Posts by clyde666

Machine learning saves £4.4M in UK.gov work and pensions fraud detection

welfare

DWP "welfare" includes pensions.

It's always what you're NOT told that is important.

Researchers intercept unencrypted satellite traffic from space blabbermouths

security???

But... but... Huawei...

Bharti big shots storm BT boardroom after £3.6B raid

BT eh?

Strengthens my determination never ever to deal with BT, where it can be avoided.

Ebuyer website bought by Fraser Group plc

I used to buy loads from them. Then one time ordered a lot of ink cartridges. They came in several separate deliveries. But was short one cartridge.

I took photos, tried communicating with them. They just insisted they had sent everything. Actually the last couple of emails said I had received everything. Called me a liar without using that word.

Given that was after having bought tens of thousands of pounds of components, ink, etc in the previous few months.

If I had been minded to mess them about, it would have been over a much more valuable item than a £12 yellow ink cartridge.

I've never bought anything else from them since, and never would have. Utter lack of civility in their customer service people.

Laptop farmer behind $17M North Korean IT worker scam locked up for 8.5 years

Fraud?

Where's the fraud element in this?

Nowhere does the story say that the work contracted and paid for was not done. That would be fraud.

The story says the work was done by people masquerading under different identities. That's not necessarily fraud, just a bit underhand.

Ordnance Survey digs deep to prevent costly cable strikes

Re: Scotland?

Yes I understand there has been this sort of system in Scotland for a while.

Not sure off top of my head what it's called though.

Meta to feed Europe's public posts into AI brains again

Hah

"The Facebook goliath said users will begin receiving in-app and email notifications explaining what data will be used - which excludes private messages and any content from those under the age of 18. These notices will include a link to an objection form, to opt out, which Meta insists is easy to use and will be honored."

I doubt it.

The normal practice for this stuff is a legalesely wordy email saying they're changing their terms and conditions and if you continue using the site you'll be deemed to have accepted.

Almost never anything that provides real "informed consent".

How the OS/2 flop went on to shape modern software

pirating

What did it in the market I was in at that time, was the software pirating.

Software - very especially games - could be easily copied for the "IBM clones". Cue all the young boys convincing parents to buy a cheap Windows machine "for education". That led to professionals and small business folk seeing the affordable potential.

From then there was no holding it back.

As an aside, that's also what did for the Archimedes. A good machine, heavily punted at the time by Acorn with a PC emulator. Until enough people realised you could buy a real PC for half the price.

How datacenters use water – and why kicking the habit is nearly impossible

Are these new ElReg standards nowadays?

"In the US, datacenters can consume anywhere between 300,000 and four million gallons of water"

Right, every time we read financial values here they are followed by ($ equivalent in US dollars).

Why is it different when the value is firstly expressed in US amounts?

This story is focussed on something other than money, but it's the same argument.

"xx million gallons": as others have queried, what sort of gallons? And how much is that in real measurement?

Vodafone and Three permitted to tie the knot – if they promise to behave

Guarantees?

Sounds like mealy mouthed assurances from all the high powered high paid executives.

Where's the guarantee that they'll do what they've promised?

"The CMA wants legally binding commitments "

There's one way to ensure that - get a registered charge over some of their assets. To be cleared when the commitments have been met.

Interpol nabs thousands, seizes millions in global cybercrime-busting op

how many?

"The number is based on findings that 52 percent of UK businesses have experienced at least one cyber attack in the past five years"

Well then, I must have been doing something right after all!

Thinking back on all or any "cyber security" type of problems I've heard about from all my clients combined, it's way less than 52%.

I'd think only maybe less than 10% of them have had any issues whatever.

Other than requests like "does this email look dodgy" - usually it's a bounce report for spam that's spoofed their email address.

Google offered millions to ally itself with trade body fighting Microsoft

trained bullshitter?

What the heck is a "senior Google communications professional"?

Senator accuses sloppy domain registrars of aiding Russian disinfo campaigns

What's the guy's real intention?

Once more a US politician wants to change stuff for all the wrong reasons.

Where has he been all these years when these very self same corporate registrars have been facilitating criminality? Domains that were used to scam vulnerable people. Where was his faux concern then?

He's jumping on the bandwagon of self righteous virtue signalling. Incorporating the Enemy-Du-Jour into his argument.

Don't even get me started about the propensity of the USA thinking it's the world's policeman and it can make the rules and the rest of the world has to live by them.

Digital River runs dry, hasn't paid developers for sales since July

Lots of pies in that pork barrel

I used to get lots of Easystreet software through them.

I also see lots of other software through them.

One called Synchronize Outlook back to 2012. From memory it worked.

But they were just the payment processors. Facilitating other people's products.

Uncle Sam reportedly considers capping AI chip shipments to Middle East

Knuckle dragging economics

How to make friends and influence people.

Not.

UK's Sellafield nuke waste processing plant fined £333K for infosec blunders

Maiden name please

Given that no-one else has yet seen fit to do so, here is the obligatory Windscale mention.

UK elevates datacenters to critical national infrastructure status

Diplomacy instead of aggressiveness

Maybe if some of these "responsible" government types put more effort into old fashioned diplomacy instead of aggressiveness, it might reduce the cyber aggression from others.

It won't make any juicy headlines in the Daily Express, but I'm all for anything that helps to tone back this inexorable talking ourselves into conflict.

FCC boss starts bringing up Musk's Starlink dominance, antitrust concerns

Competition? Be careful what you wish for

Isn't China planning on putting up about 15,000 satellites?

Maybe that's not the competition this person was hoping for.

UK trio pleads guilty to running $10M MFA bypass biz

time?

Have they been in jail for 3 years?

Arrested in March 2021. Three years to bring it to trial?

Where the computer industry went wrong – the early hits

Re: The big mistake

Yes, and I would say the Amstrad had an early success because of the bundles.

From memory, it came with around 20 or more games bundled. When the young lad wanted a computer for Christmas, Mother (and it was always the mother who made the decision) often chose the one with the huge number of bundled games. There was always at least one educational game in there to justify buying it.

Also remembering the overall effect of the local markets. You could buy a copy of this week's latest and greatest game for £2 or £3 at the market. Saturdays and Sundays they were swarming with youngsters and sometimes parents.

Different days :-)

iFixit divorces Samsung over lack of real commitment to DIY repair program

User details

It does not seem unreasonable to me that a manufacturer would want details on who and what device is asking for spare parts.

For a start, the manufacturer is going to want to track any patterns in problems. Might lead to identifying production weaknesses, or design flaws.

Also to ensure parts are going to real end-users.

Google will delete data collected from 'private' browsing

what? where?

Does this only apply to, affect, people in the United States?

Mystery German chip fab sips on Gradiant's ultrapure water

How much?

"said to consume about 264 billion gallons of water"

Is that Imperial gallons, or US gallons, or what?

Why is this value not shown in a universal measurement, for example litres?

Or even metric tonnes?

We'll have to assume the billion referred to is a US billion.

It's not like El Reg to use random units of measurement now, is it?

PC 'price hike' coming as cost of memory soars – analysts

Changing markets

Are all these wars "whether war be declared or not" a factor in changing markets?

I see another action overnight last night.

Human beings - elections - wars - profits: can AI tell us if there's any correlation in all this?

Digital memories are disappearing and not even AI or Google can help

relevance or interest

Decades ago I was tasked with clearing out an old bank vault.

Amongst all the usual accounts stuff, there were boxes of info going back to the start of the second world war. There was a trove of official documents detailing how the local bank branches were to organise to survive intense bombing.

The gist was that every day copies of absolutely everything were to be made and sent by train to the next town up the road. Copies of everything. By hand. Now that was true 'back up procedures'.

They in turn would receive the 'back ups' from another bank in the opposite direction.

There was a large amount of detail written down.

To my young eyes this was fascinating. Sadly I believe it was all burnt.

So even if we put in lots of effort to save stuff now, how do we know how it will be treated in the future?

Vertiv goes against the grain with wooden datacenters for greener bytes

back to the future

"mass timber"

"typically refers to joining together layers of wood"

So, plywood then?

Anyone for utility furniture?

Florida folks dragged out of bed by false emergency texts

accent

One of the phones in our house didn't get switched off. So it got the alert.

It was an American accented voice.

That to me was the most shocking aspect of this. How little cost or effort would it have been to change this?

If the alert thing is of such big importance, at least take ownership of it. Typical UK - do it on the cheap, but no doubt with a huge price tag to the government.

China to stop certifying fax machines, ISDN and frame relay kit

Green dot

So does that mean no more green dots?

Anyone else remember the modem chap who used to go around the Dixons shops peeling off the green dots to put on his own modems, so he could sell them?

Questions asked about Chinese takeover of UK tech company

China - so what?

The seller took the money and nobody raised an eyebrow.

The purchaser has been open about who they are. Now eyebrows have been raised.

The Chinese need to learn how real capitalists do this. Obfuscate your ownership through anonymous secret offshore companies and trusts.

Do it the big boy way.

Waiting for speedy broadband? UK's Openreach prioritizing existing work over fiber expansion

Re: They had a nifty machine ..

At least 11 mentions of wrongly spelt FIBRE in the article. That must have taken effort to copy & paste and change at the same time.

This was a 100% UK story about a 100% UK company being read mainly by a 100% UK audience.

However effort went into editing and changing the content - why? To what end? For what purpose?

If the intention was to annoy said audience, it's worked. It is actually very jarring reading along then bumping into some of this wrong spelling.

It's like reading something from Viz.

UK facing electricity supply woes after nuclear power stations shut, MPs told

Re: Hmmm.

Same at Dounreay. There's a big shaft which empties into the sea. Vast amounts of stuff got thrown in there. Not sure if it's been fully cleaned out yet.

Government by Gmail catches up with UK minister... who is reappointed anyway

Upvoted for the English lesson

Lloyd's of London cuts off network after dodgy activity detected

reboots dodgy network

So they restarted the router then?

Europe lagging behind South Korea, Japan, US in 5G rollout

plus ca change

I got a new phone about a year ago, specifically chose it as a 5G model.

Apart from running speed tests often in the first few days, and trying to check on various towers around here for a while, it's just reverted to being my mobile phone. Nothing less, nothing more.

Vodafone and Three's UK arms locked in merger talks

Where does this apply?

The first paragraph says this is about happenings in Great Britain.

Further down the article there are four mentions that it's about the UK.

Once it talks about Britain.

Once upon a time El Reg was vaunted for its attention to detail, it was a site one could quote safe in the knowledge of its infallibility.

The web's cruising at 13 million new and nefarious domain names a month

blame the registrars

New domains are bought/registered through Registrars.

There must a pattern in that study that points to probably no more than a small handful of registrars that are processing these new domains.

That's where enforcement should be concentrating. Cut the bad guys off at source.

If we're talking millions of new domains per month which are used and thrown away very quickly, there has to be some level of either collaboration or at least turning a blind eye.

Consolidation looms for UK broadband providers

Re: Fibre Fibre Fibre Fibre FIBRE!!

You're not alone. Seven instances of "fiber" in an article about fibre.

That would have warranted at least a thousand lines of 'I must spell fibre properly' in the good old days. Or even a belting in some schools.

Seriously though, it does spoil the readability of the article. It's like thumping into a brick wall at 50 mph, fairly knocks you off your concentration.

Was the article intended to read like a glorification of venture capitalists?

Of course the money men always have the final say, but at least in these islands we've always had the fig leaf of engineering and 'how it's done' stories being of a lot more interest to the public.

As a techie, my interest is definitely more in the service.

Maybe us grumpy old gits are the new snowflakes?

USA adds two more Chinese carriers to 'probably a national security threat' list

Time to ratchet it back

Since the dawn of time, mankind realised that thumping your neighbour could be sorted by kissing and making up.

What is it about politicians and leaders that they insist on turning a blind eye to that?

Diplomacy takes time, and never makes for news headlines. But when it works it can save lives.

There's a big business in pushing aggression and enhancing an "us and them" attitude. There is no good end point with that approach. At best it becomes a standoff.

As we currently see in Europe, the end game of aggressive posturing is death and destruction.

It's time for this war of words to end.

Rest in peace, Queen Elizabeth II – Britain's first high-tech monarch

Titles not necessarily constant

The appendage "II" to the queen's name is only correct for England. That is, she was only Elizabeth the Second in England.

In Scotland and the other Commonwealth countries there never was an Elizabeth the First, so she could never be the Second.

When she was crowned, there was a big stushie in Scotland over that naming convention. To the extent that a great number of replacement pillar boxes with the initials E2R were damaged. The result to this day is that there are very few E2R pillar boxes at all in Scotland, in fact there are more with the old George initials.

While we're on the subject, Elizabeth never was the "queen of the UK". That is factually not the case.

In England she was crowned queen of England. Wales as a militarily conquered nation is included in that.

In Scotland she was Queen of Scots. With a separate coronation.

Charles will need to have his separate coronation as King of Scots. Interestingly, the law around that is that the king is king with the acceptance of the people. In theory the Scots people can replace the monarch if they so wish. Being king/queen of the people, not of the country.

A bit off topic: the queen Elizabeth the First (of England) was the one who ordered the chopping off the head of her cousin, Mary Queen of Scots. On the basis that Mary was a threat to Elizabeth's holding of the monarchy.

Last laugh came when Elizabeth died, and Mary's son James who was the Scottish king at the time, got the throne of England as well.

no driving licence

Correct.

My father never took a driving test, at least not in the UK.

He had a full driving licence. Until some wee toddler chewed it :-)

He never bothered getting it renewed after that. That was in the days when the licences were issued by the county council.

The trade ban that wasn't: US allows 94% of restricted tech exports to China anyway

rogue ???

"rogue foreign powers — China in particular "

I can understand North Korea or Myanmar being called that, but China ?

The last I heard China is a functioning part of the United Nations. There is at least one more powerful, richer country that only uses the UN when it's useful to them. The same major power country that began withholding huge amounts of its dues years ago and caused loads of trouble for the UN.

It's pretty obvious that some countries are intent on going to war. I wish El Reg wasn't regurgitating the propaganda.

BT wins networking contract for UK nuclear site Sellafield

Sellafield? You spelt Windscale wrong.

BT union wants pay dispute talks with telco's largest shareholders

Re: "We have tried and tested processes...

Seconded about the old school BT engineers.

Years ago I had a workshop off the beaten track. Bad guys came after dark and pulled down the outside telephone cables - thinking that'll put the burglar alarms out of action.

Then broke in to the workshops. Of course the Red Care system kicked in right away, and the cops and I were on the scene right away.

The point of this is: I phoned BT and an engineer came out within an hour or two. Now this was a Saturday night, after midnight, horribly cold and wet, the rain was pouring down as it only can in the Scottish wilderness.

The engineer who came out - this was his first call out since returning after a heart attack, over 60 years old, up a telephone phone for a couple of hours in that weather, and only me and an umbrella to protect him if the bad guys had come back.

I won't ever put down those old school engineers.

I'm sure he never had the pay he deserved.

China rolls out bots to enforce ‘temporary closed-off management’ of Shanghai

Why the complete shutdown?

I ask why China has been doing these total lockdowns of whole cities and the like.

Could it be they have info that indicates that these hassles are less damaging in the long run than the probability of long term long covid?

While us plebs in the free world get sent back to work and shopping and generally mixing with all and sundry and spreading our loving covid all around.

The attitude of our leaders in the free world is always of short term financial gain. So long term consideration of (as yet) uncertain health complications don't trouble the beancounters.

Whereas the dear leaders in the east maybe think more about long term risk?

Feds take down Kremlin-backed Cyclops Blink botnet

choose your targets

What a pity these same agencies don't put the same work into taking down the spam bot networks that have plagued most of mankind for years now.

Is it because much of that spam comes from the USA so it cannot by definition be evil ?

US, Canada to figure out rules on cops and Feds accessing people's data across borders

new world order

So it's just another instance of the US wanting to write the rules and make everyone else abide by them

Amazon cuts credit for charities to access web services

Re: Bezos must need a bigger yacht then

Have to say I have a lot of sympathy for what razzaDazza1234 says.

A family member worked with a well known charity years ago to setup a new project. Very worthwhile, helpful for many people project.

She did it as a volunteer, not only unpaid but also got lots of other people to contribute financially and practically.

She got out after only a year or more. The politics was overwhelming. Both internal politics - ladder climbing, empire building, all the sort of stuff you expect in a local authority, but also party political stuff - croneyism, and outright blanking people who were known to have other viewpoints.

She would get ignored during meetings, seldom any follow up with assistance.

Indeed, look at the top of big charities. Massive salaries. International shoulder rubbing. And lots of party political shenanigans.

ICANN responds to Ukraine demand to delete all Russian domains

Propaganda

The old adage about truth being the first casualty of war.

People screaming about propaganda, and shut down Russia's TLDs and domains.

For any sake, the internet is about much more than propaganda. It's also about much more than being a vehicle for nasty attacks.

The internet fuels vast communications between people everywhere. Good and bad. Mostly for the good.

Well done that Mueller guy for standing firm in the face of what was probably strong pressure.

Ukraine asks ICANN to delete all Russian domains

proportionality

This invasion has been ongoing for a few days and we have people calling for total isolation of one country and all its people from the rest of the planet.

The conflict in Myanmar has been ongoing for years with thousands dead and well over a million refugees. The world turns a blind eye.

Iraq ? Libya ? Afghanistan? Bombed back to the stone ages, invaded, Probably a million dead and many millions of refugees, causing social unrest throughout Europe for years. Have we cut off their internet???

Conflicts are never solved by more conflict (unless through total extermination of one side). Solutions need discussion. Talking. Seems that diplomacy failed in Ukraine, but that is no reason to pull that plug. The only way back to "normality" is with cool heads and dialogue.

UK government told to tighten purse strings or public will have to foot the bill for nuclear decommissioning

The Name that cannot be spoken

This whole article on nuclear, with lots of mention of Sellafield.

But not one reference to ... Windscale