* Posts by Wellyboot

2255 publicly visible posts • joined 24 Apr 2018

Iran? More like Ivan: Brit and US spies say they can see through Turla hacking group's facade

Wellyboot Silver badge

Or possibly they're just piqued..

After a long and tortuous trail of hacking their way to the heart of the Iranian interior, Caruthers & Simpsons joy was short-lived when they found a pile of empty vodka bottles and a rude message waiting for them.

Wellyboot Silver badge

Re: Better the devil you know

Citizen, you have been misinformed by the lies of Goldstein, Mr Smith is diligently correcting the misinformation put about by our enemies.

Row erupts over who to blame after NordVPN says: One of our servers was hacked via remote management tool

Wellyboot Silver badge

Security..Hah!

If you aren't the hardware OS admin & don't control physical access to the hardware you can't claim it's secure.

Nord are renting server time from 3rd party server farms to host VPNs because to do it properly would cost too much in buildings, hardware & staff. Beancounters strike again.

Samsung on fridge cert error: Someone tried to view 'unsavoury content' in middle of John Lewis

Wellyboot Silver badge

Re: I wonder what sort of "content" that would be?

Maybe price comparison sites?

Google ads from the po-po can prevent vengeful gamer nerds going full script kiddie – research

Wellyboot Silver badge

or maybe 'where can I find a DOS provider' returns zero search results?

Wellyboot Silver badge
Big Brother

We're watching you 24/7

to protect you from any incorrect actions citizen.

Don't fall for the hype around OpenAI's Rubik's Cube playing robot, Berkeley bans facial recognition, and more

Wellyboot Silver badge

Re: Solving the cube not so important

If it takes the equivilent of 10,000 years to 'train' this robot to a 20% success then it's slow machine learning not AI. Having said that, if it can be improved to the point where retasking to any other 'one-hand problem' reaches a similar level success within a few weeks then we're well on the way to a general purpose robot that will render the need for human manual interaction with any environment optional.

As the only useful purpose of a robot hand is to manipulate the items we've designed to be used by hands (quite literally, everything) I see these robots main use in and around the home, "Robot, Make me a cup of tea, butter some scones then mow the lawn and prune the roses" or more likely "Help me out of bed, help me in/out of my stairlift, give me my medication..."

Everything outside the home environment will be better served by custom built designs as is happening now.

Yahoo! Groups' closure and a tale of Oftel: Die-hard users 'informally' included telcos

Wellyboot Silver badge

>>>didn't think it was "befitting for the world's sixth largest economy to manage critical national infrastructure via a Yahoo! group."<<<

Why not? US foreign policy is mostly done via Twitter these days

Think your VMware snapshots are all good? Guess again if you're on Windows Server 2019

Wellyboot Silver badge

Re: Backups

+1 - Just for a comment that's twice as long as the article!

I'd upvote for it being a reasoned point of view as well if I could.

Some assembly required as Dream Chaser mini-shuttle's empty husk arrives in Colorado

Wellyboot Silver badge

Re: ESA Purchase?

Because the French & Germans would both want to pay 50% & build 75% of it.

Wellyboot Silver badge

Re: Windows are a pain in the a$$

Just ask the Apollo 13 crew...

Hands off our phones, says Google: Radar-gesture-sensing Pixel 4 just $999 with a 3-year lifespan – great value!

Wellyboot Silver badge

Re: Recorder app, which can transcribe recorded audio – reporters rejoice

Transcribed text takes up much less upload bandwidth when multiplied by the billion.

Wellyboot Silver badge

Be fair now, at these prices google are charging you less that $1/day to let them spy on your every move.

/sarc

Conspiracy loons claim victory in Brighton and Hove as council rejects plans to build 5G masts

Wellyboot Silver badge
Joke

Brighton & Hove councillors = 14 Conservative / 19 Green / 20 Labour / 1 Independant.

That's a majority of loonies whatever your preference.

Wellyboot Silver badge

Re: Wow, what a catalog

Just an idle thought, I believe ingesting almost anything is more harmful than putting the same amount on your skin, so GMO are in fact at least an order more dangerous than a few more radio waves in the air.

Both have risk levels that tend to zero for normal exposure levels.

Robocop needs reboot, $200m for AI research, UK govt knowingly deployed racist passport system – plus more

Wellyboot Silver badge
Joke

Re: "instead of helping her, the thing just yelled at her to “step out of the way"

Is anyone thinking of the do-nut vendors & out-size uniform tailors that will be cast into poverty by this machine!

Lies, damn lies, and KPIs: Let's not fix the formula until we have someone else to blame

Wellyboot Silver badge

One has to ask.

A more fitting BOFH fix would be to ensure the system continued, possibly with the average being slowly nudged towards 96/97% for the improved benefits.

Did Alban get any sort of promotion for his efforts in identifying this key strategic information for management? After all, the boss was obviously not caring a jot about publishing the revised previous numbers merely looking for a patsy for when the numbers 'go bad' in future.

From Libra to leave-ya: eBay, Visa, Stripe, PayPal, others flee Facebook's crypto-coin

Wellyboot Silver badge

Re: FB needs a currency

>>> where does FB go from where it is now?<<<

Let's make a list of where we'd like it to go, I'll start with > "To hell in a hand cart"

Wellyboot Silver badge

Re: "... system that breaks down financial barriers for billions of people."

Money meh.

Return the privacy, stop the profiling, charge $1 a month

Wellyboot Silver badge

Re: But today I'm a reformed character

The dollar has value because it is trusted to be reasonably stable and once issued dollars are 'out there' for anyone to use, the Iraq economy post 2003 ran almost exclusively on printed dollars flown in by the billion.

Opinions as to the capability/motives of the current personalities heading (always temporarily) the different US institutions that provide policy, policy execution, oversight & restraint doesn't overly affect the dollar value because the system is seen to work.

Trusting the US Gov. to keep it that way is far easier than trusting one individual with majority sharholding (Zuk) in one company to do the same.

Wellyboot Silver badge

It's the power of competition, with thousands of financial institutions across the planet any one that gets a reputation for abusing their position or breaking rules will see the client base step over to another provider or be forced to shutdown.

Does anyone think FB wants to work in that environment, or would they eliminate the competition (and partners) by doing all this for free (or even at a loss) via ad flinging.

VISA/Mastercard know that their advantage lies in their global acceptance, if they help FB to become a global financial system providing the currency what do they do when virtual FaceCard appears (ignoring all the various national financial rules).

It's in nobody but FBs interest for this currency to happen and the overnight news of the others jumping ship seems to confirm this.

Oh dear... AI models used to flag hate speech online are, er, racist against black people

Wellyboot Silver badge

Re: Walking on eggshells

They obviously haven't seen the Mel Brooks masterpiece!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6pADDn0qm3M

Wellyboot Silver badge
Coat

Re: Context is all

My school chum called Peter Green was referred to as " P "

Some people never made the vegetable connection.

Wellyboot Silver badge

Re: There can only be one standard

Luckily us meatbags can adapt very quickly so the (non)AI will just have to wrangle that up the grumble pipe.

Wellyboot Silver badge

Re: Racist AI or offensive and crude slang? You decide...

It's still just context, if you're interviewing for a gangster rap writers position that language moves from offensive to appropriate even if they wouldn't use it near their grandmother.

Experts warn UK court digitisation is moving too fast and breaking too many things

Wellyboot Silver badge
Holmes

more change coming from technology.

This time it's the lawyers getting the pitchforks out.

Openreach's cunning plan to 'turbocharge' the post-Brexit economy: Getting everyone on full-fibre broadband by 2025

Wellyboot Silver badge

Sounds like a

sales pitch for redirecting HS2 money if (when?) it gets cancelled.

Stalker attacks Japanese pop singer – after tracking her down using reflection in her eyes

Wellyboot Silver badge

Maybe she uses helicopters normally.

Is there a martial art in 'obsessive behaviour' we need to know about?

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The tinfoil hats will just love this

A creepy moment when reality catches up with TV/movie 'Enhance', what's next on the 'impossible' list'?

.

Second MoD Airbus Zephyr spy drone crashes on Aussie test flight

Wellyboot Silver badge

I'd go with 100% yes and frankly even if you hit it with a modern jet it would cause less damage than a bird strike.

The flightglobal site says it can travel around 1000km per day, that gives it a cruise speed about 40km/h, at its operating height I'd think anything more than slight buffeting will cause it to drop out of the sky as it overstresses the frame.

Looking at the pictures it seems clingfilm is being used as the aerodynamic surface covering. If you tried to make anything substantially more robust than this you'd soon be looking at a design not unlike a U2.

From the military PoV, $4.1m for a 100 days of use makes these throw-away technology.

Mission Extension Vehicle-1 launches to save space from zombie satellites

Wellyboot Silver badge

Re: FAB

That was all down to the trigger happy operators...

You rang? Windows 10 gets ever cosier with Android, unleashes Calls on Insiders

Wellyboot Silver badge

Nice.

Now MS can slurp your calls without needing to build & sell actual phones.

'We go back to the Moon to stay': Apollo vets not too chuffed with NASA's new rush to the regolith

Wellyboot Silver badge

True, discarded equipment on the moon doesn't mean squat other than it needed putting on a big rocket to get there.

Now please explain the footprints.

HP to hike upfront price of printer hardware as ink biz growth runs dry

Wellyboot Silver badge

Because far too many people buy on the headline price and can't even spell TCO.

Wellyboot Silver badge

Re: At the risk of topic drift, can I ask for a recommendation for a mono laser...

I can recommend the HP4100, (mine is a 18year old dn model)

There is a market selling refurbs and all the bits are available from HP & others.

avoid the jetdirect-610n interface, they had a high failure rate, get a 620n instead.

Wellyboot Silver badge

Re: Eye-watering!

It is mad.

A few months ago I bought a set of Lexmark colour lasers (old stock found in the back of a warehouse somewhere) for a mere £75 each just for the toner they came with, the complete spares package (printer) was just a bonus.

Wellyboot Silver badge

Deskjet - sold for $1,000, and not subsidised.

Any near silent alternatives at that price point in the early 80s?

Deskjet USP was the lack of noise, you could talk normally 3 feet away from one.

Wellyboot Silver badge

I think the change came when HPs started sticking their badge on tat instead of decent kit.

TalkTalk bollocked after fibre marketing emails found to be full of sh!t

Wellyboot Silver badge

Was it something we reported?

Has the Reg ever had a good news article about T-T?

(other than those where they get a slapping for lying, incompetence etc.)

Talk about a calculated RISC: If you think you can do a better job than Arm at designing CPUs, now's your chance

Wellyboot Silver badge

Re: commercial lockout

I think ARMs plan is to settle this into the gap between generic CPUs and ASICs, eventually rendering %90+ of the custom designs to oblivion as this will be much easier to implement.

Spacecraft that told us 'you're screwed' finally gives up the ghost after doubling its shelf life

Wellyboot Silver badge

Re: Geordie Astronauts

Wey ay man, an dinna forget the life support, crate of Newcy Broon & some Greggs pasties.

Has any astronaut ever mooned at the entire planet?

Promise of £5bn for rural fibre prompts Openreach to reach for the trench-digging diamond cutter

Wellyboot Silver badge

>>>50,000 homes and businesses in villages and market towns including Scotland and Devon<<<

Any correlation between the areas chosen and senior managements holiday homes?

Boris Brexit bluff binds .eu domains to time-bending itinerary

Wellyboot Silver badge

Re: Government Advice and Actions

The EU majority votes have been qualified majority since 2014 with the largest six (by population) holding about two thirds, (Germany, France, UK, Italy, Spain, Poland). All of the other small countries are just along for the ride now, the redistribution of the UK vote will leave the other five with only a slightly lower %.

The big exception is for international treaties which still requires unanimous agreement and hence the very long negotiations for any trade agreement.

Wellyboot Silver badge

Re: Free Travel Area

For No.3 - I can't see any way that would work without kicking off a few more decades of blood letting and quite possibly another Irish civil war.

Here we go again: US govt tells Facebook to kill end-to-end encryption for the sake of the children

Wellyboot Silver badge

Re: Idiot politicians

and if that doesn't work - you don't want 'those' pictures to be seen do you?

Wellyboot Silver badge

Re: "Outside the digital world, none of us would accept the proposition that"

Militaries get the kit that they need to overcome/deter another nation state, Plod gets the kit they need to overcome/deter the public from stepping too far out of line.

You've just described a bunker - One simple law gets passed and plod can turn up with an laser guided inert 1 tonne 'door knocker' dropped from a great height without prior notice.

Tetraplegic patient can now move his four limbs with the help of a badass neuroprosthetic suit

Wellyboot Silver badge

Re: Truly Amazing

Because that's just the way nature works, we've only developed ethics and morals to counterbalance the immediate self interest motive.

The path that this technology will take is fairly straightforward, tetraplegics can now walk, more complex nerve functions will follow. The end position will be that as long as the brain itself can be sustained we will be able to build hardware or grow body parts to replace everything else.

How long can we sustain a brain, will we find a way to replace neurons & their links insitu?

£99,999, what's your emergency? Paramedics rush to OAP's aid after shock meter reading

Wellyboot Silver badge

Fingers crossed that Eon don't phone you every month asking to arrange the smart meter installation like they did to me a couple of years ago. (no mention of meters before joining)

£3bn Google sueball over Safari Workaround bounces through UK Court of Appeal

Wellyboot Silver badge

The board members would just give themselves contracts that have a 3 years worth of salary+bonus termination clause. 3 strikes and the company gets broken up would be a much bigger incentive to be nice.

UK ads watchdog bans Burger King Twitter jibe for condoning chucking milkshakes at politicians

Wellyboot Silver badge

There were a few battery acid incidents before cheap bleach was identified as easier to find and it allows for a bigger typeface. Not many journos in the general media remember even this basic level of science from school.