Posts by Wellyboot

We’ve had enough of your beach-blocking shenanigans, California tells stubborn Sun co-founder: Kiss our lawsuit

Re: Not quite right

Widely advertised - just means there was a typed A4 size notice nearby, a link buried in the council website to same and possibly a small copy in the local press notice section.

Council planning committee agenda & minutes are a public record - you should be able to go to the office and ask to see them (Door marked "Beware of the Leopard" springs to mind). Claiming you're vexatious is really only going to stick if you're in the habit of throwing FOI reqs at them every day for info that should be readily available via other means.

Your father could also ask a solicitor to investigate any duties and liabilities that have been placed on him without proper notice in respect to the moved footpath. I'm assuming here that the field access path is your fathers property and not just an easement allowing access.

That Pulse Secure VPN you're using to protect your data? Better get it patched – or it's going to be ransomware time

Re: Useful info

Only if the ransom crew are script kiddies working from home, most likely it will lead to a daisy chain of other compromised systems in 3rd party countries that do not log their connections (because they're compromised!). If each chain is used only once for a short time then the trail will just stop dead unless you're capable of hacking through these systems quickly enough (breaking lots of laws on the way) to reach the source.

Pack your bags! NASA's latest exoplanet hunter satellite finds its first Earth-sized world in a habitable zone – and it's only 100 light years away

Re: What a rush

Brings a whole new meaning to being a Millennial !

EA boots Linux gamers out of multiplayer Battlefield V, Penguinistas respond by demanding crippling boycott

Re: 2020 will be the year of linux on the desktop!

Many linux users like the challenge of team games as much as they like being able to control their own hardware & o/s to the level that suits them.

Y2K? It was all just a big bun-fight, according to one Reg reader

Re: It was a great gravy train to be on

actual Y2K critical stuff was probably a very small portion of it

That depends on the company, but I'm not going to argue!

Anyone with ISO9000 paperwork had to do a lot to prove their systems were going to be ok and for my company at the time it allowed us to force the users into accepting standardised O/S & application versions on their servers (with the associated user testing and certification), support work during the next couple of years was much easier.

Cheque out my mad metal frisbee skillz... oops. Lights out!

Old Fogie remembers

DP > Data Processing manager, from a time when batch processing was 'the' job done by computers.

The IoT wars are over, maybe? Amazon, Apple, Google give up on smart-home domination dreams, agree to develop common standards

Re: Will they go far enough?

Yup, too many people believe the collective intelligence of our species is exhibited in all of the individuals.

If my beverages come out of the fridge warm I'll not be amused.

Re: I already have an IoT standard

and if it wasn't, going outside certainly would.

Re: Connect directly to the Internet?

A thermostat is already weather based using the only input that matters - temperature.

Every home has a single heating characteristic - how long does it take to reach the desired temperature when switched on from the (whatever) minimum setting. A simple programmable one that turns the heat up (how long + 5) mins before the morning alarm is all that is needed.

If you can't afford to heat your home that way, smart gadgets are NOT where you should be spending your money.

Medical biz LifeLabs fesses up: Hackers slurped 15 million customer records – and we paid them to hand it all back

85,000 personal medical test results were taken & the thieves rewarded.

>>>one year of free identity theft and fraud protection services<<< Isn't even a starting point for this, it wasn't an online shopping account.

Do we have any Canadian cousins who can shed light on local laws covering this?

BBC tells Conservative Party to remove edited Facebook ad featuring its reporters

Re: Parliament now holds the prime minister prisoner

Ok, It turns out I was way off the mark with that last comment!

The 2019 election just removed a big wedge of sitting Labour MPs to match their 1983 debacle.

The look on the TV commentators faces when the exit poll was announced was priceless. All their prepared hung parliament speil vapourising in a second.

Re: When

It's generally accepted by everyone But the politicos who think they know better than us.

Re: Ha

UK power source is available here > https://www.gridwatch.templar.co.uk/

Currently less wind generation than being imported from French nuclear.

No idea about the stag.

Re: Clip 'could damage perceptions of our impartiality',

You'd think they'd have had enough time to shut down the beeb already having been the government for 40 out of the last 74 years.

Re: Parliament now holds the prime minister prisoner

@SVV - Unfortunately I agree, self restraint & respect for voter intelligence amongst our political parties is at an all time low. The culture of soundbite reporting and a 'stock' answer (blaming the other side) to any question has reduced any serious political debate to mud throwing and occasional not very subtle threats.

Channel 4 only exhibited some artistic license in pre-preparing ice blocks for an environment question session, it's no worse than the tub of lard that replaced Roy Hattersley years ago on a BBC show. The beeb & C4 news is as non-partisan as its possible to get given that every political party thinks (and always has) they are giving biased coverage towards the others.

After all is said & done, come Friday 13^th only about fifty or so seats (it's rare to get anywhere near 100 out of the 650 changing) will have changed hands and unless you're one of the 100,000 (ish) floating voters needed to do this, you, me & most of the other 30 odd million voters really don't make a lot of difference. I'm a floating voter myself but in a constituency where the MP habitually gains over 50% of the vote it's irrelevant.

Why is the printer spouting nonsense... and who on earth tried to wire this plug?

Good advice, Trip the Breaker, Test everything & Assume it was wired by a moron until you know better.

Chez Boot still has some interesting wiring from previous incumbents where the feed is not from the expected source and some loose ends under the floor that can't be fixed/extracted until I get around to ripping holes in walls. (ie. a full rewire)

It does surprise me how dumb sparkies can actually survive for so long.

Attention! Very important science: Tapping a can of fizzy beer does... absolutely nothing

Re: Who in their right minds ...

TBF they're Danes - a little short of real beer options.

Re: Minus a negitive?

Any loss of lager is a net positive for beer drinkers.

Re: This theory always puzzles me

The bubbles don't appear because they are microscopic while under pressure and most of the gas is held dissolved in the liquid, on opening these bubbles expand rapidly as the pressure drops.

Divers suffer from the bends for the same reason when nitrogen bubbles form in the blood when they decompress too fast.

Re: So many flaws

Tapping the top, side or flicking the ring (!) pull matters little. The impact just has to be sharp enough to dislodge the formed bubbles from the can wall.

Don't pay off Ryuk ransomware, warn infoseccers: Its creators borked the decryptor

The next iteration of Ryuk

will now include a demonstration decrypt of a single file using a different key.

and a bigger cash demand.

We've heard of spam filters but this is ridiculous: Pig-monkey chimeras developed in a Chinese laboratory

Re: TV remake

You've got to love UK childrens TV from the '70s

In tribute to Galaxy Note 7, BBC iPlayer support goes up in flames for some Samsung TVs

Re: Sorry but...

Not arguing with the software management comment but they do (did?) reasonable customer support if you've registered the box. Way back in 2010 I bought a sammy smart TV and about 2 years later a letter drops throught the door saying it was binned from software support and here's a voucher code for a free sammy 6500 set-top box from big-river-co. (that box died in 2016, the TV is still working)

My current 6500 box was showing an "Iplayer will stop working on this device on Dec 6" message all the way through November and as it's still working this morning i'm guessing the s/w updated itself.

I'll be moving to a PI or similar when it eventually dies.

Tricky VPN-busting bug lurks in iOS, Android, Linux distros, macOS, FreeBSD, OpenBSD, say university eggheads

Security layers

So to mitigate this particular problem the local network (at both ends of VPN) has to be secured which poses a problem for coffee shop & airport dwellers.

Nesting VPNs would probably be a workaround unless the method used here can be used to drill down through the layers.

We're not trying to be rude here but... there's an ice giant stripping down, emitting gas as it orbits a hot white dwarf

strike a light

It's certainly smelly with all that hydrogen sulfide sulphide about.

Yes I'm a grumpy old f...

Den Automation raised millions to 'reinvent' the light switch. Now it's lights out for startup

Re: SMS

If It's just acting as a room thermostat overide I can't see how an insurance co. can say it's different to all the other IOTat doing the same job.

Of course we are talking about a bunch that would use any excuse for not paying out if they could.

Re: SMS

Raspberry-PI or similar could achieve the relay flipping you're after and G3 modems are quite cheap now.

A little programming job for the winters evenings and bingo.

Re: What?

We can bookmark this articles URL and use it to explain that the IOT while sounding like a good idea is actually being implemented in the worst way possible.

Mayday in Moscow as devs will be Russian to Putin mandatory apps on phones, laptops, TVs

I don't know whether to laugh or cry

In other news Apple to open Moscow software lab..

Register Lecture: Can portable atomic clocks end UK dependence on GNSS?

Going to be a little late?, you won't miss a thing if you get there before the sound waves make their merry way to the back of the hall.

Internet Society says opportunity to sell .org to private equity biz for $1.14bn came out of the blue. Wow, really?

Re: Vote with your feet, folks.

ISOCcanGOs.uk is available for £5.99/y for up to 10 years.

Re: The whole operation is shady

It's only 36x earnings until the fees go up.

$1.14Bn / 10 Million is $114 per hostage domain. watch them get every last bit back inside 5 years.

There's a US election next year.

You can make the libelous connection.

Russian FaceApp selfie-slurper poses 'potential counterintelligence threat', FBI warns

Re: "could conceivably be used by the Kremlin for intelligence"

It's not FUD, If I ran an interweb business out of Moscow & the FSB told me to hand over details and keep silent I'd be very keen not to upset them in any way.

The FBI (& other US agencies) send national security letters which prevent the recipient from disclosing the fact that they are required by law to assist investigations. The FSB makes no statement about the existance or otherwise of any similar facility within the Russian legal framework and why would they? (ditto all the other countries out there)

Government Spying Rule #1: Don't tell people they are being spied on.

The $agency$¹ considers any information anywhere that that they do not have access to be a potential counterintelligence threat.

¹Insert any security agency from any country here. Most non american agencies try not to make public statements that draw attention to themselves in this manner.

We've found it... the last shred of human decency in an IT director – all for a poxy Unix engineer

Re: The senior manager wearing a mob cap and apron

>>>we lost the tea trolleys 30 years ago<<< And with it went the soul of many large companies.

This service probably cost about the same as one minute of time per employee, but it was on the beancounters balance sheet unlike the time (nearer ten mins?) it will take everyone to go and make their own individually with all the attendant 'Who's used the last of the milk' & 'Where's my mug'.

Cloudy biz Datrix locks down phishing attack in 15 mins after fat thumb triggers email badness

a compromised supplier of Datrix's

Once a known contact gets compromised you're going to be in the firing line and security tools can only go so far.

Nice to see that the boss here has a realistic outlook on the problem.

Christmas in tatters for Nottinghamshire tots after mayor tells them Santa's too busy

Re: Mayoress is the Mayor’s wife, and always has been.

It's 'Mayors Consort' only ladies get an honourific based on their husbands title, marrying 'up' doesn't give a chap any uplift in official status.

Re: what's with -ess

With you all the way on auto incorrecting speel chuckers.

This fashion for genderlessness gets right on my lactation glands

Re: I have it on good authority ..

Who's going to buy these bonds?

Talking a Blue Streak: The ambitious, quiet waste of the Spadeadam Rocket Establishment

The fuelling time for liquid engined rockets and the short notice flight time for any incoming soviet strike (SS4 launched from Poland/Baltic states) also put a big hole in the Blue Steel deterrent argument by 1960. In the US/USSR the warning lead time was enough to allow their missiles to be fuelled and away in time.

As it was with many 1950s weapon systems the gap between state-of-art & obselecence was often barely long enough to get the equipment into service.

Re: So if you ever wonder why Germany and Japan became so strong economically thats why

TSR2 - a world leading design that was cancelled when the (pennyless again) UK govt. needed to spend money on Concorde (eventually far more expensive than TSR2) because the development treaty with the french demanded it.

The other brands you give (all automotive) gained their bad quality reputations after being nationalised, before that they were as good as anything else available. In the James May car series a few years ago he made the comment that Germany & Japans automotive industries are where they are today because for a long time after losing the war their best engineers were not allowed to build Rockets, Aircraft, Nuclear submarines etc. like the best engineers in the US & UK were able to.

Bon sang! French hospital contracts 6,000 PC-locking ransomware infection

Pfff.. shugs & lights gauloises.

Put DGSI or E on the case

We lose money on repairs, sobs penniless Apple, even though we charge y'all a fortune

They know their market.

They're not thinking logically - super-complex machinery that requires specialist and highly trained technicians to fix would suggest a similar requirement to build them in the first place, not a sweat shop factory that pumps out milllions a month for peanuts actual production cost just like any other phone.

They're just trying to maintain the cult status and incentive to spend real cash on a 'not much more to update' mentality.

The only super-complex bit is designing the thing and its PCB assembly process in the first place.

Re: Quelle Surprise

Would this restaurants speciality be Apple turnover ?

Astroboffins spot the most energetic photons yet from gamma ray burst – and here's hoping Earth is right in the way of the next one

I'd hazard 'yes' in this case, Clarkes third law is in play for Joe Public.

Space-wrecks: Elon's prototype Moon ferry Starship blows its top during fuel tank test

Re: Best tradition of chaos ingineering

I'm with you there, wouldn't want to be near any rocket during fuelling, It's probably the most dangerous event apart from ignition during the whole launch cycle.

Re: Best tradition of chaos ingineering

The most important part IMHO is where they put the seats, I don't think I'd want to have been there!

You're right though, it is impressive that anything was left recognizable :)

Internet world despairs as non-profit .org sold for $$$$ to private equity firm, price caps axed

On an unrelated topic

Here is an obviously fictitious ‘elevator pitch’ that has absolutely nothing to do with this article.

..doors close..

Pitcher - "I’d pay peanuts for the organisation now, but if the current pricing policy changed I’d pay squillions and need some board members in a few years"

Catcher - "Hmm…."

Pitcher - "Here’s my details"

..Ping..

No wonder cops are so keen on Ring – they can slurp your doorbell footage with few limits, US senators complain

GDPR & DPA anyone?

Section 3.6 is the one that'll get operators of these nailed in the UK.

https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/domestic-cctv-using-cctv-systems-on-your-property/domestic-cctv-using-cctv-systems-on-your-property