Posts by onefang

US authorities call on cryptocoin 'exchanges' to sign up for regulation

"hosing down celebrities like Paris Hilton"

Pics or it didn't happen.

Spectre haunts Intel's SGX defense: CPU flaws can be exploited to snoop on enclaves

Re: big news:

"Hasn't pretty much every DRM method ever been cracked so far soon after release anyway?"

If I recall, the PS3 DRM took years to crack.

Intel gives Broadwells and Haswells their Meltdown medicine

Re: Anything for the Z80 yet?

That spectre from the past might meltdown trying to keep up with modern software.

Batteries are so heavy, said user. If I take it out, will this thing work?

Re: Hmmm :(

'I suspect that the same applies to many men who "can't figure out what setting to put the washing machine/dishwasher on" or similar.'

I almost got away with "I can't figure out how to set the timer on my brothers VCR" to his girlfriend of the time. I slipped up by setting it for something I wanted to record some time later. She didn't know that I pride myself in being able to figure out tech "by osmosis" as a previous commentard mentioned.

On the other hand, much later I bought myself a very fancy computer controlled washing machine, and forbid the non computer literate women I was living with from doing the laundry, something we were all happy with.

Re: At John Brown...

"On a similar note I'd like the eejits who specify those folded plastic bags on a roll for vegetable aisles be condemned to spend a week opening them whilst wearing thick woolly cloves and wearing specs that won't let them focus closer that about 60cm."

Or who ever redesigned the caps for Lipton Iced Tea. Almost impossible to open without tools, though they have gotten better recently, I've not had to cut one open for some time.

Re: Flip phones & their users are evolutionary dead ends?

I volunteer at a seniors place, where I help the seniors out with all their computer, laptop, and phone problems. As far as I can tell, they all have smart phones. Though it is common for them to think that "smartphone" means an iPhone, everything else isn't a "smartphone".

Edit: For the record I usually carry a large smartphone, and a small dumb phone for actually making phone calls. The smartphone is for everything else.

Re: Compliment slip stapled to 5.25" floppy

I've had the stapled floppy disk, and the one that was folded in half to fit into the envelope it was mailed to me in.

Re: Musk Space Ship

Mobile phones are like syringes, don't share them.

Re: Thats right up there with

And what some one did to my Amiga computer once. Has a DB 25 printer port, and a DB 23 monitor port, this idiot had some how managed to plug my monitor into the printer port, then wondered why it wouldn't boot. Luckily a little work with my needle nosed pliers fixed up the bent pins.

"Had a customer who edited MSDOS.SYS (it was a while ago) in Notepad (or whatever the equivalent was in 1992), managed to save it,"

I've done something similar, on purpose. Edited some executable binary using a text editor, coz that's all I had at hand at the time, and I knew I could get away with it, coz the change needed was only to some string buried in the file.

That previously mentioned RZ-350 (thought of this just after the edit time out) was very lightweight to, made mostly from lightweight composites, too easy to get it into the air. Was driving down an otherwise empty suburban street one day, saw a car coming the other way, with a speed bump between us. I figured if I sped up just enough, I'd hit the bump at just the right speed to be air born as I passed them, and for extra points, I did that on the wrong side of the road.

Re: New???

"emergency stop when a camel steps out in front of you at a zebra crossing."

That'll be the camels fault for using the wrong crossing. Makes me wonder, when you do hit a camel, is there one thump or two?

"The Series A and possibly B Range Rovers had a big starting handle. As a low compression engine it was theoretically possible to use it. My big rugby playing pal tried to do it one day. No way could he get enough momentum to get it to fire."

My Yamaha RZ-350 motorbike was so easy to push start, sit on it and roll it down the drive way ramp from the footpath, it would start before it hit the road. Kick starter, not electric starter. I theorized that I could hand crank it to start it, and tried that one day. Worked perfectly.

That bike was lots of fun, so easy to throw it around corners. It's designed as a road racer. I learned to ride on dirt bikes, often rode it like it was a dirt bike. Went camping with a bunch of folks one day, after several days of light rain, we decided it was a good idea to leave now. I left last, caught up to every one, drive circles around them on the muddy track just to show off, then zoomed ahead, to wait for them on the paved road. With bald tyres instead of knobbies.

Re: Its powered by magic fairies and gnomes

"It's in Australia. It's *always* the 1960's in Australia."

Except in Queensland, where it's always the 1950's.

Re: Its powered by magic fairies and gnomes

"it depends on your personal biochemistry. I understand there are people who do actually produce alcohol due to different biochem to thee and me."

Ah, that explains a medical report I got from my doctor years ago. It included a lot of standard stuff that didn't apply to the medical condition it was about, but was filled in comprehensively anyway. One part reliably reported that I don't drink alcohol, with another part reporting that the doctor thinks I should drink less alcohol. I was wondering if the doctor expected me to produce alcohol from my body some how.

I did forgive him for getting my age wrong, he had written it on my actual birthday, but probably didn't know that my age had clocked over very early that morning.

AI racks up insane high scores after finding bug in ancient video game

Re: Atari 2600..

"Let it play with the next gen MS Office suite for a week or so before Microsoft releases it."

The end result will be Microsoft copyrighting new versions of Shakespeare created "on a computer", and an infinite number of unemployed monkeys.

Boffins baffled as AI training leaks secrets to canny thieves

Re: Stands to reason

"How would a dog reveal a secret to someone else?"

The dogs know where the skeletons are buried.

I'll bee back: Boffin's bionic bug Band-Aid after real ones all die

It had to be said.

I, for one, welcome our new robo-insect overlords.

So the suits swanned off to GDPR events leaving you at the coalface? It's really more IT's problem

Re: ITs job but not IT's problem

"Putting a data owner in legal jeopardy for the information stored by their department should make for more mature conversations popcorn consumption."

FTFY

4G found on Moon

Re: Not O2 then?

Nope, not O2, there's no oxygen on the Moon.

"The man that sold the Moon". Robert Heinlein wrote it, if I recall correctly, it was a very long time ago. I vaguely recall the plot centered around a guy using the law that people own everything above the land they buy, bought up lots of land around the Equator, since the Moon orbited around the Equator, he claimed he had bought the Moon, then proceeded to sell it, or bits of it, for a rather large profit. I could be entirely wrong about all of this.

So we can get Internet between Earth and Moon, but amanfrommars is shit outta luck, TCP/IP timeouts wont cope. Must be why we don't see him that often, he commutes.

Chilly willies: Swedish nudie nightclub opens in -11°C to disgust of locals

Re: IT?

"Sounds like the your typical night-shift in a data center to me. Even the part where you freeze your nuts off because it's so darn cold...

"Edit: Someone beat me to it already. We really have cool jobs, don't we?"

Freezing your nuts off is well beyond cool.

I'll get my coat, I like keeping my nuts warm.

Re: Not my cuppa tea.

Well, I did originally say that lots of soap was needed for sexual purity. I didn't say anything about it being comfortable sexual purity. I prefer my sex to be dirty anyway, I'm just a dirty old man.

Re: Not my cuppa tea.

Soap is kinda slippery. On the other hand, professionals have told me that you need lots of lube for sex in a jacuzzi. That's why I said lots of soap.

Re: Not my cuppa tea.

'What's this "sexual purity".'

Sex is dirty by default, so sexual purity is doing it in a bath with lots of soap.

"Also, how do you breed depression and broken souls? I'm pretty sure it's not with dance music, nakedness and rampant sex."

You breed depression and broken souls by creating a prudish religion, and telling people they will go to hell for indulging in dance music, nakedness, and rampant sex. Though that probably depends on the style of music, and the distance between the dancers.

I'm not getting my coat, I'm taking it off, and the rest of my clothes. Though I can't dance, so I better have sex instead.

Intellisense was off and developer learned you can't code in Canadian

Re: laudable in its own way

'And yet most Dutch and German English speakers; speak better English than half the left AND right pondian "native" English speakers'

I find that with most that have studied English as a second language. You don't try that hard with your native language, coz it just comes naturally, but you do try hard with other languages, coz you are studying them for a reason. The same likely applies to native English speakers learning other languages. Almost every European I have heard or seen saying "Please excuse my bad English, it's not my native tongue." has been better at English than a large percentage of native English speakers.

Re: I've never quite understood

The honourable thing to do is to honour the H.

The H may or may not be silent, but my spell checker thinks the U is invisible.

McDonald's Sweden adds fries to VR

From my experience food grease tends to make cardboard soft. I don't eat at McDonalds, as they don't sell food, so I dunno about their grease soaked cardboard, but I wouldn't want to strap my rather expensive phone to my face using cardboard that is likely to fall apart.

I own a plastic Google Cardboard clone, a Google Daydream 2017, and an Oculus Rift DK2, I don't need no stinkin' used food wrapper VR.

As for creative uses for used grease soaked cardboard alleged food containers, a method for applying lube to sensitive parts for those that don't do oral? Paris might do it, she has no taste.

EU aviation agency publishes new drone framework. Hobbyists won't like it

Re: Regulate footballs also

"My problem with footballs is when they are on the ground and some fiend has filled it with concrete."

Your fiendish footballers are doing it wrong. Though I know nothing about football, despite being born in Melbourne. Perhaps that's a valid tactic when the other side has a free kick?

Re: Are model rockets still a thing?

All I can say Adam is that your rockets are bigger than mine.

Use of HTTPS among top sites is growing, but weirdly so is deprecated HTTP public key pinning

"Serious question. Is there any real point in sites like The Reg, Slashdot, Stack Overflow, etc requiring https?"

Dunno about the rest of you, but I don't want my grubbermint knowing I said some of the bad things I say about them on El Reg. So I tunnel https via ssh to my foreign located server. I'm thinking of adding OpenVPN and Tor into the mix.

Mines the one with large rolls of tin foil in the pockets.

'"The most surprising thing is probably the string growth in HPKP [HTTP public key pinning], a technology being abandoned by many and soon Google Chrome too," Helme told El Reg.'

String growth? Sounds like a buffer overflow attack to me, they are often surprising to lots of people.

Fender's 'smart' guitar amp has no Bluetooth pairing controls

Re: As a practicing[0] guitarist ...

"Mixing guy is a full time guy, he has time to browse endless menus as he wish, totally different job."

I've done several jobs in music, including mixing.

Last mixing job I did was for a bunch of bands I'd never heard before, most of which didn't turn up for the sound check, in a tiny venue that wasn't built for live music. The last one was a loud heavy metal band that liked to scream really loudly into the mics, and there was a feedback problem. Especially when the lead singer started roaming through the audience, getting random audience members to sing for him, and trying to get me to sing. Both hands where busy riding the controls to keep the feedback to a minimum, and the volume up to 11. Luckily they didn't need the part of the desk that had scrolling menus. Mixing guy sometimes needs more then the standard issue number of fingers and hands.

I've also done R&D for analogue and digital music equipment. Sometimes the musicians need the fancy equipment with all those odd features. Sometimes they need them to interface with their ancient instruments that they love. At several points during that night, when the lead singer roamed the audience, I was wishing his mic was wireless. I would not have been fussy about what wireless technology was used if it was.

Stunning infosec tips from Uncle Sam, furries exposed, Chase bank web leak, and more

Re: furries

Dammit, now I have to go RTFA again.

IPv6 and 5G will make life hell for spooks and cops say Australia's spooks and cops

Re: This IS IMportTANT!

"By default the idea with IPV6 was to provide sufficient ip addresses to essentially pave the planet."

My ISP recently informed me that they had assigned to me 4,722,366,482,869,645,213,696 IPv6 addresses. That may be enough for me to pave the planet all by myself, and have a few left over.

Re: So they want..

"If they can't handle logging every activity of every IPv6 address, perhaps the spooks should float a new standard, IPv4.5 - like IPv4 but a bit bigger - shove a 5th group at the end, max value 4 - and they could include built in tracking and logging for all packets as part of the standard."

Don't give them new bad ideas, they are entirely capable of coming up with bad ideas of their own. You'll only confuse them.

Re: Legitimate encryption

"Thought experiment. Gov't introduce backdoored encryption and mandate its use for personal communications (things like banks are allowed to use better stuff). Bad guys simply use good encryption which they then super-encrypt with the mandated backdoored encryption. How would the gov't ever know? Only when they get the warrant will they find out that the baddies have thwarted them."

The problem with that theory is VPNs. VPNs are legitimate use of encryption, especially for business. A previous Oz government has even said that VPNs are a legitimate tool for bypassing geoblocks for consumers to get around the "Aussie tax" overseas companies levy on us coz they can. So you use your VPN to make a HTTPS to some foreign companies ordering web site. The VPN connection starts in your Aussie lounge room, so uses the backdoored Aussie encryption, but the other end is the foreign VPN providers server in the foreign country. You use good HTTPS encryption that is tunneled through the VPN, coz the foreign web site thinks you are a local, and doesn't support backdoored Aussie encryption for it's locals. You are not being naughty, you are following the governments advice, but you get flagged as being naughty.

Tough luck for overseas visitors using the existing VPN software on their laptop / phone to do business with their office in country of origin.

"Oh, and anyone tempted to use codes should try to ensure that the messages they produce make some sort of sense. :)"

coded messages can make purfect sense if then cotes look like typeoz. If you get really clever, you don't even need code books. B-)

Re: Backdoors don't matter.....

"Where exactly do you expect to find seven belgian hedgehogs in the middle of winter?"

This is Australia, it's summer, and we call them echidnas. I think your code book is out of date.

Our PM has declared that Oz laws outrank maths laws, so it will be very interesting to see them try to legislate that. If they do, not sure if I should place a very large order for pop corn, or move to NZ, or both.

Re: I am a bear of very little brain.

Or to put it another way, the temporary IPv6 addresses are indeed temporary. They only last a fixed time, or last a bit longer if they are currently being used by some application for a long lasting connection. More temporary addresses are generated for new connections when the old ones expire. So depending on how busy your applications are at creating new connections, or reusing old connections, you will have some random number of temporary IPv6 address at any given time. Of the two computers I have running currently, one has none, the other has eight.

KFC: Enemy of waistlines, AI, arteries and logistics software

Re: Self Driving Cars and the future of bumper / rear window stickers

I only break for self-driving cars.

Re: Road kill

You're new here, aren't you?

El Reg comment sections have a habit of going off the rails completely. Some can go on for several pages, never once actually mentioning the topic of the article.

Though maybe if KFC used road kill, it would taste better?

Apple: Er, yes. Your iCloud stuff is now on Google's servers, too

Re: But...

"[my underwear is itchy, time to change it - ha ha ha ha ha]"

Underwear, I've heard of it. Isn't it that fancy lace stuff they wear in that Victoria's Secret magazine? Oh, that's a catalogue, you are supposed to buy underwear? None of it will ever fit me.

"when do you need to shower"

I have a shower once a year, whether I need it or not.

Jolt FTW.

Wanna build an AI robot? Don't have an actual robot yet? Try this Holodeck for droids

Re: Star Trek?

I'm headed to the replicator, I need a new keyboard.

Hubble Space Telescope one of 16 suffering data-scrambling sensor error

Unsure if I should upvote AC or report abuse. Have an upvote, and a beer.

Drones replace models on Dolce & Gabbana catwalk

If us IT industry demographic types are now fashionable and chic, will I now become popular with the sexy model types? Or only if I'm sporting a high price tag on my massive hard disk?

Paris, coz she can peta my hard disk any time, with or without the high price tag. No byting.

Sony Xperia XZ2: High-res audio but no headphone jack

Re: There's a hole in my headset... thank goodness

"BUT I cannot abide taking a call when I cannot hear myself. You end up shouting or just feeling really self-conscious."

Back in the Dark Ages, before every one was doing it, I bought an in ear head set for my mobile phone. I have a big bushy beard, and the wires on the head set matched it's colour. I plugged them in at the shop, listening to some music as I walk out of the shopping centre. Naturally the very first phone call I get while using them is at the busy bus stop outside the major shopping centre, from my mother. So in front of a very large crowd, that can't see the headphones, or the wires hidden in my beard, and are not used to such things, I'm explaining to my mother about all the weird looks I'm getting from the crowd, as I speak to my mother that isn't there, without holding a phone up to my ear.

Re: What's gone wrong ? IT'S BIGGER !

'Whaddaya mean "unusably-large"?

http://www.publicdomainpictures.net/pictures/20000/velka/old-phone.jpg

You didn't have to lug those phones around, or hold the entire thing up to your face. Have an up vote for the giggle anyway.