Posts by nojobhopes

Faxing hell: The cops say they would very much like us to stop calling them all the time

Re: I called the cops

I've seen it done, and was there when the police arrived.

Of course even if you stay on the line to explain your innocent mistake, the police in the US are obliged to turn up at the registered premises for the phone number. They need to check all is well.

A lot of private office exchanges are configured to forward "911" from an internal phone to the police, as if you were on a normal landline. There is even a US Patent for it - US20040081290A1.

Some interesting snippets in this Cisco manual:

https://community.cisco.com/t5/collaboration-voice-and-video/911-call-announcement/ta-p/3203809

"If the caller hangs up before talking to a 911 dispatcher, then emergency services will be sent to the site to verify the emergency. Since most of these accidental calls are caused by users misdialing the number or by accidentally entering the long distance access code twice"

"Since many dialplans are based on an access code of 9 followed by a long distance number of 1 or 011 for international calls, accidental calls to 911 happen on a frequent basis."

So remember when you are next allowed into the States and want to call home in UK:

9 - "oh!!" - 11 - 44 - number without the leading zero

Re: I called the cops

And that's the issue - memory. We all know 9 is for an outside line (except on exchanges where it isn't). We all know "1" is the 'national' prefix when in the USA (equivalent to 0 in other countries like the UK). So surely "11" is the international prefix (equivalent to 00 in the UK). And suddenly there are a pair of uniforms in reception wanting to see the person who made the accidental call, just in case... Memory issues mean we forget we should be dialing 9011 before the country code.

Patently dogged: Apple unleashes lawyers to slash $454m patent rip-off bill – even after Supreme Court snub

Central Intelligence Agency

Would the CIA contract quoted in the patent have any bearing on the outcome of the case?

UK snubs Apple-Google coronavirus app API, insists on British control of data, promises to protect privacy

Paranoid Android

Of course "Pushing out updates to Android is notoriously challenging" (https://www.cnet.com/news/how-youll-get-apple-and-googles-contact-tracing-update-for-your-phone/). In reality lots of Android phones don't have the latest security fixes. So how are Google getting this tracking update onto all Android phones? Via Google Play services. Which doesn't work for vendors who produce Google-free AOSP Android phones (like cheap knock-offs and Amazon Fire devices). This proves the Android OS update approach is a bit broken.

Police drone fliers' wings clipped to prevent them bumping into real aircraft

Give them an inch

Oh the beautiful agony of double standards.

Fruit and veg = procescuted

- http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/1010827.stm

- http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/7692483.stm

Precious metals = allowed

- https://bit.ly/2JzBdQ1

Clothing = allowed

- https://bit.ly/2wTWDoM

Weapons = allowed

- https://bit.ly/2KmFOpC

Height of politicians = allowed

- https://bit.ly/2KnnRra

Pints especially in icon form = swallowed

Australian state will install home surveillance hardware to make sure if you're in virus isolation, you stay there

April fool?

Checks watch

- Well this is a good April fool by The Register. A bit insensitive but funny. Well done y'all.

Checks Australian government bill

- Oh. Ohh. Ohhh.

That awful moment when what you thought was a number 1 turned out to be a number 2

Regtastic Regomatic Randomiser 9000 might be jealous

I am concerned that the Regtastic Regomatic Randomiser 9000 is becoming self-aware... and jealous.

It seems to be obsessed with its competitors. ERNIE is of course the Premium Bonds quantum-powered random number generator - https://www.nsandi.com/ernie. Ernie is quite a beast. "Unlike previous versions which used thermal noise to produce random numbers, ERNIE 5 is powered by quantum technology"

For a bonus point perhaps someone could explain the algorithm which the Government Actuary's Department uses to prove that Ernie is actually random. I had that as an interview question once.

Galileo got it wrong – official: Jupiter actually wet, not super-dry: 'No one would have guessed that water might be so variable across the planet'

Juipter's water is already contaminated by human waste

NASA 'deorbited' the Galileo probe into Jupiter in 2003 at a leisurely 108,000 mph. The probe was powered by two radioisotope thermoelectric generators, each carrying 7.8 kilograms of Plutonium. Apparently NASA polluted Jupiter because they didn't want to pollute its moons. Other missions have similar legacies and risks. The Mars Science Laboratory had a 1 in 420 chance of a failure resulting in a release of plutonium dioxide in the launch area. (https://mars.nasa.gov/msl/news/pdfs/MSL_DEIS_Fact_Sheet_final_1.pdf)

It's official: In May, Microsoft will close the door, lock the vault, brick over the entrance of dreaded Windows 10 1809

Gateway to the underworld?

Nice picture. Reminds me appropriately enough of the register of Entrances to Hell site - http://www.entrances2hell.co.uk/

Clunk, whirr, buzz, whine. Shared office space can be a riot and sounds like one too

The Sound of Silence

"Sounds" like you have just watched the Sound of Silence - if not, it's worth a listen. Directed by Michael Tyburski.

Protestors in Los Angeles force ICANN board out of hiding over .org sale – for a brief moment, at least

Appearance of impropriety

Well this has the appearance of impropriety. If they want to sell, why not accept bids? And exclude any person who may have insider knowledge.

Vulture Central team welcomed to our new nest by crashed Ubuntu that's 3 years out of date

Brave new world

Maybe because the old red telephone boxes didn't need patching every week, or even every three years.

How four rotten packets broke CenturyLink's network for 37 hours, knackering 911 calls, VoIP, broadband

Going Postal?

Reminiscent of parts of Terry Pratchett's 'Going Postal', where a Clacks message is kept 'moving in the Overhead' using the tags G, N, and U.

Xilinx FPGA. Nvidia GPU storage. 56-core Intel Xeons versus AMD next-gen Epyc. It's all kicking off in data-center world

FPGA because von Neumann machines are too easy to hack

Ever since John von Neumann proposed storing data and instructions in the same memory (back in 1945), it has been a recipe for malware. Surely an FPGA can't suffer from buffer overruns? So there's another advantage. Hoping someone with actual knowledge will correct me.

GitHub builds wall round private repos, makes devs in US-sanctioned countries pay for it

No idea! You could also be affected by the Chagos islands dispute: https://www.theregister.co.uk/2019/05/27/io_domains_uk_un/

Turning it off and on again IN SPAAACE! ISS animal-tracker kit needs oldest trick in the book

200kg is a lot of kit to take to space. Are we sure it is only tracking? And apparently "The OBC-I [On-Board Computer] is installed inside the Service Module behind a ceiling panel" [https://directory.eoportal.org/web/eoportal/satellite-missions/i/iss-icarus]. Is someone trying to hide it from the Russians?

Google's Fuchsia OS Flutters into view: We're just trying out some new concepts, claims exec

Fu logo?

The Fuchsia logo is remarkably similar to another Fu... - Fujitsu's 'infinity' logo.

Goddamn the Pusher man: Nominet kicks out domain name hijack bid

IIt appears he is a "domainer", and buys and sells domains.

https://uk.linkedin.com/in/squillions

https://www.acorndomains.co.uk/threads/lee-owen-squillions-minisites-a-warning.87809/

https://www.acorndomains.co.uk/threads/why-am-i-infamous-here.17805/