vault-Tec France's Supermutant breeding vault?

NASA to have another go at firing Space Launch System engines because just over a minute of data won't cut it

Silly people, SLS isn't supposed to fly but to provide jobs in Alabama.

Satya Nadella spoke with Australian PM about opportunities created by pay-for-news-plan. Zuck called the Treasurer for a chat, too

It's a hard choice but I'm going to go with Facebook. That might be related to how much I want to punch Zuck in his smug lying face.

India plans national digital currency plus a ban on ‘private’ crypto-cash

> But absent a draft and therefore a definition of “private cryptocurrencies”

At least the people of India should be spared from the Zuckcoin.

Facebook finally finds something it thinks is truly objectionable and needs to be taken offline: Apple

If I had my way Facebook would be dismantled and Zuck strung up as a warning to other wannabe data leeches.

We've got some really bad news about Apple's privacy measures, Google tells iOS app devs: It'll hurt your Google ad revenue

Re: It will just be like the Whatsapp app

That tipping point came the day Zuck opened his shitty website to the world outside Harvard. Some of you just haven't realised it yet.

The killing of CentOS Linux: 'The CentOS board doesn't get to decide what Red Hat engineering teams do'

Re: There's also a reason why Ubuntu is known as "Windows amongst Linuxes".

According to the article on this very site last week, no it isn't.

We'd rather go down in Down Under, says Google: Search biz threatens to quit Australia if forced to pay for news

Re: Google

A lot of non-techies don't know what the address bar is in their browser or understand URLs. So every time they go to a website they type the name of that website into Google and then click the first link. Even sites they visit every day. It is hard to fathom the total cluelessness of users some times.

BOFH: Are you a druid? Legally, you have to tell me if you're a druid

Re: armed robots...

Have a look through past episodes, the kill bot was locked up in the basement long ago. It has always been fitted with weapons-grade devices, hence "CHAINSAW, STAPLE GUN and ROTATING KNIVES were not mentioned", and the "extermination thing" is its normal programming.

Judge denies Parler an injunction to force AWS to host the antisocial network for internet outcasts

Re: Censorship by Private Companies

It is possible to buy your own servers.

Visual Studio 16.9 Preview 3 brings Chromium WebView debugging, noisy tests for visually impaired, and more

Re: What's really needed

You are completely free to skip these upgrades an lose out on useful new features like HotReload in Xamarin apps or performance improvements in your applications. The VS interface itself doesn't change.

So what can we expect from a Joe Biden White House when it comes to tech? We'll try to answer that right now

Re: Project fear mark III

> fear of 'the hard right' used to dismantle democracy.

It wasn't the Democrats who incited a mob to storm the Capitol or tried to overturn the legitimate results of a democratic election.

Loser Trump's last financial disclosure docs reveal Tim Cook gave him $5,999 Mac Pro, the 'first' made in Texas

I'm always amazed at the prices people will pay for Apple kit. Six grand for what I would describe as eff all storage! That wouldn't store my pr0n let alone give me room for work, games, music, movies, etc.

With depressing predictability, FCC boss leaves office with a list of his deeds... and a giant middle finger to America

I'm dissapointed this story didn't have the headline: Bye Bye Ms American Pai

Re: PDNFTT

> You can go into the ER

Hint: The E stands for Emergency.

> badly infected scrapped knee

So in other words for emergency treatment. This does not prove your point, quite the opposite in fact.

Re: PDNFTT

So why is COVID treatment costing patients in USA over $1 million?

In the UK the cost would be £0 and in the Netherlands €0.

Indian government slams Facebook over WhatsApp 'privacy' update, wants its own Europe-style opt-out switch

Re: GDPR

I don't think it is that different. I think FB are just making moving users to another juristiction and they will deal with any fallout later. Classic case of it's easier to ask for forgiveness than for permission.

Over long US weekend, GitHub HR boss quit after firing Jewish staffer who warned Nazis were at the Capitol

They apologiesed to the employee they wronged obviously. I think you mean what did they apologise FOR.

150,000 lost UK police records looking more like 400,000 as Home Office continues to blame 'human error'

Nice of the BCS to blame the developers. This was probably user error compounded by worse management error because there were no backups.

I've always thought the BCS irrelevant to my profession. I'm glad I never joined despite getting the hard sell a few times.

This chip lark is child's play: Intel gives us the lowdown on Lakefield in language of Lego

I always find it incredible how many people are capable of typing a comment but are not able to read.

Look, we've sent space probes to Jupiter and Mars – makes sense to keep them going a while longer, says NASA

> "Continued operation of its weather station

From the data I've recived via the InSight Mars Weather API over the last 6 months that weather station is not functional or barely functional at best. Weeks and weeks of data are missing temperature, wind speed and wind direction measurements with only atmospheric pressure present. :(

Privacy pilfering project punished by FTC purge penalty: AI upstart told to delete data and algorithms

Re: Inconsistent decision is concerning

> The Google decision set a precedent, so why make a different decision afterwards?

Perhaps this situation was slightly different so they felt that precedent didn't really apply or perhaps they now realise that precedent was not the best enforcement action they could have taken and decided to make a new, better precedent.

Or should we stick with whatever precedents were decided for crimes in the past? A justice system locked in stone for all eternity...

Boffins store text message inside E coli bacteria using electromagnetic signal – and you'll never guess what it says

> Soviet physicist Mikhail Neiman first proposed the idea in the 1960s, but working studies were not developed until the 21st century.

When I was at Glasgow University, researchers there had already stored data in DNA and that was in the 20th century of 1990. I don't remember the details but I do remember the dept. heads talking about the incredible density of data storage that would be possible in the near future (hah!) thanks to this technique.

Trump's gone quiet, Parler nuked, Twitter protest never happened: There's an eerie calm – but at what cost?

Re: 1st amendment

> Google, Facebook and Twitter cannot throw you in jail, but as we have seen, you can be cut off from society very quickly and definitively

I have never used Facebook, Twitter, Instagram or ANY social media site. My GMail addresses are only known to two people and some cloud services. I do not need any of these companies. They could cut me off tomorrow and I would barely notice.

Being a member of a social media network does not make you a part of society.

Parler games: Social network for internet rejects sues Amazon Web Services for pulling plug on hosting

Re: @AC and @ Author Thank god

1977 you say, yes I was born thank-you and so were may people on this site you condescending child.

> While the author cheers this action on... he seems to forget the basic principles that this nation was founded on.

Actually it would seem that despite being a class 1 asshole patriot you don't know the principles your country was founded on. Free speech and the First Amendment only apply to your government, they don't apply to a private business like AWS who are free to ban you any time they like. Maybe if you had paid attention in school you wouldn't need to be edumacated by socialist Europeans.

Paperless what? Pah! UK government looks to ink £900m in printer deals

Shhhh... No one tell Matt Hancock that MFDs means the NHS can buy FAX machines!

Loser Trump is no longer useful to Twitter, entire account deleted over fears he'll whip up more mayhem

Re: An elephant in the room

> What folks don't agree on is the science behind masks, lockdowns and other draconian measures supported by politicians.

Only idiots and morons like yourself and your pal Mr Two Racoon Hat. The rest of us understand that masks reduce everyone else's exposure to germs coning from your nose & mouth which will help prevent them getting sick if you are sick. Since many people who have COVID are asymptomatic, not wearing a mask is akin to firing your gun in random directions while in a crowd of people. You may never know it but you may have killed people.

Boeing will cough up $2.5bn+ to settle US fraud charge over 737 Max safety

The board of Boeing and the heads of the FAA should be made to log 100 hours each flying on the "fixed" MAX before allowing it back into service.

JetBrains' build automation software eyed as possible enabler of SolarWinds hack

Re: Looks like finger pointing

They were probably using Supermicro servers with those Chinese "grain of rice" spy chips on the motherboard that Bloomberg was so fond of. The Chinese just gave their login details to the Russians.

/s

If you're a WhatsApp user, you'll have to share your personal data with Facebook's empire from next month – or stop using the chat app

Re: Not Fair

> leave it is no longer an option

Bull. I have never used WhatsApp and I have never needed to do so. Perfectly avoidable.

Techies start growing an Alphabet-wide labor union: 200-plus sign up, only tens of thousands more to go

Exactly. I refuse to work for advertising agencies because the whole industry is evil. I acomplish that by turning down offers of work from them.

Where in the world is Jack Ma? Alibaba tycoon not seen since October after slamming Chinese government

Re: And we still do business with China ?

In 2019 one of the assistants at our local pharmacy (a local chain) asked for a raise as she was earning more in the evenings delivering pizza for Dominoes. She had worked there for over a decade. The boss refused so she quit and took up delivering pizza full time. Workers in local pharmacies are already earning minimum wage (aside from the single qualified pharmacist in the shop I assume).

Pharmacy will be a bad move for Amazon. There is no way their systems will cope with the myriad of different procedures in place at UK GPs, procedures that cannot be changed because the computer says so - just ask NHS IT. They will not be able to cope with doctors forgetting to sign some items, forgetting to put some items on the list, items being missing from the repeat prescription list, being sent a prescription that should have gone direct to the equipment manufacturer and the many, many other fuck ups our GP makes with my partner's prescriptions (which include controlled drugs) at least once a month. Not to mention trying to handle the rottweilers (receptionists) who control access to GPs to get such issues fixed.

Selling medicine for little Johnny's cough is one thing but handling prescriptions is another matter entirely.

Indian telco that won Google and Facebook investments flatly denies it’s diversified into farming

Maybe it was fans of David Icke and Eamon Holmes vandalising their infrastructure?

Brexit trade deal advises governments to use Netscape Communicator and SHA-1. Why? It's all in the DNA

Re: So no-one's....

Mozilla Mail was part of the Netscape suite of apps in the 90s and later included with Netscape Navigator by AOL. It was a decent enough mail app but part of the decline of Netscape as they fell foul of the delusion that they would replace all operating systems. Silly boys.

Re: Ms paint

By 1993 they were both available for PC as well so there was no excuse for using Paint.

After 11 years, Australia declares its national broadband network is ‘built and fully operational’

> I think the correspondent lets the NBN bastards off too lightly

Me too. My connection is rated to 80Mbps and I get the full 80Mbps download. If I only got half of what I'm paying for I would be seriously pissed off.

Red Hat defends its CentOS decision, claims Stream version can cover '95% of current user workloads'

Re: The RedHat corporate spinners won't fix this

> They should have a law against old dying dinosaurs buying up innovative companies just to take them down in their death struggle.

Red Hat was founded on 26 March 1993, I'd say that makes them an old dinosaur themselves. (like me)

US nuke agency hacked by suspected Russian SolarWinds spies, Microsoft also installed backdoor

Re: Ironic

Insert that "always has been" meme here.

US Government Accountability Office dumps sack of coal on NASA's desk over Moon mission naughtiness

Re: None of this was unexpected

Congress expects to get paid (in the form of subsidised jobs in their state), actual science is just gravy.

Passwords begone: GitHub will ban them next year for authenticating Git operations

Re: A self-defeating approach?

My bank requires me to use SMS TFA every time I log in to their website and again if I make a payment from their website. They also log me out after 90s of inactivity. Not to mention randomly when I'm using my card on other websites, even ones I use on a regular basis. It is a total pain in the arse, especially having to re-authorise every payment once I'm already on their website.

I have pointed out to them that SMS is not secure, there are numerous groups who could intercept it and if I was mugging somone I'd steal their phone with their wallet making it moot. All they do is repeat the security lie, but louder. It's like dealing with my geriatric parents.