Posts by doublelayer

First rule of Ransomware Club is do not pay the ransom, but it looks like Carlson Wagonlit Travel didn't get the memo

Re: In re tracing cash...

Sure, that can be done, and it is done to detect known theft of bills with sequential serial numbers because such lists can easily be passed around. However, it doesn't provide you the same kind of information that bitcoin does. Cash can be spent several times before it ends up in a bank, and so even if you know that a criminal obtained such a banknote and it returned to a bank via a deposit from a retail store, you don't know that a criminal was the one spending it at the store. If the criminal doesn't steal it from the bank, but instead steals it from somewhere else which probably doesn't catalog serial numbers, then even when it ends up in a bank, you don't know that it was ever connected to a crime. Meanwhile, we may not know who spends each bitcoin, but we can track an individual one through every transaction short of just giving the wallet key over to someone else.

Infosec bod: I've found zero-day flaws in Tor's bridge relay defenses. Tor Project: Only the zero part is right

Re: The problems continue

"Pedantically, for something to be a "zero-day" it has to be actively exploited in the wild, before researchers discover it, or the provider is informed."

Even more pedantically, that's not it. The zero-day doesn't start counting up until there is a solution--something we know about and it's being used but there is no patch is still a zero-day. Now you may be correct about requiring an active exploit; the researcher claims that a zero-day exploit can be something that could be used but isn't yet known to be, while something that is known to be used is a zero-day attack. I'm not sure I buy that logic. Either way, if he is correct about these being exploitable and someone starts to exploit them while the Tor project hasn't accepted and patched them, they would become zero-days.

Re: The problems continue

Which is what the researcher is claiming. Whether they already do so isn't known, but he alleges that it is feasible. Given the level of expense the Chinese government has already taken to provide censorship, they clearly believe it is useful to perform such scans. My guess is that they either already are taking actions to block or identify Tor usage or they believe few of their citizens use it. I'm not sure which it is, but the former makes more sense to me.

The problems continue

This researcher has started to demonstrate various problems in Tor, including the ones mentioned here. While the Tor project may have a pedantic way to argue that these aren't zero-days, they aren't doing very much to describe why they aren't problems. For example, I notice that they spent a lot of time stating that the researcher read a paper wrong, but don't spend very much at all showing why the algorithm he provides for detecting traffic doesn't work. They've provided a few arguments for why it might not work at scale, but they have neither disproven his methods nor proven their defense.

It's worth reading the full blog entry, linked from the article, to see the details on detection. I also found a previous entry covering problems in the browser and direct connections to be enlightening. I don't always agree with the severity of things this researcher says--for example, in the previous entry he describes how to detect direct Tor traffic as very problematic when there's already a much easier way to do that, but it also has caused me to be more skeptical of things the Tor project says.

'I'm telling you, I haven't got an iPad!' – Sent from my iPad

It may be, but unless there's someone else doing the real work on it to make sure it stays working, some of the students might get caught in the trap while it's still in operation. An environment through which students must submit work is a very important thing in education, and when it breaks there can be large problems.

I am young enough that I've used such systems during my own schooling, and two events of problematic failures come readily to mind. First, there was the time when the system simply refused to accept uploaded documents. Every week, starting around 10:00 in the morning and ending at midnight or possibly later. The homework was due at midnight. I don't know how many students were thrown by this, but I had to email my professor with the documents and promise to try again later and that the files would be identical (fortunately this was accepted). The second time concerned a system for automatically detecting plagiarism which reported, on our class's final papers, nearly universal plagiarism. In fact, we had all committed exactly the crimes of which it was accusing us, namely we had copied, with only slight modifications, large chunks of other documents. Those other documents were our drafts for the same paper, which also got submitted into this system's big database. Worryingly, it seemed we had also plagiarized smaller sections from certain works which all seemed to be between quotation marks. Funnily enough, I don't remember that system being used for many other courses.

Humble-bragging ServiceNow CEO tells anyone who listens: 'Our destiny is to become the defining enterprise software biz of 21st century'

Bill, you may need my help

“[W]e're humble and we're taking nothing for granted. We’re on the move to our destiny to become the defining enterprise software company of the 21st century.”

Oh, Bill. Here are definitions for humble, take for granted, and destiny. Read each of these and get back to me. You have one or more of them wrong and we need to make sure you have a good understanding of them if you're ever planning to use them again.

If you own one of these 45 Netgear devices, replace it: Kit maker won't patch vulnerable gear despite live proof-of-concept code

From the reports, it sounds like it's only LAN-accessible unless the user has done something really stupid. Still, there are too many ways of getting LAN access and too many worrisome ways of exploiting root access to the network device, so it's still important.

Reply-All storm flares as email announcing privacy policy puts 500 addresses in the 'To' field, not 'BCC'

Re: Flash is dying, why not e-mail?

That is true, but unfortunately most of those things are worse. Email may have too many security problems to count, but you can pretty much guarantee that an email sent from one place will get to another one, and if it doesn't there are only a few reasons for it. More modern communication apps require a lot more configuration. Ones designed for companies often make it hard to communicate out of the company. Those designed by big companies require sending unencrypted data through their centralized system. Those designed by hardware manufacturers lock you in. And some others require phone numbers or email addresses and essentially provide an overlay; while the features are good, you still need the other mechanism for that one to work. Email and to a lesser extent phone calls and SMS are global and compatible. Most other things aren't.

Huawei claims its alternative ecosystem to Google Mobile Services has 1.6 million devs, 73 million Euro users

Re: I'm a bit confused by this.

Because the code is developed in the U.S., meaning that they're not allowed to supply it, even indirectly, through any entities they control or which control them, or through an independent entity which they know will be used to violate the sanctions. If they do, they can be penalized by the American government for trying to break their regulations, which is investigated on a when-they-want-to basis. This means that Google would be handing ammunition to cause them problems to any U.S. administration which has some reason not to like them.

Google allowed to remember search results to news articles it was asked to forget. Good

Re: Why I love the Right to be Forgotten

Google is not allowed to collect and store such information from other parts of the law. The fact that the right to be forgotten had to be enacted as a separate section, rather than coming organically from other sections, clearly indicates that it is a separate thing. Among some of the details that make this different is the fact that Google's database does not specifically say any of this; it simply knows that a certain page happens to contain those words; the entry for a page stating "Person X declared bankruptcy", "Person X presided over a hearing for declared bankruptcy", and "Person X fought against creditors who declared bankruptcy" look rather similar. In addition, if they are required to remove access to the page, they are not required to remove it from the database. In fact, they are required to put it in another database so they know not to link to it. The parts of GDPR regulating personal information would have required deletion, which this does not.

Re: Why I love the Right to be Forgotten

You're misstating the points you're replying to.

"This is not about the US Constitution or American law. This is exclusively for the other side of the pond. In cases such as this the database entries must only be removed for EU territory, Google can still legally show them in other jurisdictions."

Not only was the U.S. not mentioned, but this is a comparison. Countries in Europe do it this way, other countries do it a different way. The comment you replied to was contrasting these approaches and stating opinions based on this comparison.

"This is not a government forcing anyone to unpublish anything."

Wrong. You seem to have two parts to this argument. Let's look at each:

"Firstly, this is a purely private case between a private citizen and a private company."

No, this is a case between a private citizen, a private company, and a national government using a national law which is interpreted by a national court. The law decides what that private citizen is allowed to demand. The law allows the government to penalize the company if it doesn't comply. It is that law, and the government that created, interprets, and enforces it which makes this a governmental matter. It is true that the government isn't making unilateral demands, and in this case they refused to support the citizen's demands, but the law gives them power and it is that power which we are talking about here.

"Secondly, the RTBF is not about publishing. It can not be used to remove articles or force corrections. It is limited to the storing of personal information in the databases of search engines."

Wrong again. It is not about the storing of personal information in their databases. It is about storing of impersonal data, namely specific links. Which they are going to publish if it's in their database in the search results area. Which this law would make it illegal to publish. Your second phrase is wrong, and your first phrase is only technically right based on a limited definition of "publish". We have had many an argument in this forum about whether deciding and sending search results is publishing, and some of us think it is. Even if it isn't, it limits what Google is allowed to write to their search results pages. Not about personal information.

You can argue against the point in many ways. I would agree with some possible arguments. The points stated in that comment are exaggerated and not well-argued. There are lots of legitimate avenues for dispute. You did not choose to take any of them.

Google extends homeworking until this time next year – as Microsoft finds WFH is terrific... for Microsoft

And there you have the problem. If you know you will always be working from home, you would probably enjoy doing exactly that. If you knew you would be coming back in six months, you could try to liberate yourself from your agreement to rent and find somewhere nicer to be for those six months. If your workplace might bring people back, but nobody knows when or whether, then you don't have as much freedom. And the worst possible outcome: your workplace might bring people back and hasn't committed to a specific time by which you have to return. Google has done a good thing here just by giving a date well into the future. People can actually make some decisions based on this without fearing that they'll have to cancel plans at short notice.

Re: Anecdotally

I think your attitude towards shifting from office to home work depends a lot on what your office and home are like. I preferred the office, but that's mostly because the office for me was rather nice. We had separate offices, meaning little sound pollution or barriers to impromptu meetings, and my commute was a relatively short walk which I quite liked unless it was raining particularly heavily. I wouldn't be surprised to hear that people like home working a lot more when their office is in a really expensive place to live, meaning long commutes, or where the office involves a lot of distractions or is in some other way hampering productivity and enjoyment. Similarly, I'd expect working from home to be less popular for those who live with others who are frequently disruptive or for those who have other things to do in the area around their office.

Chinese tat bazaar Xiaomi to light a fire under Amazon's Kindle with new e-book reader

Re: Bazaar?

Yes, but given that the sentiment, phrasing, and timing was so similar between the posts, I figured it was likely. Especially as the idea was both wrong and rather unrelated--after all, Apple doesn't make devices like this, so they're not that relevant to the discussion.

Re: Bazaar?

You really had to post that sentiment twice? And by the way, it's not really true. Apple designs all their equipment, then subcontracts the manufacturing. Xiaomi does some of that, but a lot of their stuff isn't done that way. For example, they are somewhat well-known for their wearable fitness trackers, and they don't design any fitness trackers. Instead, the company called Huami does that, both for their own brands and for Xiaomi. Neither of these models of doing business is necessarily bad; whether it's Xiaomi or Huami making the trackers, people seem to like them, but they're not the same strategy.

Companies toiling away the most on LibreOffice code complain ecosystem is 'beyond utterly broken'

Re: "Slapping a "Personal Edition" label on a product implies..."

"Sorry, there are sentences like "Slapping a "Personal Edition" label on a product implies you can only use it for personal use, which would be against the license." which are utterly wrong."

Maybe you would accept it if rearranged. Here's what I think it is trying to say:

If a project said that you can only use it for personal use, that would be against the license. Slapping a "Personal Edition" label on a product implies but does not really mean that.

The sentence occurring immediately after the one you quoted makes it clear that they understand that the implication is not true. They are not claiming license violations. They are claiming user confusion.

Raytheon techie who took home radar secrets gets 18 months in the clink in surprise time fraud probe twist

Re: Did he not

Comment was written somewhat tongue-in-cheek, hence things like claiming he knew what he was doing and recommending that criminals pay attention to environmental considerations. However, it is good security practice to erase disks even when discarding the hardware, so I only had to joke about what his intentions were, not what is a good idea.

Re: Did he not

It looks like he wanted to follow good security practice. Even if you're going to toss the machine, erase the disk first. If you don't, an attacker can get the computer out of the bin and extract the data. Of course, if you're planning to discard the hardware entirely, secure erasing the disk is more easily done by using a hammer, but remember to still do it.

The instructions above are meant for example purposes only. If you truly are planning to erase your disk to avoid legal prosecution, at least you hope, you should not bin your machine. It is more environmentally friendly to have the diskless shell brought to an electronics recycler.

Re: Editing

I really don't mind the typos. It happens to all of us. My suggestion would be to turn the tips and corrections feature into a form rather than an email--sometimes I'm on a machine without email configured or with accounts I don't want to use, so I try to remember to send a message later and likely fail. I'm guessing it was done this way to deal with spam, but you already have our logins so you can associate reports with those for blocking purposes.

Re: Did he not

The article described him as a systens engineer and a techy, but they didn't provide extra context on that. It's possible that he built electronics or worked on the physics of the radar, rather than dealing with computers. While many electrical engineers and physicists have had lots of experience with the low level of computers, many haven't. I wouldn't be that surprised to hear that they don't automatically know about the device nodes and how to find the right one.

Re: "he had downloaded documents to an external drive against company policy"

You are very right to think that. It is critical that audits be done about copying data to external media if employees are meant not to do so. This company is very fortunate that all this guy wanted to do was take work home without permission. Had he taken a copy and showed up at a prearranged consulate, he could be happily living in another country with the data handed over before the company even knew there was a problem.

Russia tested satellite-to-satellite shooter, say UK and USA

Re: Sitting Ducks

Exactly. If you can have enough weapons to be able to take out satellites with a 12-24 hour lead time, that's pretty good. Preparing a ground-based attack might be able to go faster if you rush things, but it's not markedly so. Also, if you attack a satellite from something near it, you can do so in such a way that relatively little damage is caused to other things. If you have to fire your offensive weapon from the surface, you don't have as many options--either you launch what is effectively what you could launch already, or you go for a blast it to pieces approach. If you do blast it to pieces, there's always the chance you might damage something you didn't intend to damage, either causing problems for you or angering someone who was formerly neutral. Even if you still think surface-based attacks are useful, it doesn't hurt to have both options available. If you can stand to wait a few hours, use your orbiting disassemblers. If you can't, bring out the big laser.

Butterfingers who don't bother with phone cases, rejoice: New Gorilla Glass 'Victus' tipped to survive 6ft drops

Re: Is dropping your phone common?

I've dropped mine a couple times, onto wooden floors, onto concrete, and onto a cat. The phone never seems to mind these drops, but mine is older and has a case on it to be careful. The case isn't designed to provide massive levels of protection, but I've seen other people with cracked screens, so I figure it's not hard to use the basic protection option. So far, this combination has resulted in no problems save for a short meow and a contemptuous look.

What evil lurks within the data centre, and why is it DDoS-ing the ever-loving pants off us?

Re: Why is the IT manager deploying HA Proxy?

The culture of having managers and nonmanagers, where managers are defined as people who don't know how to do any of the things that need doing but direct people to do so is harmful. A good manager understands what the people they're managing do, and they understand how to do those things in a pinch. The team members themselves may be better at doing it, but if the manager doesn't know, they're not competent. In addition, the word manager can be applied to people who manage things other than people; it's pretty generic.

Re: Football team web site throttles business

"need to take it up with the idiot users who leave pages open when they're not doing anything with them."

That's not a good approach. Why shouldn't most pages be left on? They're documents. Mostly static documents. If I want to have them open, it should do little harm other than using some memory. Same thing is true of most nonstatic pages, because if they need to update, they probably don't need to thrash the CPU for it. After all, there are tons of other apps and applets whose entire job is to remain in the background and update information so it's always available; they seem fine at it. A few pages may do something else, like livestreaming video, but even those should be coded to stop streaming when they're not in focus. Leaving a properly-written livestreaming page open in another tab is simply a better way of returning to it when needed. None of these things are unusual, and users shouldn't be blamed for not knowing that a bad developer has made a site that wastes CPU time or network bandwidth.

Bill Gates debunks 'coronavirus vaccine is my 5G mind control microchip implant' conspiracy theory

Re: Choice, not Charity

So, your suggestion is? If your suggestion is "you should have taxed him more a while ago", well, it didn't happen. If your suggestion is "take away his resources now", don't expect that to happen either. If your suggestion is that he should donate his money to a fund controlled by the government rather than a fund he controls, don't expect that to happen either, because he and probably various others will have more confidence in his determination rather than any national government.

In addition, there are different goals between philanthropists and governments. Do you think the public would be very interested in curing a disease that never affects them, in an area far away with which that country doesn't interact very much? Would a government that is beholden to its voters, lobbyists, and businesses but not to people on another continent spend a ton of money on a comparatively small project to help the least powerful there? It sometimes happens--there is foreign aid--but it's not their primary concern and arguably shouldn't be (I wouldn't argue that but I've heard enough people do so that it does have an effect). It is his choice to spend his money on people outside his country, in a way that might not be the priority of the people who would get the vote on it if he had to turn the resources over. Unless the people decide that, for some reason, he needs to have his money taken away, that is his choice to make.

Re: Bill Gates ... saving millions of lives across the globe

His employees? Do you mean the Gates foundation employees? Or Microsoft employees (he hasn't run that for over a decade and a half)? Do you have reason to believe either set of employees are being paid badly? It's not like Amazon, which does have a massive workforce at the lowest end that can be mistreated for massive profits. Both his organizations have much different organizational charts. I'm sure you can find some problems, but I don't think you'd find them to be large or systemic ones.

New Google rules mandate Android 'Poundland' Edition, Go, for sub-2GB RAM phones once Android 11 is out

No, they didn't. The claim is that apps expanding to fit the available memory is good. The reply states why having free memory is good. If the apps expanded to fill the memory, then there is no free memory, and the benefits listed there are lost. If a system can run in a gigabyte but has two, you have a gigabyte for caching. If it can't run in one and needs two, then you have less or zero for caching.

Options

Google: We are going to force manufacturers to do something. Something that would improve Android as an ecosystem, you know? It's time to show the power wielded by the holder of those GMS rights. What should we make them do?

Engineer 1: Well, how about security updates?

Google: Security updates? If they want those installed, they'll join Android One. We already have that.

Engineer 1: Well, that's only used by a couple companies, and that's only three years, and the ones who aren't on that program sometimes drop after six months. We could extend those requirements or...

Google: Stop questioning us. You're fired.

Engineer 1: [Is ejected.]

Engineer 2: I was thinking we could limit preinstalled applications that aren't hardware related.

Google: Excuse me?

Engineer 2: Wait. I just mean we can let users uninstall or disable

Google: Have you not heard about Google Play Services? We make money from that.

Engineer 2: [ejected]

Engineer 3: Well we could make manufacturers keep our UI

Engineer 3: [ejected]

Engineer 4: Stop them releasing Android 7 in 2020?

Engineer 4: [ejected]

Engineer 5: More reporting on use of permissions for the security conscious

Engineer 5: [ejected painfully]

[...]

Google: Why do I have to make all these decisions? Shouldn't we have engineers to do this? Well, how about we make them use Go edition more? That would work.

Engineering manager: It might not be a selling point for all manufacturers. Sure it runs faster, but there are some things it can't do which could make consumers think

Engineering manager: [ejected]

Re: Does Go come without the non-removable facebook app ?

Short answer: Probably not.

Long answer: It's up to the manufacturer, but Facebook has made a Go version, these are usually low-cost devices, and one way that manufacturers make extra money, especially with low-cost hardware, is to dump preinstalled crap on. So I'd expect most Go devices available in countries with high rates of Facebook infestation will have a preinstalled version.

Suspected armed robber’s privacy was not infringed by cops’ specific cellphone tower data slurp, US judge rules

"I'd prefer not to be tracked all the time, obviously, but I've never worried that so being would fit me up for a crime I didn't commit. Does anyone here really worry about that? If so please can you explain why in rational terms?"

Here's one short but good reason. It has already happened. Look at arrests based on facial recognition. There have been several in the U.K. and U.S. In many cases, the person arrested doesn't look like the person identified; the cameras got it wrong. And yet, those people have been in police custody for far too long before they were released. They do get released at some point, with no charges, but do you think they get any recompense for spending some time in jail? Any way of proving to people whose meetings they missed that yes, the police did arrest them, but that they didn't do anything wrong nor was there any reason to suspect they did? Similarly, some police organizations have been known to treat some people without regard for justice. It hasn't affected me. It might not be in my area of residence. If it affects others, it's still bad and it is part of my responsibility as a citizen of a democracy to ensure there are protections for those people. One of the most useful protections is requiring warrants for accessing potentially abusable information. It has been done for decades in many countries; it can keep happening.

Don't strain yourself, Zuck, only democracy at stake... Facebook makes half-hearted effort to flag election lies by President Trump

Re: why aren't postal votes considered a fraud risk in the US?

"For the benefit of us folks in the UK could you please explain what a hanging chad is and why it matters."

This applies only to the 2000 election. Chads are small round pieces of paper that are meant to be punched out of a paper ballot. The voter selects the choice, the corresponding hole is punched, the chad falls away, and the ballot with its hole can be counted automatically. The problem occurred because some machines failed to completely punch through the paper, meaning that the selected hole was not fully opened. The chad remained partially attached to the ballot, hanging there. This caused problems because the counting machines sometimes failed to count those ballots correctly.

The W3C steers the way the World Wide Web works. Yet it is reluctant to record crucial meetings – and its minutes are incomplete

Re: Some unwarranted paranoia.

"all the engineers involved in the working groups will be rather glad their every word isn't being recorded and scrutinised by strangers with an axe to grind"

According to your description, I can already scrutinize any words I want because the minutes are being recorded. You mentioned some alterations during fast discussion, not cutting out. Given that that's your primary reason, it seems like your objection isn't valid. You are worried that people will do something they are already capable of doing. The only way people couldn't already do this is if minutes aren't accurate, public, or comprehensive. You have claimed that they are all of these things.

I don't believe there are massive conspiracies they need to keep hidden. Nor do I really care about whether recordings or minutes are released. They don't mind publicly announcing standards that were obviously created by corporate interests and not considered by much else, so I don't think there's very much they might want to hide. However, despite this, your claims don't seem to make sense. You claim that recording isn't necessary because text minutes are kept, that audio or video recording would lead to unneeded scrutiny of every word while claiming that nearly every word is written down and made public, that publicity of data is potentially harmful and that in the interest of publicity minutes have been standardized and organized. In each case, the claims appear to contradict.

Re: Some unwarranted paranoia.

I'm glad to hear that. As I understand it, according to you, everything is written down, everything is done in a standard way, public, and the only downside is that sometimes people talk too fast for the minutes to be correct. So, if everything's public, and the meeting is over audio, what is the problem recording the audio and using it to help the people taking dictation? Or, you know, releasing it? If you and your colleagues have no problem having everything transcribed, what problem do you have with it being recorded instead? If you don't have any problem with it being recorded, then may I suggest that possibly the people who do are not on the group you're on and therefore that you don't know what they may be doing, legitimate or not? And if that is the case, your description of the trustworthiness is not very useful, is it?

Ex-boss of ICANN shifts from 'advisor' to co-CEO of private equity biz that tried to buy .org for $1bn+

Re: @lglethal

I believe you are correct and that there is some community involvement in choosing the board members in this particular case. I haven't looked that hard yet, and don't know for certain. However, the boards of charities and nonprofits are very powerful and very unaccountable. The reason for this is that a charity (most countries) is not owned by anyone. It's just controlled. There is therefore no check on the board other than laws governing what a charity is and isn't allowed to do.

I have never worked at a charity for my main job, but I have some close friends who have and I've volunteered for one small enough that I have met their board. These people are volunteers who get to decide lots of things. Their decisions cannot be appealed. If someone leaves the board, the existing board members get to replace them. The only way to get rid of someone on the board is for the rest of the board to vote them out. The board doesn't get any money for doing this, but of course you can always find a way to get use out of some money without paying yourself, and given that the board decides who runs the charity, they have a lot of power. If it is necessary to completely remove and change the board, it can be done only by suing the charity and board for violations of some law, which are pretty forgiving in most locations. The charity is allowed to use their resources to defend themselves in that lawsuit. So unless you already have a bunch of money or are a government, you face a tremendously difficult uphill battle.

Re: It stinks...

"If you are a legitimate business and not a scammer, you owe it to the public who may be roped into "doing business with you" simply because you're serving some dodgy JS on thousands of webpages that people encounter every day without any warning in advance that your lousy dodgy JS is going to be trying to get into their browser."

I completely agree. The problem is that Whois doesn't help. I don't trust code any more if it's a company name rather than a privacy organization stored there, because a) I have no proof the information in there is correct even if it looks possible, b) dodgy JS can come from any place and can be owned by any company, and c) any company can create other companies to make their origins look different, and they do that all the time. Consider what you would think if you saw this in a Whois record:

Registrant Name: Siculus, Inc.

Registrant Organization: Siculus, Inc.

Registrant Street: 1700 34th Ave NW

Registrant City: Altoona

Registrant State/Province: Iowa

Registrant Postal Code: 50009

Registrant Phone: [phone]

Do you trust this company? We can do some research and determine that that company does exist, they are at that address, etc. Do you trust them now? Well, whether or not you trust them should be the same as whether or not you trust Facebook, because this is Facebook. You wouldn't know that from Whois though. Nor would you know whether Facebook/Siculus actually registered this domain--if I was a scammer and I thought you'd trust that, maybe I put that information in when registering my domain. It wasn't hard to find, after all. Nor do you know basically anything else about the system or the people from that contact info.

Re: It stinks...

"For example, because WHOIS records are now virtually useless due to so-called privacy provisions which are largely used by shady organizations trying to escape responsibility for their online activities, it takes me 5 or 10 minutes per domain to do research every time I see some questionable javascript that I'm trying to decide whether to let run in my browser or not."

Which really breaks things up from all the people who would just put in information that isn't at all connected to who they are. Which has been happening for years. It isn't new; when people realized that putting real contact information led to scammers, they started to avoid giving that out. I know of a friend who set up a site in 1998 and put in the wrong phone numbers to avoid scammers. Companies that let you replace your info with theres were easily available in the early 2000s.

Actually, what information are you hoping for to determine whether JS is safe? All whois contains is address, phone, and email. That doesn't tell you anything about whether code is trustworthy. While you might decide to ban any code coming from a domain associated with an address in Russia, do you necessarily trust any code coming from some other country?

Motorola Moto G 5G Plus: It won't blow your mind, but at £300 we're struggling to find much to grumble about

The model mentioned measures 129 by 65 mm. Even if there were no bezels on a phone, it could only have a 5.68-inch (144.5 mm) screen and still fit into those dimensions. The iPhone SE 2020 has made that 3 mm wider, and it's one of the smallest options out there. True, the growth in screen size doesn't mean the same increases in case size, but it has been accompanied by increases in case size. The phone mentioned in the article, for example, is still 9 mm wider as well as being 39 mm taller.

Brit telcos deliberately killed Phones 4u, claim admins in £1bn UK High Court sueball

Re: A few things

""once I've bought a new shiny and finished configuring it, I dig the packaging for the old device out and slap it onto Ebay. It helps to offset the cost of the new device, reduces clutter, and in the event of anything going wrong, I'd rather just buy a replacement"

In my case, if I'm replacing something, it's likely in one of a few conditions:

1. It's broken. Physically. Bad enough that I can't repair it. Resale value next to zero.

2. It has gotten so old that someone might want it, but they won't find it. I've waited months hoping that someone would buy old devices, and now I try to be more realistic about what it's worth, usually next to zero.

For case 2, if I can't sell it but it continues to work, I try to find someone who can use it. I have found several places that would like phones that still are capable of making calls, so I can donate those. Sometimes, I can do the same with laptops. For other devices, I keep them around in case I need a disposable device or a victim for potentially destructive experimentation; after all, it's better to reuse when possible.

I have an old phone from 2012 which was not reliable enough for the place I donate phones to. It has been a potential casualty in a number of tests so far. Still works, well sort of. If I need a cheap device that might suffer during the experience, I'll draft that into service rather than paying for something new.

Re: Supposed to give a warning

"It has always seemed odd to me that the American system would treat evidence which actually proves guilt as inadmissible due to the way it was obtained."

The concept does sound problematic, but it also provides a safeguard against misconduct by the more powerful party in a criminal investigation. If a policing organization commits a crime, they may not be held to account. The legal system is connected to them, other courts may not have jurisdiction, and if the defendant doesn't have the resources to pursue them or a sufficiently interested third party to foot the bills, the police get off for their crime. By making it clear that their crime cannot pay, it reduces the need for that. Of course, it also makes it harder to convict criminals, so there are pros and cons to either approach.

Nokia 5310: Retro feature phone shamelessly panders to nostalgia, but is charming enough to be forgiven

Re: "pre-installed Facebook app"

In that case, perhaps you could enlighten me to the point I missed? Your comment seems to have left that out.

As I understood it, the comment from which I quoted was under the impression that there was no data available to be stolen by a possibly malicious app. Their comment seemed to indicate that, since the phone couldn't contain a lot of information Facebook would like, it must have no data of value. I listed various types of data that would be entirely obtainable from this device and that it would be undesirable to give to Facebook. Again, if I missed a point, and you understand the point, it would be nice for you to explain yourself. It would have been nicer for you to have done so when you felt the need to tell me; I find discussions work best when people say what they think.

Re: The problem is...

This phone runs on a chip intended for basic phones, with 8 MB RAM. These two facts combine to make it completely impossible to run any version of Android ever released on it. It very much doesn't. Now the Facebook app is concerning, but you can't break out the accusation of Android. If you want to determine whether you trust something, do your research to figure out what it actually runs before jumping to conclusions.

Re: "pre-installed Facebook app"

"What exactly would it be snooping?"

Data collection profile: User ID 18502396963:

Phone number: On file.

Contacts: Logged. Up to date as of 2020-07-19.

Call history: Logged. Up to date as of 2020-07-19.

Text messages: Available for processing.

Images: User has not taken any. Automatic backup is enabled if they do.

Voice recording: Enabled, batch upload pending.

Music preferences: ID3 information has been logged and added to user's advertising profile.

Location history: Available for 22 days, 9:14:43. Warning: location accuracy is low, from nearby tower information only.

An axe age, a sword age, Privacy Shield is riven, but what might that mean for European businesses?

Re: The point of the EU

"The USA wants privacy for its own citizens."

No, it does not. It doesn't want privacy for any other citizens either, but don't think its own citizens are getting consideration or extra things. As government policy goes, it would like for privacy to be deleted from the dictionary and everyone's brain so people stop complaining about all the violations.

Nokia's reboot of the 5310 is a blissfully dumb phone that will lug some mp3s about just fine

Re: Wireless FM radio

Update: Several months after this article, a review stated that a wire was needed for the radio. My assumption of earlier seems to have been incorrect.

Everything must go! Distributors clear shelves of ALL notebooks in Q2, even ones gathering dust over last 12 months

Re: Do you ever change your mind, based on data?t

I don't think that's necessarily true. While most devs don't have a need for the kind of processing that graphic designers do, their workload is often heavier than text entry. In my work, I enter text for a while, then I compile and test locally. This may not require much power (it doesn't do any GPU-accelerated work at all, for example), but if I had to wait five times as long for a really low-end processor to compile some of my bigger projects, I'd be rather irritated. It's true that, when I'm done with my code, I push it to a remote server which compiles again and runs a bunch of automatic tests, but that doesn't liberate me from having to test locally. Most of the time, the automatic unit tests are sanity checks on things that could have broken inadvertently, but if I'm adding new functionality, I not only have to unit test myself, but I also have to run more thorough tests to verify that, not only do the small bits work, but they are put together in such a way that the big goal happens too. I don't push that to a server primarily because I don't want to wait around for my test data to be uploaded (sometimes medium-sized files) a job to be queued, eventually run on a new build environment, a log to be produced, the log to be put in the files section, download the log, then open it to see whether it worked. Instead, I can run the program locally right now, specifying to print the log to the terminal, and see what happens in real time. If the program I'm testing is one that needs substantial processing, and some but not all are, then having a better CPU means I can do that more efficiently.

Aggrieved ad tech types decry Google dominance in W3C standards – who writes the rules and for whom?

Re: @doublelayer - Brave

Of course, it can be removed. The point is less that and more that a proprietary blob which is controlled capriciously by a commercial entity got itself adopted as a standard in a supposedly open and independent standards body. Because that happened, users are having that DRM pushed into their browsers, mostly not knowing this. That may have been somewhat harmless because relatively few places use it (I don't have it installed either), but it is not a good sign for things to come if we let companies interested in forcing their will on the standard control the creator of the standard. Whether those are really big or medium-sized ad companies doesn't matter; it should be for internet users and developers, and it should be open.

Re: Brave

"The DRM spec hasn't been a problem for me, using Firefox."

That might be for one of two reasons. Reason 1: you don't use DRM. Reason 2: Firefox includes it. It has since version 47 and it looks transparent to you. It's used on various streaming platforms, but compatible browsers see it and it works without showing the user. So perhaps you do use it and you don't know.

The problem is that other browsers can't just drop it in, both because it's proprietary and because Google owns it and gets to control quite a bit about how it's licensed. If Google says no, then the application can't use their browser to play any DRMed content, and this means most in the public come to see that as a failed browser. This would be a lot like flash except it actually got itself adopted and people don't see it as blatantly; they don't know what to blame when it breaks things.

Imagine surviving WW3, rebuilding computers, opening up GitHub's underground vault just to relive JavaScript

Re: It doesn't need to be runnable

If I was going to put 21 TB of data somewhere for the benefit of historians, it wouldn't be code, or at least relatively little of it would be. Code may tell some how a few of us thought, but it doesn't show much about how we lived except for the readme files. Similarly, if there are translation files in there it might help as a sort of rosetta stone, but that's getting to the goal by quite an inefficient path. A lot of code will look like all the rest of code, moving data chunks around. It won't help historians very much to have driver code for fifty open source hardware platforms that no longer exist. Here's what I would include instead:

Translations of various texts into most languages, trying to ensure that most subjects are covered (technical, legal, scientific, narrative story, and the most important basic description of something likely to continue to exist later on such as the water cycle). This helps with the inevitable language problem.

Dictionaries of all the languages we've included, which helps with extra words when they've figured out the basics.

Books on geography and astronomy, which help clarify what the planet was like when we were around.

Textbooks for most subjects at various educational levels which provide a summary of what we knew or at least what we thought we knew.

Descriptions written of everyday life by people who have been instructed to provide every detail, and most likely to ensure this, describing the life of people who live quite differently to the describer.

And, since I've probably missed several important things, let's just throw in the entire contents of Wikipedia in there.

There's my suggestion, and that probably fits just fine in a single terabyte; at least text-only Wikipedia certainly does and that's probably the largest chunk in the set. It's not perfect by any means, but if I had to figure out what life was like a thousand years ago, I'd rather have had their encyclopedias than a library written in an invented language that reads from devices implementing an arbitrary communications protocol to read chips with another arbitrary protocol.

FYI Russia is totally hacking the West's labs in search of COVID-19 vaccine files, say UK, US, Canada cyber-spies

Re: Is it Time?

If you'd like an opinion, here's mine: No.

Cutting countries off the internet is bad because it's hard, it gives them extra power, and it harms us. I'll take each point in turn, but these are short summaries. Also, I've used China as an example below for two reasons. First, it's annoying to write and to read "Russia, China, Iran, and countries like them" all the time. Second, the problems I detail get infinitely worse the larger the country and the more activity links them and us, and on that basis China is the most dangerous.

It's hard: In order to disconnect China from the internet, we have to disconnect their lines and/or drop all traffic coming out of them. If we try to cut the lines, we will need to reconnect other places which currently use China's lines for transoceanic communication. Mongolia is going to be the worst hit since they're entirely enclosed by China and Russia, but you have some other countries in southeast and central Asia whose lines are going to need to go through India, meaning getting Pakistan on board and going through war-torn areas. Then, you have to imagine that China will try to work against this, for example by using existing lines that go into Vietnam and masquerading as Vietnamese traffic. Do you really expect Vietnam's government to take drastic action to stop this with one of their closest allies and one with a massive army quite invested in it continuing to work? Of course, any espionage would be much more hidden than that, perhaps starting by going through Myanmar but quickly bouncing to servers in the west operated by agents in some other country.

It helps the countries we are trying to hurt: China spends a lot of money protecting itself from terribly dangerous network traffic containing things favorable to democracy. By cutting off that traffic, they don't have to bother anymore. The important government services will still run on local systems through local comms, so the citizens shouldn't be that affected. And when they are anyway, there is a perfect target: the west. "The west has cut off your internet. They do not like us Chinese. They are the enemy. We didn't do it; they did. Why would you support them?"

It hurts us: Currently, we rely on China for various things. It might be better if we didn't, but we do. We buy from and sell to China, collaborate with Chinese research institutions, all that. If we cut off the communication between us, we have to stop most of that and don't expect what is left to continue for long after the governments start looking for revenge. This means that we cannot get things from there, make money there, or do anything to help the people living there get some rights.

It hurts us even longer: That was what happens in the first month or two, but let me prognosticate a bit further. If we decided to cancel our business relationships in China, which we really might like to do, people interested in human rights might be pleased. People who used to make a lot of money in China, however, won't be so happy. It will be in their interests to bring back their profit stream, and they will try. The easy way to do that is to lobby for new politicians who will restore the ability to trade in China, in return for which the Chinese government will demand various assurances from said country. If Singapore, for example, reopens its internet to China and starts buying things from them, do we give up on this exercise, cut off Singapore too, or wait for the same to happen to us? None look viable to me.