Posts by Clarecats

UK convicts five romance fraudsters who stole millions from duped singles

Having to deal with a person in order to move the money, is a much better line of defence. My local post office has signs up warning people that being asked to send Western Union or Apple gift card numbers to people you have not met, is likely a sign of a scam.

The postmistress told me she had prevented such a fraud by telling a customer she was not allowed to send a Western Union payment to someone overseas that the customer had not met. Money laundering legislation prevented it. Later that customer came back and admitted it turned out to be a scam.

I suggest people using dating or other net platforms say they are as poor as church mice, and see how only genuine persons are interested in their company.

Privacy died last century, the only way to go is off-grid

Re: Enshittification

Platform Capitalism. As described in:

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/32999998-platform-capitalism

Surprise! People don't want AI deciding who gets a kidney transplant and who dies or endures years of misery

If asked, the AI would probably quote the Hierarchy of Controls to explain why six people would not be standing on the tracks in the first place.

Workplace safety starts with you.

Sweden seizes cargo ship after another undersea cable hit in suspected sabotage

Re: You know, bad weather can sink bad ships

"China is extremely keen on maintaining a general freedom of navigation because it has so much to lose."

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2020/aug/25/can-anyone-stop-china-vast-armada-of-fishing-boats-galapagos-ecuador

"... The recent discovery by the Ecuadorean navy of a vast fishing armada of 340 Chinese vessels just off the biodiverse Galápagos Islands stirred outrage both in Ecuador and overseas."

Is that a bird’s nest, a wireless broadband base station, or both?

Re: I can't believe you've all missed it!

Large flightless birds like cassowary, emu, ostrich, kick forwards, so depending on where you were standing, you may have been safe. People who work with these birds tend to wear a lead apron.

Los Angeles wildfires force tens of thousands to evacuate, NASA JPL closed

Re: A question

I'm not an expert either, but I am aware that town planning includes sports fields on the outskirts of a town as a firebreak. A football field doesn't fit on a mountain slope. Also, in a pricey district, more houses are going to be built than sports grounds. Planning may change in the wake of such disasters. The winds are recorded at 160kmph, picking up burning branches and hurling them way ahead of the fire front. Exploding propane tanks propagate the fire. The scale and speed of the fires this century has surpassed previous preparations.

One third of adults can't delete device data

Re: The 50mph roadworks are the worst

That could be helpful, thanks.

"barley visible" - barely. Barley is a grain used in brewing beer.

Harvard duo hacks Meta Ray-Bans to dox strangers on sight in seconds

Supermarket cameras

Several years ago I saw an item about shoplifting from an American store. The thieves knew how to hide their faces from cameras just by looking down or away from the cameras they could see. Typically they would do this in an off-licence. So the store installed a tiny twitter noise which they said subconsciously made the thief look that direction and get recorded. They tried it on a professional shoplifting demonstrator and got his face on the camera. No facial recognition was involved, they just wanted proof to ban or prosecute the thieves.

A week or two ago I was passing the off-licence part of a supermarket and I heard the twitter. I hung around and listened, and it was every twenty seconds or so from a particular corner. Naturally, I didn't look at it. First time I've heard it. I thought it was quite loud, but maybe thieves are wearing earbuds.

I don't think spirits thieves read The Reg so I don't mind posting about the method, it could be used to gain images of people who don't want to be photographed on public streets, for facial recognition purposes.

Euro cops arrest 4 including suspected LockBit dev chilling on holiday

Spot the next typo

"the data oilfered during the attack"

Glad it wasn't pwned.

Spot the typo

"getting those extorionists in handcuffs"

Good news to get one in handcuffs, though.

Apple owes billions in back taxes over Ireland state aid rule break

Re: Ah well at least we'll be able to afford a few more bike shelters for politicians ...

Another look at the Dail bike shelter, with some reasons given for cost.

https://extra.ie/2024/09/02/news/irish-news/bicycle-shed-leinster-house

"A new bicycle shed for Leinster House which allows for storage of 18 bicycles cost the public more than €335,000.

The shelter, which was hailed by Transport Minister Eamon Ryan as a good example of public sector climate action, even required archaeological advice to make sure it fit in at the parliamentary complex."

Three cheaper options are provided the following day, which would seem to suit. Maybe nobody got the usual three quotes.

https://extra.ie/2024/09/04/news/irish-news/leinster-house-bike-shelter

"The State could have saved well over €300,000 on the purchase of Leinster House’s bike shelter – as numerous companies sell similar models for far cheaper.

The 'Ark Cycle Shelter', which provides 20 bike spaces, is priced at €7,736 and comes in a range of colour options."

'Digital arrest' scams are big in India and may be spreading

Re: Says a lot about Indian law enforcement

There is a young people's movement in India which asks its members to swear that they will never ask for a bribe or accept a bribe. They don't ask them to swear they will never pay a bribe, because this might be the only way their grandmother gets medical treatment.

US accuses man of being 'elite' ransomware pioneer they've hunted for years

Typo

malvertising scheme that ran for nearly a decade between October 2013 and March 2022.

the long-running malvertising campaigns between 2023 and 2022.

Spot the difference.

Indian telcos to cut off scammy, spammy, telemarketers for two whole years

Re: I feel a game of...

"Spell it right."

Spell it correctly, please.

Study shock! AI hinders productivity and makes working worse

Re: Ah, the old one...

"Some periodical cicadas emerge every 13 years and others emerge every 17 years."

https://naturalhistory.si.edu/education/teaching-resources/life-science/periodical-cicadas

This is a mechanism to disrupt predator cycles.

Release the hounds! Securing datacenters may soon need sniffer dogs

Re: Huh?

"having them constantly man the front desk"

Staff the front desk. As some of them may well be female.

Glad to help.

Speed limiters arrive for all new cars in the European Union

Vans can now breathalyse drivers

Due to an EU reg, from June this year, new vans have to be sold with the capability to have a unit fitted which will breathalyse the driver. The actual unit is not required yet, but it will be soon. For this reason, van sales crashed to a halt early this year, meaning no trade-ins were available, while the manufacturers rearranged the supply chain so as not to be left with unsaleable vehicles. The expectation is that the van will in the future not start unless the driver tests safe.

Mars is slam-dunked by hundreds of basketball-sized meteorites every year

"Incidentally, meteorites are also theorized to be a useful source of creating oxygen on Mars itself rather than importing it or the materials needed to make oxygen from Earth, so being able to find more of them would be useful if humans ever actually colonize the planet."

The planet Mars is inferior to the asteroid belt (means it is closer to the Sun) and the asteroids nearer to Mars are rocky, but the asteroids further from Mars, on the Jupiter-grazing edge of the belt, are icy. To get water to Mars we would need to go the further edge of the belt, nudge or push meteors through the belt, somehow avoiding collisions, and point them at Mars.

Thanks for coming to help. No, we can't say why we called – it's classified

Re: USS Dallas

I can't say for the US situation, but colleges buy calculators to provide to students during exams. Smartwatches etc. are banned and the student's calculator might have content stored in memory.

Google guru roasts useless phishing tests, calls for fire drill-style overhaul

Re: Not just e-mails

I would think it was random sending. The other day my phone rang in my pocket and a person said he was calling me back as my number had shown up as a missed call. I didn't know his number, I hadn't been calling anyone. Looks like the phishers are spoofing send numbers too - but that didn't happen on WhatsApp.

Re: Not sure if it's possible

I always tell people that I do not click shortened links. If they want me to click something they will have to send it to me shown fully. I don't know anyone who sends a shortened version any more.

Not just e-mails

A friend showed me a WhatsApp message they'd just received. This said the sender was from an Irish agency and wanted to know if my pal was interested in some work. He was quite chuffed to be remembered as he's a few years out of that business. He'd checked that the firm exists.

How did they get your number? I asked.

Don't know.

Their phone number starts with 062. Where is that?

Manchester?

Wouldn't that be 0044?

Oh.

Look it up on Google. +62 = Indonesia. Why is an agent calling you from Indonesia?

Oh.

Did you reply? Tell them anything about yourself?

Yes.

Block that number. I recommend telling the agency in an e-mail that someone is using their name.

He did. A couple of days later I got a similar WhatsApp message, but as the new EU Digital Services Act had just come into play, WhatsApp had added a warning that the message originated in Bangladesh, and I did not have them in my contacts. If I blocked the sender, WhatsApp would read their last three messages and check for suspicious activity.

I blocked, of course, and have not had repeats of the activity.

Europol op shutters 12 scam call centers and cuffs 21 suspected fraudsters

Re: "plus cash and other assets totaling €1 million"

European TV - I holidayed in Spain during winter a few years ago, and on a wet day I spent time learning Spanish from the rolling news TV channel. The programme contained 20 minutes of Spanish football, 20 minutes of Spanish culture - theatre, dancing festivals etc., and 20 minutes of national and international news, every hour.

Google all at sea over rising tide of robo-spam

AI spam checkers

Nothing beats eyes on the page.

If that sounds too slow, they need to hire more people.

Kremlin's Sandworm blamed for cyberattacks on US, European water utilities

Re: Warfare

An army marches on its stomach, and it takes a long time to open enough cans of bully beef to feed an army, so maybe fridges are the way they could go.

Garlic chicken without garlic? Critics think Amazon recipe book was cooked up by AI

Re: What about Coq au vin?

Statistically, the vast majority of male chicks do not live longer than a day. Nowadays.

Users now keep cellphones for 40+ months and it's hurting the secondhand market

Re: No real surprise

Have you heard of text?

Formal ban on ransomware payments? Asking orgs nicely to not cough up ain't working

Re: A simpler solution…

There is apparently a service called bitcoin mixing - several people provide bitcoins, the service scrambles them all up and takes 10% off the top before returning coins randomly to holders. The only evident use for this is criminal money laundering. Should be made illegal and any coins so mixed should be liable to seizure.

Re: A simpler solution…

This relates to the puzzlingly high issuance of €500 notes in the EU, given that reputable firms do not settle their accounts in €500 notes. Now discontinued issuance, but still legal tender.

Statista:

Value of euro banknotes in circulation 2013-2021, by denomination

Sep 12, 2023

The amount of cash in circulation in the Eurozone has increased in the last eight years for all currency denominations, except for 500 euro bills. The total of fifty euro bills amounted to 684.2 billion euros in 2021, by far the highest total for any bill. The 500 euro bills summed to around 186.7 billion euros, though they have not been issued by most Eurozone central banks since January 2019.

https://www.statista.com/statistics/254201/euro-banknotes-value-by-denomination/

Regulator says stranger entered hospital, treated a patient, took a document ... then vanished

Re: Pardon?

Maybe the burglars liked dolphins.

Interpol makes first border arrest using Biometric Hub to ID suspect

Genderist

"Interpol and Idemia have worked together for years. In 1999, he police organization"

Is there a she police organisation?

Bad news, older tech workers: Job advert language works against you

Re: Examples?

"I agree, if a 20-year old has managed to accumulate the same 30 years of professional experience in apparently no time at all, he's definitely somebody you'd want in your team: By 50 he'd "

He or she. These days, maybe they.

Ageist language will reveal itself.

Amazon workers are in a warehouse of pain, independent report finds

Nomadland

I recommend reading Nomadland, this generation's Nickel And Dimed. The author Jessica Bruder went undercover in, and interviewed employees of, a last-quarter seasonally employed force of seniors, living in campervans and RVs while staffing an Amazon's warehouse. Painkiller dispensers, a man hit on the head and knocked flat by a box flying off a belt, robots fenced off and seemingly repeating the same job they just did. The author found that many seniors came back year after year, because they needed the money. They were in this position because of losing their job, home or family, most having worked responsible and higher graded jobs for decades. Amazon made them welcome, and worked them hard.

I believe the book has been filmed.

Musk decides to bury dead Twitter accounts, warns users follower counts could sink

Deleting dormant accounts

Just a way of getting rid of bots and fakes.

Bots, fakes, spam farms, troll farms and follower panels, which comprise about 10% of the web identities and will increase with AI. Some of the followers are paid for monthly, and those might remain active, but the once-off purchases or creations will go.

Storage space is a concern, not because of cost of storage itself, but because of the energy needed to search, store and re-organise this content on an ongoing basis, and the energy used by search engines trawling through the content on a regular basis. Energy has to be produced and paid for. Energy from renewable sources used to do the tasks is energy not available to replace carbon fuelled energy.

Twitter is a business built to serve its users (including advertisers). Not someone who thought they might like to use it several years ago but then didn't use it. Telling advertisers they can potentially reach X number of viewers could be dishonest if many viewers never access the account, or just don't exist. Reputable businesses will serve advertisers and users better.

Statista

https://www.statista.com/chart/27229/number-of-newly-created-twitter-accounts-almost-tripled-on-the-day-russia-invaded-ukraine/

https://www.statista.com/statistics/1013474/facebook-fake-account-removal-quarter/

https://www.statista.com/statistics/1328849/linkedin-number-of-fake-accounts-detected-and-removed/

World's richest man posts memes as $44b Twitter acquisition veers off course

Elon Musk asked for a general poll on whether to admit Donald Trump to twitter again.

Great way to cut in half the number of accounts you need to check for Russian trolls and bots.

Re: Catch-22

"SpaceX is an amazing achievement, which I suspect will be important to the future of mankind."

Humanity. Thank you for including the other half of the human race.

NOBODY PRINT! Selfless hero saves typing pool from carbon catastrophe

Re: Back whilst incarcerated with the NHS ....

"one of my cow-orker"

Freudian slip?

Google battles bots, puts Workspace admins on alert

Cheaper by the dozen

I am reading offers of 1,000 Instagram follower bots for $39.99. Seems to be a monthly rental, which is quite a smart move by the merchandisers. Maybe Google could help ID them. Oddly, these sorts are easily recognisable as bots to (most) humans.

It's time to kick China off social media, says tech governance expert

Wherever the bots come from, they are well established

Many of these accounts are just bots. China, Russia, India, Pakistan, Bangladesh make plenty, as no doubt do other nations.

Instagram bots sell for about 0.78cent I am informed. It's called SMM panel reselling. These bots are found on many platforms. The older the bot, the more validity it has, because panels regularly conduct searches and erase bots, don't they. So if it survived a few years its vote, comment, like etc. looks more real.

USA Today cleaned up its Twitter followers a few years ago and found that 1 million of the 8 million were bots.

Facebook cleaned 1.3 billion bots and fake accounts during Q1 of 2021, down from 1.7 billion in Q1 of 2020. 1.7 billion were removed /cleaned up during Q4 of 2021.

https://www.statista.com/statistics/1013474/facebook-fake-account-removal-quarter/

Not only the panel activity, but the activity of search engines endlessly visiting the pages, wastes electricity and datacentre space.

There are also zombie accounts, real people's accounts pwned, some exacerbated by the fact that what would be visible on a desktop is not visible on a phone app. The real user keeps using it unknowing that something has been added.

Some panels have taken steps to require proof of identity on opening an account.

Re: re: Digital societies need to be protected.

Thanks for telling your story, Mr Zuckerberg.

John Deere tractors 'bricked' after Russia steals machinery from Ukraine

Your turn, Toyota

Pity Toyota can't brick its work vehicles. Though I am sure that might prove unpopular with everyone except warlords.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3FiYb3Dm2uc

Michigan Micro Mote works well escargot: Tiny computer makes it into the field strapped to backs of predatory snails

Link to paper

https://www.nature.com/articles/s42003-021-02124-y

Communications Biology from nature.com

No amount of Glasgow handshaking will revive this borked kiosk

Reminds me of...

Riven. I've always seen that as the cave mouth in Riven.

No cars in Riven, but there was a bullet train and big kettle/ submarine.

Where to implant my employee microchip? I have the ideal location

Re: Poor Reliability.. better idea

"wouldn't an individual ID forehead tattoo be far more reliable?"

At some point you would be mistaken for a can of beautiful soup. Once that happens there's no way back to society.

Fancy Bear hacker crew Putin dirty RATs in Word documents emailed to govt orgs – report

Re: Here we go again

"Being hit by 20-year-old exploits like WORD MACROS would be an EMBARASSMENT."

Whereas using a word processor correctly would not be an embarrassment.

Creepy or super creepy? That is the question Mozilla's throwing at IoT Christmas pressies

Re: Word association football

I took it as a hot water bottle too, probably because I don't use or buy the other kind.

'Men only' job ad posts land Facebook in boiling hot water with ACLU

Re: I think some people might have missed something...

"Yet insurance companies do this very thing and no one says anything about it."

The EU has stopped motor insurers from offering cheaper quotes to women, on the basis that men, especially young men, are more likely to speed and have serious crashes, but firms must not discriminate against them.

A firm selling motor insurance is called its4women.ie and offers quotes to women or men without bias.

Thus all other drivers now have to pay more on the premium to account for the non-loading against young men.

Re: In the current environment, women are too much of a business risk..

..."aren't meaning how I am reading it.

Since Jews are the only ones who can experience antisemitism, be the target of it, as that's what it means, being anti-Jewish, then comparing that to your leading sentence implies to me that you are saying only women can experience sexual harassment."

I disagree with your statement. A non-Jewish person who is friendly with a Jewish person, or who employs them or is employed by them, can also be the target, directly or indirectly, of antisemitism. Much as a shop could suffer vandalism because some idiot decided they did not like the look of one of the employees.

Men, women and non-binary persons can experience sexual harassment.

Don't mean to alarm you – but NASA is about to pummel the planet with huge frikkin' space laser

Re: Keep Calm and Carry On

"Yep plenty of room in a Pope's hat for a decent sized teapot on top of the head.

I should say so - the thing is a mitre high"

His Holiness is currently visiting Ireland so I don't imagine he needed to bring his own teapot.

Cup of tea, Father? Ah go on.

Grad sends warning to manager: Be nice to our kit and it'll be nice to you

Re: Actually my own computer..

"After spending hours looking for the bug, and finding nothing, I leaned toward the computer. I asked it if it wanted to be thrown out the window (pointing to the window for dramatic effect)."

Amazing how often in this thread people resort to defenestration.