Posts by stronk

Your smart TV is watching you and nobody's stopping it

Lost cause

Resisting data snooping by smart devices is a lost cause for individuals (maybe .0001% have the competence to create a fortress at home, but even this won't solve all the issues and it comes at the cost of huge inconvenience). And if you want politicians to regulate to control snooping, you have to trust your government doesn't want to do exactly the same thing for their own purposes (which is clearly foolish in the US or the UK... I don't know about the rest of the world). I personally do resist, but understand that it is utterly futile.

The only thing I will take some care to do is to isolate all smart devices on a guest network because I expect them to be a vector for infection.

Northern Ireland government confirms it did not ask Fujitsu to continue bidding for project

Preferred bidder

Not that I'm thrilled this company was awarded a contract, but I'm not sure the author understands the term 'preferred bidder'. When a preferred bidder is selected, the bidding process is over and the company that will sign the contract (assuming no last minute problems like funding being pulled, upheld objections from losing bidders, etc) has been chosen. I would guess in this case the govt department was probably not thrilled about awarding a contract to Fujitsu so delayed as long as they could. But Fujitsu hasn't broken it's commitment not to bid for new work and it's not on a technicality. Companies that bid for public sector work would all see it the same way. What IS underhand is the slyly worded non-defence of the procuring department, which says 'Oh yes, they are definitely liars, but our hands are tied by procurement rules and we weren't allowed to stop them'. They could have found a way to stop this award, they just didn't want to take the risk of being sued (which is vanishingly rare in UK public contracts like this... UK public contracting is a deeply weird business, different from how the rest of the world does it).

Blocking stolen phones from the cloud can be done, should be done, won't be done

Imagine that you can change your IMEI to something else. Great. Now... what IMEI are you going to use instead of the original one, in a stolen handset? Do you know which IMEIs are valid, not reported stolen and match your model of phone? Do you know which have and haven't been used, so you can't be blocked by networks and Apple/Google services because you're not the first live handset reporting that IMEI? You would have to either corrupt the IMEI assigning authorities (plausible, but it creates a single high level point of failure for the criminal enterprise) or purchase a real physical device with a mobile network chip that has a unique IMEI and use the IMEI from this without ever turning on the device (fine, but this moves control to the IMEI assigning authorities who have various other actions they can implement to discourage theft; it also increases the price of a stolen phone, which ultimately discourages theft).

You're both forgetting that Apple and Google (and various Android manufacturers) already have methods by which users can remotely lock and wipe stolen phones using using their cloud account which is connected to the device OS. These problems with verification that apply to IMEI blocklists implemented at a network level can be circumvented already using existing systems that the phone OS manufacturers have implemented. These are ALREADY as vulnerable as they will ever be to blackmail and abuse, because they have abilities that can effectively brick a phone as far as a regular user is concerned. To implement blackmail, you have to gain control of the user's cloud account. Apple, Google, etc are already fine with this risk. But somehow... not fine with simply adding a further check on the IMEI, against an internal list of handsets reported stolen by owners ('owner' being authenticated by the cloud account).

It's very obvious that the companies controlling the OSs and cloud services don't want to play ball solely due to commercial interest.

Re: Nice idea

There is absolutely no need for police to have control over IMEI cloud blocking. Apple and the various Android manufacturers ALREADY have stolen phone functions that users can use to lock or wipe a phone that has been stolen. They consider these safe enough to deploy because they are confident in their authentication systems. They literally have all the systems they require to implement IMEI blocking already, they just need to add the IMEI (which they already see and store) to the identifiers for these functions. People arguing against this are imagining some kind of police state is needed and calling foul... but ironically also protesting that police are too weak to prevent all phone thefts and ought to be heavier-handed.

Re: Nice idea

Apple works hard to fight the re-use of stolen parts - see Activation Lock. Note that they have a direct commercial incentive to do this, because their original manufacturer 'genuine' parts are a strong revenue stream for them (as well as their repair services provided through Apple stores). I imagine Android manufacturers either do something similar or are considering it, because it makes good business sense. Regardless, the fact that some phones have some value when broken up for parts is not an argument against preventing devices from accessing cloud services worldwide when reported stolen, using the IMEI.

How nice that state-of-the-art LLMs reveal their reasoning ... for miscreants to exploit

Protections?

The people building AI are being astonishingly negligent by relying on the model itself to implement rudimentary protections. If the instructions preventing harm are considered as an input by the model, they are always going to be hackable (not least by the model itself, once they are capable enough). We've built something that by its very nature has no constraints and we're controlling it by telling it to behave. It's like making an industrial robot which is not physically prevented from pointing the laser directly at the operator, we just write in the manual that you shouldn't enter values more than x=1.2. Perhaps to implement proper protections in AI models you have to make the constraints a function of the training process (not just 'is this conclusion right', but also 'is it moral')? Otherwise you're finding that your artificial animal is in fact a monster and solving this problem by painting it a soothing colour and making sure it is well fed before interacting with the public.

Tech support world record? 8.5 seconds from seeing to fixing

The all in one iMac design has a lot to answer for. My school in the 90s only had Macs (with the honourable exception of an ancient BBC microcomputer in the library) and upgraded them all to the first all-in-one CRT monitor + integrated computer iMacs (brightly coloured plastic like a Dyson vacuum, with an inexplicable large handle on the top, as if people were regularly moving them around). I think 90% of students at that school left believing that a monitor and a computer are the same thing.

Brit reseller given 2022 court date for £270m Microsoft SaaS licence sueball's first hearing

Seems a reasonable case, but...

I'm writing from 10 years in the future (it's much the same, except the toasters are sentient).

This case is just wrapping up and sadly ValueLicensing lost because Microsoft managed to show that they had lots of other reasons to move to SaaS models and that this on the whole benefited customers. The courts agreed, though due to some solid legal gymnastics from Microsoft, evidence from actual customers of the SaaS product was not required.

NASA Administrator upends the scorn bucket on Elon Musk's Starship spurtings

Re: He'd better hurry - Virgin Galactic only a year away from launch!

Judging by the look of the Falcon 9 boosters that are being reused, they are likely to go for the rugged worn-in look. I think if I were sitting on top of a rocket, I'd probably prefer it to have had some test runs than be new and shiny with lots of new parts.

SpaceX didn't move sat out of impending smash doom because it 'didn't see ESA's messages'

My word, what a genius idea!

But why stop there? If it's portable then eventually everyone will have this personal communicator technology. We can build in all sorts of little extra tools. Why not glue a camera to the back? Looking around for a bottle opener? No problem! Before long, they will be fantastically useful for spies and keeping cheeky revolutionary types in check.

And I'm just spitballing here, but why don't we make the power source double as an incendiary device, so that when the time comes for the computers to take over, every human in the world has a nice little fire starter on their person. That'd save a lot of time and hassle exterminating them one by one.

Once the computers are calling the shots, the satellite collision problem will be well in-hand. Problem solved!

'Space junk'

Amusingly, at least one part of the BBC is referring to SpaceX's satellites as 'space junk'.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/newsround/49566370

Half of all Windows 10 users thought: BSOD it, let's get the latest build

Re: "reflects perhaps misplaced confidence"

Absolutely.

We launched our new free product in stores by requiring everyone going into the store to take one before they were allowed in. And for those who told us to **** off, we broke into their houses later on and replaced their existing functioning products with our 'better' version. We've got amazing market share now! Must be because we have a great new product.

Fleeing Facebook app users realise what they agreed to in apps years ago – total slurpage

Re: Most people do not care

Most people care, but don't care enough to do what is necessary: delete their Facebook account and remove all data.

The reason they don't care enough? I may speak only for myself, but to me Facebook provides services that are irreplaceable. Fundamentally, it's a near-monopoly on users that makes it impossible not to have a Facebook account and still be able to - for example - be efficiently invited to a friend's party, or see your family's holiday photos, or keep up loose contact with distant friends. You lose something tangible with real consequences if you remove yourself from Facebook. There is no paid Facebook option where they don't exploit your data. There's no real alternative to Facebook because nothing has the critical mass of users that Facebook does.

I haven't deleted my profile because once every few weeks it enables me to do and see things that I would live a more lonely life without.

One option that should be on the table for regulators: make online social interaction a standardised commoditised function, like email. If I don't mind my data being slurped, I use Gmail. It's 'free', in that my data is recorded and used by Google for profit. If I minded this, I could avoid Gmail and use a paid service from a company with a different business model.

Let's go live now to Magic Leap and... Ah, still making millions from made-up tech

Re: @Mr. K

Interestingly, there are companies that sell condensers for exactly that use, at a reasonable scale and apparently profitably. It's an expensive way to obtain water, but there are some niche uses where it's more expensive to bring your own than to grab it from the air. Desalination is another example: stupidly expensive, but if you've got the money and energy to burn and you don't want to move somewhere wetter, then go for it. With Magic Leap: AR is clearly possible. The question is whether they are able to make it practical and profitable.

The warning signs are usually as pointed out in the article. Doesn't look great for Magic Leap, but from outside you can't see enough to tell absolutely for certain until either they succeed or fail.

One assumes that their current investors are not morons and have been asking the same basic questions as The Register, with their own engineers and business strategists in tow prior to investing. I don't really care, because... I'm not an investor. If they haven't bothered, then more fool them. The Register seems to be so frothy about the whole thing because they find the founder very irritating (I have sympathy there).

I'm sure the technology works, because you can't fake a perceptual experience in the same way you can fake a condenser or a solar grid or a medical testing machine. The question is whether it works flawlessly yet, and if they can get it all into a reasonably priced practical package. Even then they aren't home free, as people need to have a good reason to shell out for this, which means compelling exclusive functions and content from day 1. History is littered with beautiful tech that died because it had no obvious purpose.

Hip hop-eration: Hopless Franken-beer will bring you hoppiness

Re: Nomenclature

Dude, you need to open up Wikipedia.

Microsoft says 'majority' of Windows 10 use will be 'streamlined S mode'

Re: Games, anyone?

I don't know, you might be surprised if you actually ask 'the average Joe'. I spend a lot of time helping out colleagues with IT questions because frankly the IT department make such a song and dance about simple stuff that it's easier to ask me. Over the years, I'd estimate 30% of people I've asked have said something like "I don't have a problem with the new Windows" (sometimes 7, but mostly 8 or 10). 70% have said variations on "God, it's *terrible*! I hate [long list of things they hate about it]". These aren't techies, they are normal users just trying to get work done. They don't need any encouragement to complain. 100% of MacOS users have been satisfied. And no average Joe I've ever met uses Linux.

If the average Joes knew how to switch or if their IT department decided to give it a go, then provided the replacement OS addressed their issues with Windows and didn't introduce loads of other issues, it sounds like they'd be fine.

'Love it to bits' is just completely off the mark in my experience. It's only used because it is the monopoly in a system where cross-compatibility is more important than user experience. MS could install sewage smell generators as mandatory hardware for their next OS version and turn every 5th window upside down and 98% of people would still use Windows. They hug themselves and do high fives whenever they release new 'features' like the one being discussed which just make everything dumber and harder to use for more purposes. I think they really must fail to understand how low people's opinion is of them and their updates. Or they know and don't care because it's all about maximising revenue.