Posts by doublelayer

Surprising absolutely no one at all, Samsung's folding-screen phones knackered within days

Re: Pretty well Inevitable for an Alpha Version

I think any portable product design should include one more step immediately after the first manufacturing run is complete:

Hello engineers. Thank you for working on this product. Here are the first units for you to use. You have to use them for the next two weeks. Be rough on them. Report any failures.

If the engineers are being too careful still, we'll have to scale it up again.

Hello engineers. Sorry we arrived unannounced at your house. We just brought along these gifts for your children. When they tell you their gift is broken, please report what happened.

This will find things never imagined by the people who built the testing machines.

Microsoft debuts Bosque – a new programming language with no loops, inspired by TypeScript

Re: can someone explain...

You make a list containing n elements, run a lambda over it where you ignore the thing in the list but ask for input and run the process on it. It's reasonably simple, but not at all revolutionary.

Re: What's Wrong With a Loop?

It was also possible that their thought process went like "If they think this is good style, they might use a bunch of gotos in the next project, which could be much larger". Depending on whether you were going to be there for a while, they either thought "They will really hate it once this catches up to them and they have to recode something big in the future" or the more pragmatic "We will really hate it if we see this on something bigger". They could then decide that you could get experience writing in a clearer style with this relatively small project to get you used to a better way.

iOS 13 leaks suggest Apple is finally about to unleash the iPad as a computer for grownups

Re: File transfer

Unfortunately, you'll need a third-party app to do this. There are a number of them though I cannot make a recommendation for a modern one. You install that and a client on a computer you're transferring to, and this allows files to be sent between the two. Definitely not the best solution, but it's available. Other apps do the same thing to file-sharing-enable apps that didn't do it right themselves. I should say for the record that I have never had an iPad and don't recommend it for computer tasks. This is just a thing that can be done and might help in some cases.

Re: file system access

Let's go car analogies. By your definition, if I drive, I am a professional user. All driving means to me is that I can make the car go where I want. I cannot decide how the car does this by governing the methods the engine processes its fuel. I can't make the car fit through gaps that are too small, or go above its maximum speed, drive off-road if the car isn't designed for it, or fly. All I can do is decide where the car is pointing and whether it is moving or not with some control over speed. That's analogous to a user of an IOS device. They do not have control over the system level, analogous to the stuff you can make a car do by disassembling and rebuilding parts. They can't make it do things it wasn't designed to do unless someone has already written the app (by user, we're already saying that they don't have the knowledge or desire to write the app themselves). But they can tell the device what to do and have it respond. And if they want extra functionality, they can either write an app themselves or have someone else do so.

A user of a computer uses it. That is all that is required. They do not have to have control over the computer, administrate it, or use it for some computery thing that we whitelist as making you a user. They just have to have a computer that they are putting to some use. Your strange definition of user doesn't work, and it seems to exist only to yell about IOS.

I'm not defending the devices, and I'll admit right here that the solutions below are most definitely not optimal, but here is how you can do those things if you already have iPads present:

"- File system access to backup and restore user created content."

You could use various options. You can take full backups to a desktop over a cable so they go much faster and/or use a made-for-IOS storage device which can take files. Most applications can export to a companion application for this.

"- File system access to allow simple transfer of files between devices."

This depends on what you want to get the file from or send it too. Flash drives aren't exactly going to happen, but you can get a file off one on a computer and send it over using internet services, airdrop (macs only), various apps over bluetooth, etc. You can also write files to apps that support file sharing using the USB cable.

"- User control over installed app versions"

You can disable automatic updates and sync the old app version before you update something you're concerned about. Should the new version not work, you can delete it from the iPad and send the old version back from iTunes.

"Using iCloud to back up thousands of 50 MB camera RAW files isn't realistic and having a single backup in one location is never a good choice."

This is where you'll want a full device backup, which gets taken via the cable onto a computer. The files making the backup can be copied to other media as well for redundancy.

Obviously, these aren't the nicest ways to accomplish these things, but as it sounds like you've already got an iPad, hopefully some of these will be useful for the specific problems.

Re: file system access

Thank you for that, but I'm afraid you may have missed my point. My point was not, as your reply implies "Android can't run a useful shell". It was, rather, "If Apple opened up filesystem and terminal access on an iPad it would be about as useful as, and therefore get as much use from IT and the general public as, the default android shell". Your comment supports my belief that nobody finds that mockery of a shell useful, and instead goes with one of your suggestions when they want one on an android device.

Re: file system access

I'd like those things, but a) Apple is not going to do them, ever, and b) very few users in companies care about these things.

They aren't planning to have you write code or administrate things on them. That isn't what they're for, and they wouldn't do a very good job. You'd get a micro Mac OS that's hard to build things for, leaving you with a thing that's kind of like using the shell directly on an android device*. Just use a laptop for that.

They're trying to sell this to the people who write documents, read messages, update spreadsheets with the data they got from the messages, read a website, and finish writing a document. Their improvements are aimed at people like that, who very frequently have multiple documents open to scroll through them but don't really understand what the filesystem is. I don't think the changes mentioned in the article will be sufficient, but it's good to know what they're going for.

*Using the shell on an android device: Not using a sort of Linux VM, nor a remote shell with the android device being a terminal, but the system shell to which we all have access. Does anyone use that? That's why we wouldn't use one on the iPad either. It'd be a pain. All it would do is let us write a few scripts that give us more control, then stay away from it for the future.

A quick cup of coffee leaves production manager in fits and a cleaner in tears

Re: Builders...

"the US is the most confusing, with half a dozen shapes of plugs available for use in the home"

Sorry? The U.S. has the one type of socket, with two parallel slots and a lower round earth slot. In very old installations, you might find the old type of socket, which is the same but without the earth slot. I believe those aren't allowed anymore. There may be other standards, but I don't think you find them in American homes. That's the only style of plug I've seen for that region, with the only variable being whether the device to plug in has an earth pin or opted not to include one.

Re: AS400's

At one point, I had a problem like this, where I had the capability to provide UPS power to some equipment* but no way to determine if it went down from the setup. My method was to add a small network device to the mains but not UPS supply, which would be contacted by a sentinel program running on one of the protected machines. If that device went down, the machines would sync to the disks, I'd get a warning, and some more important machines would run automatic shutdowns. If there are people there, I suggest a power fail buzzer with a similar setup.

*Not much equipment and a small environment. There was no room and no budget for a proper UPS solution that can be monitored by the equipment; everything had to be built out of things found in the closet.

Hey criminals, need a getaway vehicle? There's an app for that... Car share tool halts ops amid crime wave, arrests

"Share Now said no other cities should be affected by this."

Why not, exactly? From their home page, they're operating in nine other cities in the U.S. and Canada, so what is stopping people from doing exactly the same thing there? Or did they mean the quote in the title in the sense of "We would really prefer if this didn't affect other cities"?

Ozzy app maker cancels hump day: We've tripled profits! scream slackers

Re: Wouldn't fly around here

I once worked at a place that managed to be semilarge and still have a startup environment, actually a rather pleasant one. I think they mostly managed it by having smaller offices in many places, so there were only about 200 people where I worked. The nice thing about their scheduling system was that they really didn't care when you did the work as long as you were there for or called into any meetings and worked for the specified amount of time. You could do some long days and take most or all of a day off. You also didn't have many meetings, and most of them were small and could be organized to give you the flexibility to take time off.

Europe's home PC buyers reach for their collective smartphone, sigh: We don't need a new desktop. This is a computer, right?

Re: The old ones don't get obsolete

I don't care about optical drives on laptops, and nor do many people who have asked me to find them a laptop. The media is simply too old and too small to be used very much. I have a USB drive in my disk that I can connect if I need it. Otherwise, it's extra weight I do not need to carry with me. As for keyboards, there are certainly a lot of terrible ones around around this time, but there were some truly terrible ones before too. I've seen many keyboards on the more expensive laptops that are fine, but sometimes a keyboard is a thing that will be compromised with a laptop.

The old ones don't get obsolete

This is a wonderful time in desktop hardware, where virtually any machine you find that was built in the past ten years will work for a lot of use cases. I do some volunteer admin for a charity nearby, and they frequently come to me asking me to reinstall or update their desktops. Before when I'd did this, I had to deal with machines that would not have much life left--not because they were physically broken, but just because they no longer provided enough power. I haven't done that in a long while. Every machine is capable of handling Windows 10, office, and a web browser. That's pretty much all the people do with them. So they haven't bought any new desktops for at least three years and many of the ones in service are much older than that. The same is true of laptops to an extent--the processors, memory, disks, and graphics continue to be reasonable for quite a while. Laptops are getting better in the realm of size, weight, and screen resolution though. Still, people can use their old machines for longer and in the case of desktops, there seems to be little likelihood that this will change soon.

Google readies Pixel for the masses, but are the masses ready for Pixel?

Re: So they deny the problems, just like other manufacturers?

First, this is not an article directly comparing Pixels with iPhones. Pulling a Steve Jobs and using "Phones aren't perfect" is not really responding to the argument. The question is whether the bugs mentioned in the article, which are somewhat severe and form quite a long list, are enough to make the pixels less useful or desirable than other phones, both iPhones and other companies' phones, especially when taking the price into account. For me, that is a clear no as I do not care about the camera, and it sounds like that's the only part where the Pixel is better than other android devices.

Second, iPhones did bend, but haven't in a while (that was the iPhone 6), blow up (when they bent, also not in a while barring some "I squashed it and that ended badly" stories that would apply to a lot of phones), and the holding it wrong was a very long time ago. iPhones have many problems you could discuss. Use a newer one, and be honest about the quality when making comparisons. These historical bugs are still good only for jokes.

Re: I can't say that I'm trusting of Google hardware

You might have mobile data turned off if you don't have a very high limit. You might not use it for much but keep the small amount for an emergency need. Higher data allowances may be expensive from the mobile provider especially if you don't use it enough to justify the increase. To avoid background activity that may be difficult to stop from immediately using up all your data, you might turn off mobile data.

As for bluetooth, if you don't have any bluetooth devices, you might turn it off in case it does any background scans. By turning it off, you save battery. You could also have an incorrect reason for turning it off that has no real benefit. Even if that's the case, there is no good reason for the phone to enable it for you. If I've selected "off", no matter why I decided to do that, I meant "off".

As long as there's fibre somewhere along the line, High Court judge reckons it's fine to flog it as 'fibre' broadband

Re: Utterly Shameful decision.

Let's take it another way. We'll start with a question about the situation, and because I like them, we'll continue on to another analogy.

Does fiber differ from copper? Fiber in this case being FTTH? The answer is yes. It doesn't have to, as you've said, but it does. Fiber connections from most places are both faster and lower-latency than copper lines. Without the real specifications which they will not give you, this may be the only method for users to ensure higher speeds. Yes, it is possible that the fiber connection will be terrible too, but if you have it, you know that you have higher-spec equipment and the infrastructure that serves that connection was updated recently. You don't get that guaranteed with copper. With this environment of restrictions, you can only get a small amount of information.

Now the analogy. I have a wonderful intel processor to sell you. It fits into this motherboard, runs at a certain clock speed and has a good benchmark rating, and it runs at a specific power rating. I did not lie about any of this. Well, actually, I did lie about one thing. It's not an intel chip. It's a MIPS chip. If you're writing code for it, it will function just as I said it would. However, if you bought it to run X86 machine code on it, well that won't work so well.

I hear you protesting already. "The ISA is one of those features you have to match when it's a processor." I'd argue that this is analogous to the internet providers not telling you important details, but let's just accept this. So it's no longer a MIPS chip. It runs the X86-64 architecture with all the same extensions. Are we done? No, we're not. It still isn't an Intel chip. The specs may be the same, but there are still differences. Intel warranties their chips for some period of time. We at definitelymakeintelchips.com have a warranty on our chips for the same length of time. Another matched parameter. However, ours are built as cheaply as we can to pass that time, and because we employ the people who came up with planned obsolescence, our architecture that implements X86-64, which does not affect you at all because all your instructions run at the speed we told you, happens to have security vulnerabilities that Intel doesn't have. They weren't known to be there; we didn't refrain from telling you. We just hired the cheapest team we could find and the vulns will come out when your warranty is over.

Finally, a point of honesty. Even if our chips are just as good in every way as Intel chips, it's not fair to sell them as Intel. Of course, in this example, Intel could sue us for trademark infringement, but the same applies to other terms with definite meanings. "Intel" means "designed and manufactured under the direction of Intel or someone they gave the name to", "titanium" means "the element titanium", and "fiber" means "fiberoptic cable". If the ad says "Our fiber home internet connection", they're clearly implying that the connection that is connected to your home is a fiberoptic cable. If it's not, they're being misleading.

Re: Utterly Shameful decision.

It's quite pointless to use fiber as a marketing term, because it doesn't guarantee faster speeds or lower latency. Still, they use it to imply that their network is better, and they do this in a misleading way. Consider a parallel. Titanium is a great metal for many reasons, and things are made of it at times to get the benefits of the element. If customers come to view titanium as an advantage in things constructed of metal, they might decide to buy things made of it and advertised as being constructed of titanium. Would it be acceptable for a company to take its existing not built with titanium things, glue a piece of titanium one centimeter square to it, and advertise it as built of titanium? Maybe the consumer does not need titanium, but they decided that they wanted it. They will buy the metal item with the assumption that the metal in it is titanium. If they rely on this for some reason, they will be disappointed. The term has a specific meaning. If they were being honest, the network providers would drop the specific technology being used from the adverts and simply give statistics for bandwidth *and* latency. Anyone who cares about specifically getting fiber to deliver that could identify that element, but it would not be used as a piece of marketing nonsense.

It is but 'LTE with new shoes': Industry bod points a judgy finger at the US and Korea's 5G fakery

Re: What about the ugly hype linking 5G and IPv6?

They're not going to kill WiFi any time soon. That's not really feasible, since 5G systems won't provide as much bandwidth or certainty, and since there are so many WiFi devices out there. And it's so easy to have an internal network with or without NAT, that's not going to happen either. I fully expect that NAT will continue to be used even as IPV6 eventually gets rolled out.

Re: "Although given the NBT was DAT and Minidiscs"

And this could be a problem for the mobile companies, too. Or less a problem for them than another reason for us to dislike them. I currently have trouble figuring out which providers a given device will support. Of course, if it's a GSM device, it will work on any GSM network, easy enough. But this only guarantees me voice, text, and some semblance of data that doesn't really work. If I want to use 4G or even 3G, I have to match up LTE bands (4G) or at least frequency bands (3G) with the ones the provider is going to use. And there are very few devices that actually include most or all of them, instead choosing some seemingly random selection to accommodate some provider they have in mind. If the 5G people are going to carve up the spectrum again, I predict another set of bands that will never be the same across providers or devices.

Firefox arrives for Snapdragon Windows and Slack sidles up to Office 365

Re: stats

Can we make that a quadratic equation with integer coefficients that are limited to some value? Only the one my quick python expression gave me was

30.172645780509356x^2-380.2337095297456x+847.7979639890812

Silk Road 2 + Dread Pirate Roberts 2 + 1 Liverpudlian = over 5 years in prison

Re: Slight concern

A logical concern, but it doesn't seem to work. We describe in great technical detail how malware was detected. One would assume that the malware writers would find new ways that definitely aren't the ones that failed, and that users would make sure those methods couldn't work. And yet, the most successful malware in the sense of getting itself on a bunch of victims' machines is not all that complex. It uses vulnerabilities that have been known for a while, and it isn't always very well-written at all. There are a lot of people bent on doing evil without the intelligence needed to avoid the mistakes of the past.

While Google agonizes over military AI, IBM is happy to pick up the slack, even for the Chinese military

Re: Objectively speaking

You are correct. The two are not at all the same thing. They're just two different bad things. Science does not have some get out of consequences free card. Nobody should have a get out of consequences free card.

Be wary, traveller: There is no going back if you step over the Windows 10 20H1 threshold

Re: Isn't agreeing to the EULA a step over the edge

That's exactly how you go back. They just can't press a button to convert their beta system into one running the main build. Which doesn't surprise me--if a system running untested beta operating systems breaks, I know I have a bunch of confidence that it will all start working again if I press the big reset button. If you're going to run an OS to find bugs in it, don't put it control of things you aren't prepared to lose.

User secures floppies to a filing cabinet with a magnet, but at least they backed up daily... right?

Re: Load of bollocks

Why imagine that. I just invented this mind reading technology and I didn't know what to do with it, but your comment has enlightened me. I'm going to build a system where the mind reader finds out what the user wants and makes the machine do that. If you want it, I'll be selling the technology later this week. If you don't want to buy my device, you could always use the machine the way it was built. The same way you use every machine--for the purpose that it was built to do. It is not the fault of support when a user messes up. A proper support person will fix the problem, but that doesn't mean the problem was the fault of the person who fixed it.

Re: Don't underestimate users...

You can do that in your Windows profile, just like you can do that inside a home folder on Linux or Mac OS. Nobody says that you have to use only My Documents, but creating random folders outside the user directory breaks the paradigm of a multi-user system and means it's harder to ensure the data is found again. It's fine on a personal machine where you can control more, but it's not good policy on a business one for exactly these reasons. Just put your directory structure in your home folder.

Shock revelation as massive American presidential election hack confirmed

Re: What's a Millennial...

The definition is supposed to be people who came of age around 2000, meaning the people in their 20s and 30s now. But people really like having categories that have no reason to exist and are completely arbitrary, hence names of generations that have to cover every year.

Razer – perfectly happy to sell you a laptop for over $2,000, but when it comes to fixing security holes... tough sh*t

Re: Official sponsorship

I went to a place in a mall that was selling phone cases. I wanted one that was somewhat flexible, so I looked at the cases in order to find one. The one I found and decided I liked completely covered the back, other than the camera. So did a bunch of other options at this place. The one before that which fell apart quickly but also covered the whole phone I purchased on Amazon. I didn't make any special effort, and they were dirt cheap. Maybe they don't have them in all places, but it has been quite easy for me to find them without really trying.

Uncle Sam charges Julian Assange with conspiracy to commit computer intrusion

Re: Bah!

I'm not going to jump into the main argument, but they are trying to get the OPM hackers. They don't have specific names (to the best of our knowledge), as they were members of a China-based group (either criminal or military hint: it's military). If they get the names, they will try to get the people involved. I think we all know the likelihood of China turning them over. The U.S. is not happy with the OPM breach, and they've made no bones about it.

Re: USA

When a crime is committed, whether that is a crime you agree is a crime or simply a thing that is against the law in some place, it can be tried where the criminal was or where the crime occurred. Usually, these are one and the same, but for computer crimes, this is not necessarily so. If you steal something from a citizen of country X and you live in country Y, you can be tried under the theft laws of either country. If country X requests you be sent there because you committed a crime there, country Y or whatever country you are in can decide to send you there, and then you will face the legal system of country X. They could also decide not to send you there, in which case you do not face that legal system but could still be tried in your home country.

This is why criminals from countries that refuse to extradite can still end up facing justice if they visit another country that is willing to extradite. It's the way the system is built. If you don't like it, ensure that you don't get a request made against you and/or stay away from countries willing to extradite to those countries that have asked for you. For some countries, the requests are usually for real criminals. For others, it is used as a tool for injustice. Either way it's used, it is the reality of international criminal law.

Apple disables iPad for 48 years after toddler runs amok

Re: It's the time since epoch

My guess would be that some time in 2018, the locking system got a wrong code and wrote a time. For all we know, it was just a "try again in one minute" thing, or even an automatic thing the device does every time it unlocks. It wouldn't have to be noticed until the clock reset. Consider if the code and user actions followed this sequence:

2018-sometime: User enters wrong code

2018-sometime: Device puts current time in unlock limiter, meaning the user can try again right now

2018-sometime +5 seconds: User enters correct code

2018-sometime +5 seconds: Device unlocks, doesn't clear the unlock time

2018-sometime +5 seconds to 2018-sometime+some minutes: User uses device

2018-sometime+some minutes to 2019-04-08: Nobody uses device, battery dies, clock resets

2019-04-08: User turns on device. Device reads the unlock time, saying "Don't unlock until 2018-sometime", and presents the 48-year delay

2019-04-08 +one minute: Child gets blamed for coding mistake.

Re: Can someone explain how this worked?

No, the battery died and the clock reset to 1970. Somewhere in the system, there was an indication to "don't unlock until 2018". The unlock system thus reported a very long wait time. Whether this required some incorrect attempts to activate the timeout system or just happened automatically and the child was blamed is not known.

Re: Denial of use attack

You can still get at the data on it unless you've set the device to delete it after a certain number of failures. My device and many others are not set this way, so all you'd do if you had access for the 81 minutes* required to do this is annoy me.

*You have to enter the code incorrectly ten times, but there are enforced gaps between each try after five. If you're trying to lock me out, I'm unlikely to let you have the thing for that long. If you really want to deprive me of my device for malicious reasons, just accidentally on purpose drop it onto concrete a few times. That will work much better.

Re: It's the time since epoch

Probably the device was last used in 2018, and the lock time was written then. Then, it was left long enough to die, during which the first part of 2019 happened. When rebooted, the clock is set to 1970, and the unlock time is set to whenever it was last used in 2018. One would suggest writing the current time to the disk as well to forestall this, but it doesn't seem Apple built it this way.

One possibility is that the device was left in a drawer for long enough to lose power to the clock and revert to 1970. If they store the lockout as a time before which the device couldn't be unlocked rather than a time difference, that would make the 48-year thing if the device was last unlocked in 2018. That method of storage would make sense, as it would be easily stored to the disk so you couldn't get around the delay by turning the device off. Unfortunately, it doesn't make as much sense if it isn't cleared and the clock can get set back.

When is a phone not a phone? When it's an Android security key

Re: Linux ???

Unfortunately, the mention was purely implied and could best be stated outright as "It doesn't run on a Linux machine and we are not going to do anything to fix that". They probably don't want to waste the tiny amount of employee time it would take to have chrome on Linux properly interact with the various options for bluetooth controllers. They probably also are aware that Linux users are less likely to use Chrome directly, instead opting for Firefox or a derivative of Firefox or Chromium, none of which would support it. Finally, they've probably done the math and realized that Linux users are more likely to see that this isn't very new and could potentially be quite unwanted, so why bother? Sorry, you're out of luck.

Why is any of this Google's fault?

Because it's Google's platform. They decide all the specs, they write most of the code, and they have effective control over who can make devices and how by licensing Google Play Services which every manufacturer wants. This means that they have the potential to enforce security updates, or for that matter feature updates. A simple "if your device meets the spec for the feature update and was released less than [insert reasonable value] months before the release of that feature update, you must release a version of that update within two months of its release. If you don't, we will not license Google Play Services for your next generation of devices" would do the trick. It is entirely in their rights to decide not to care, but that also means we can complain about their choice not to do this. Their choice, ergo their responsibility.

RIP: Microsoft finally pulls plug on last XP survivor... POSReady 2009

Re: It gets everywhere

The good news is at least it's had a long time to prove it works and doesn't crash often enough to replace. If they keep it entirely airgapped, that could be acceptable. What do you think is the likelihood that they did that, though?

BT Tower broadcasts error message to the nation as Windows displays admin's shame

Re: MSDOSh

Not that those aren't terrible, but I still have to say that I prefer those to the prompt that's just ">" and really is the basic sh shell on some thing that technically has a Linux or BSD kernel but does not intend to actually let me run anything. No, every command I type will be answered with "sh: command not found".

It's always enjoyable to ls some stuff because that's the only command they have. No other shells. No tab completion. No find, stat, or file. No editors, not even vi. You can of course ls the bin directories but that will just show you a bunch of executables that could be useful if the problem wasn't whatever it is, like all the networking utilities and some other executables that nobody knows what they do and just take a guess if man is available. I recently had a system like this where I couldn't even figure out who I was. I could tell that I wasn't root because it was denying me access to lots of stuff. Whoami and who were not found. ~ resolved to /. I eventually found touch and tried to create a file to see the owner, but although touch thought a file was created, ls did not agree. I did have plenty of tools to read a file (for a system with nothing else, it had both less and more), but I didn't have access to anything. I wonder if this was an April fools joke that I didn't find for a few days, but I don't think so.

Re: Wot, no TITSUP?

Tower indicating terrible start up process.

It's alive! Hands on with Microsoft's Chromium Edge browser

Why would Amazon want to do that? Browsers are pretty much given away for free. So you have to consider, when deciding to write one, what the benefit will be to you. So far, the benefits have been:

IE: User lockin to Microsoft OS.

Netscape: Commercial, browser and later connected products but not browser sold to people.

Firefox: Nonprofit, going for open source. Some proceeds from linked services (Google as default search engine, etc.) to support development.

Chrome: Data! Your data! On our systems!

Chromium: If we make this open source, people will fix the problems we made and we don't have to pay them. And later, people will use this and we can gain market share.

Safari: We're Apple. We build everything that runs on our systems. Our systems want a browser, so we're going to make one. (Side note: Safari uses webkit, which is also not chromium.)

Edge: Data! Your data! On our systems!

Edge-chromium: Data! Your data! On our systems!

If Amazon were to write a browser and remove all the tracking, what would they get? They wouldn't get data. They wouldn't be able to lock people in to another system. The only thing I can see is being able to advertise a bunch of Amazon products, but if they're not tracking your activity, they're likely to advertise a bunch of junk that nobody wants anyway. If they did decide to make a browser, I am certain it would track too; it doesn't benefit them sufficiently otherwise.

Overzealous n00b takes out point-of-sale terminals across the UK on a Saturday afternoon

Re: You should have been sacked

"it was most likely the same command and he just forgot to replace the default "*ALL" in one parameter, something no authorization structure can fix"

I agree about that, but for such an important command, you could at least warn. A simple "This will [insert verb, in this case reconnect] connections globally (for all users). Usually, this is not necessary. Are you sure you want to proceed?" would probably have alerted the user that they probably want to cancel the command and try again. However, as good as that solution would have been, a better one would be giving a very new employee more training than that before leaving them alone with full permissions and no backup or emergency assistance.

SEC says no to Amazon bid to stop shareholders voting on use of facial recognition system

Re: Voting in the corporate world.

I also see some benefits from using Amazon to buy stuff. In many cases, buying directly from other manufacturers means I have to pay for shipping from each one, which is more expensive for each one than Amazon is charging even when they don't give me free shipping. If something doesn't arrive, I can quite easily see the status from Amazon's system but I don't necessarily have that information from each additional individual company. Also, Amazon offers a middle ground between small companies that only have their products and the Chinese selling platforms such as aliexpress that sell everything but with untested and unverified quality. If you need something rare-ish, you can probably find it on amazon* more easily than you could find a company selling it. It also allows you to compare different options because they're all listed there**. I don't know if we can provide similar benefits for non-amazon systems, but I'm totally in favor if we can.

*Finding something easily on Amazon: Use a search engine, rather than Amazon's search feature. Sometimes Amazon will show you the wrong things even when the product you want is available and has exactly the same name as your search query.

**Comparisons between options: This can help when you want a product of a type but don't have specifications. You can look at the various options for sale, filter out the ones with negative reviews, obviously fake reviews, or features you don't want, and choose from the remaining set. That becomes much harder when you first have to find the websites of each manufacturer and then compare based only on the information they choose to put there.

Huawei P30 Pro: Nifty camera tricks haven't made mobe mandatory over last year's model

Re: No sale

It is an internet-facing device. It may have a public IP at times depending on the mobile network configuration. It gets sent documents and files that it sends through its rendering engines. It has applications written by the manufacturer in a month that have not been fully tested because nobody thought through whether the apps were needed or not, and some of those apps run all the time or provide core functionality.

All of this indicates risk. Security patches are useful because you cannot prevent all malicious activity. You can avoid installing malware from a store, perhaps, but you can't avoid it if someone sends you an email or posts an ad that gets sent to you online with malformed HTML that will allow them to access data from the device. You don't have to treat the phone as something special, but it has all the complexity of a computer and it needs to be protected and updated just like computers do.

All's fair in love and war when tech treats you like an infant

Re: No standards

That's why the following phrase was in my post: "or for those who cannot or would prefer not to look at the screen, you could do the whole thing with audible feedback". In fact, the aforementioned people are getting the worst end of this because, when it comes time to pay, the system suddenly drops the information they need, referring them to the screen.

Re: No standards

Another thing we could work on is when and why the machines choose to give us audible feedback. A beep when you scan something can be helpful. Announcing the price of that item doesn't strike me as particularly necessary, but why not. But why, then, when you get to the payment process, does it simply tell you to follow the on-screen instructions. You could just do all of the previous talking by printing to the screen, or for those who cannot or would prefer not to look at the screen, you could do the whole thing with audible feedback. Why mix them?

Who needs foreign servers? Researchers say the USA is doing a fine job of harboring its own crimeware flingers

Re: This is not exactly news

"The usage of TOR or VPS services from within my corporate network would be cause for termination."

Inside a corporate network is where you don't need them. The corporate has the resources to create VPNs for the users that are not on the network, and there is no need for user privacy on corporate machines. If you read the posts that I replied to, they are discussing blocking access to public-facing services from large ranges of addresses because a hosting provider, which usually includes a VPS provider, is using them. Not because there is any active traffic coming from the entire range, but just because it could.

They are not asking to do it properly, like another poster here suggested: "run fail2ban, and other commercial IDP products, and we just regularly review the lists of blocked IPs". They are suggesting that they simply obtain all the ranges that someone can buy and block them. I would like them to know that there is a reason for legitimate traffic to come from those, and also that if this is their cunning plan to quash security threats, it will be ineffective because an attack can come from any set of IPs.

In practice, I care a lot less about blocking Tor than I do about blocking VPS systems. Tor is rarely used by legitimate users to access the standard internet except to circumvent censorship, and we can ensure that whatever systems are being accessed in that realm know not to block it. However, I don't want my traffic or system to be considered suspect just because I don't have my own IP address range.

Re: This is not exactly news

Blocking Tor and providers of hosting services or VPS simply breaks your service for people trying to use those services for security or privacy reasons. For example, I have a VPN endpoint which goes to a provider of VPS services. I'm sure that there are malicious people renting space there as well, and I'm also sure that they would be taken down if they could be identified, because it has happened before. If you block my connection into your system, you will lose me as a customer. I need the VPN's services at various points. How would you suggest that I get a VPN operating that your oversimplified security policy won't block?

Facebook ad platform discriminates all on its own, say boffins

USC means one of two things

"According to boffins from Northeastern University, the University of Southern Carolina, and tech accountability non-profit Upturn ..."

I know that USC can refer to one of two American universities, but they are the University of Southern California and the University of South Carolina. They haven't gotten around to making the University of South California or the University of Southern Carolina yet, but I'm sure they will in order to make the acronym even harder to understand. For now, from the paper, let's properly credit the University of Southern California for the work they did.

Edtech will save our schools from cuts and spare our teachers from burnout, booms UK.gov

Re: Sounds like another boondogle is inbound

That's great, but it sounds like they have some controls that prevent some easy methods of cheating. By using specific devices that are correctly locked down and making students be there at specific times, for example. However, there will be many schools that lack the IT staff to do something like that. If, for example, they don't appropriately secure the laptops from running third-party code, it only takes one student with some knowledge and a desire for their friends to pay them for a solution to obtain one and write some USB disks. When I was in school, students with the relevant experience were rather easy to find, and you only need one of them to prove unethical for the cheating problem to be much worse.