Posts by Dinanziame

Someone must be bricking it: UK govt website for first-time home buyers snapped up for £40,000 after left to expire

How is this STILL a thing!?

Seriously. I understand that domain registration is something you should lose unless you pay for it; but when I forget to pay my rent in time, I'm not kicked out the next second. And changing flats would be arguably much less disruptive for me than changing domain names for some businesses.

Of course, it's easy to laugh and point the finger at the morons who forgot to renew their registration, but this is even a security issue — users trust that the website with that address is the same as the one from yesterday. Maybe it's time to introduce some mandatory protections?

After huffing and puffing for years, US senators unveil law to blow the encryption house down with police backdoors

What about foreign entities?

What prevents a company in Germany to offer a service with end-to-end encryption? Will US citizens be forbidden from using such a system?

'Boringly reliable': Red Hat architect thinks Kubernetes is 'mostly done' – but there are still plenty of bugs

Re: Does it even work?

If you read the blog post accompanying this link, you'll see this is not meant to be criticism of the project, rather documentation of hard-to-find issues because people only report success stories.

NY Attorney General warns Apple, Google to police COVID-19 tracing apps in their souks – or she will herself

Well at least, it seems that the common API of Google and Apple prevents general surveillance... As long as you are in a country that uses it.

Did any of these apps reach an adoption rate of even 30%? It seems an exercise in futility.

And even if it worked as intended, and people learnt that they have been in contact with an infected person, what does it change? If you have symptoms, you get checked. If you don't have symptoms, you can't get checked (not enough testing kits). What the app tells you is essentially irrelevant.

Forget biz insider threats for a moment – let's talk about partners turning rogue and installing spyware on phones

All well and good

However, this type of situations often include the victim not being able to stand up to the abusive treatment, and having to obey orders. So short of making it impossible foranybody to install a tracing app — not even the victim — I'm not sure what technological solution there is.

As the authors themselves note, there are legitimate uses, and no good way to make distinctions.

They might as well ask video camera makers what they do to protect the privacy of people.

Mortal wombat: 4 generations of women fight for their lives against murderous marsupial

So that's why

... They call it trial by wombat!

Get rich quick! Work from home! Earn $100,000 easy – just find a critical flaw in Apple's sign-in system

Re: Bouquet to Jain, but ...

Remember goto fail? There's not a lot of testing done of these libraries, apparently...

Watch an oblivious Tesla Model 3 smash into an overturned truck on a highway 'while under Autopilot'

Re: I get that the cameras may not have picked out the truck...

As far as I know, Teslas don't have a lidar. They say it's not necessary, because anyway the car needs to solve optical recognition, so a lidar is redundant. And as everybody knows, you don't need redundancy for safety systems. Ahem.

Which I translate to: "Our cars are already expensive, Lidars would add on to of that. Also, they don't look cool."

Das reboot: That's the only thing to do when the screenshot, er, freezes

Re: Funny that

I'm going to be my cranky annoying self, but I really feel it's a mistake to pull tricks like these on people you might need to rely on when you have a real problem.

Personally, in such circumstances, I might decide it's exactly the moment for me to go for a cuppa, and let you flounder...

Internet of Tardiness: Microsoft puts on a brave face as IoT boat prepares to set sail

Re: Missed the Boat

Security, compatibility, ease of use: Pick one. Not two, one.

AT&T tracked its own sales bods using GPS, secretly charged them $135 a month to do so, lawsuit claims

Re: Telekom

I can only assume that AT&T is mostly the only business in town, after having carefully agreed on regions with their competitors. They don't need customer service; the customers cannot leave anyway...

Worried about the magnetic North Pole sprinting towards Russia? Don't be, boffins say, it'll be back sooner or later

I vaguely remember the geographic North Pole also moves a tiny bit (a few meters), due to something called nutation (not a typo).

Stop tracking me, Google: Austrian citizen files GDPR legal complaint over Android Advertising ID

The money was for the phone — Google didn't receive any of it, whether for Android or Google Play services or the apps. So they are indeed technically offering their services for "free"... As far as money is involved, that is.

Re: It will fix nothing

Ah but see, the cookies are informed consent — that's why we have all the pop-ups saying "this website uses cookies". So that's technically legal... Maybe?

This article is a pretty neat example how a simple "don't track me" sentence can be muddied with "but we don't know who you are" and "you can change it at any time" and probably "you gave your informed consent on page 153 of the T&C's"

US govt can talk about the end of lockdown, but Silicon Valley says 'as long as it takes' – and Twitter says 'WFH forever'

What I miss most is the ability to talk directly to people. It's not only about social contacts, it's just easier to ask a quick question or discuss a situation for five minutes when you can walk over, rather than send a text, or ask for a VC.

The second thing I miss most is the coffee machine.

Author of infamous Google diversity manifesto drops lawsuit against web giant

Re: i knew this thread would quickly devolve into sticks and stones

If I offended you, tough shit - the world owes you nothing

James Damore undoubtedly thought so, too.

More seriously, if you make one single person angry, it could well be that they're oversensitive and illogical. But as the number of persons you make angry grows, eventually comes the moment where you should ask yourself who's to blame. Preferably before you lose your job...

Re: Hmmmm

To me, that question is the flip side of what "equality" truly means, and is the criterion that determines if we are allowed to call policies that discriminate against us "unfair".

You are allowed to call them unfair, the same that rich people can complain that anti poverty programs only give money to poor people, never rich people, which is clearly discriminatory.

What do you call megabucks Microsoft? No really, it's not a joke. El Reg needs you

The Windowmaker

The Windows seller

The other cloud company

The Binged one

... It's a bit hard, they kind of lack personality these days.

Dart 2.8 is out with a Flutter as Google claims to have solved the cross-platform dev puzzle

But is it used?

Developers' love is one thing; usability and feasibility a very different one. For instance, there are developers who really like Haskell...

Find your wallet, Apple: Ex-engineer adds eight more patents to lawsuit seeking credit for his developer work

How about asking the people whose name are on the patent to document their work?

That said, it's entirely possible that they also developed this independently from his work. That email from the VP sounds a lot to me like "thanks for the suggestion, we already had the idea and we're working on it". It does happen to me that people come with a grand new suggestion, and it can take quite a bit to convince them that we are already implementing it, no we don't need their design doc, and please don't take credit for it.

Apple-Google COVID-19 virus contact-tracing API to bar location-tracking access

Re: Makes a change

In the very specific subject of privacy in UK, that's pretty standard.

OK, so you've air-gapped that PC. Cut the speakers. Covered the LEDs. Disconnected the monitor. Now, about the data-leaking power supply unit...

I remember I used to draw fractals when I was learning Java. The computer would stop drawing regularly for garbage collecting, and I eventually noticed a squeaky sound coming out of the tower and stopping at exactly the same moment. I've never really figured what was causing the sound, but I guess it could technically be used as exfiltration mechanism...

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

UK government thinks it's not a problem to spy on its citizens. I'm shocked, shocked! Well, not that shocked...

Video game cloud streaming shaken up as Nvidia loses more big names, Microsoft readies its market killer

I'm happy with all of this

Stadia works reasonably well for me, but the most important thing is that the rest of the industry has followed and game streaming is now a thing; there's even quite a competition apparently!

Facebook takes $5.7bn stake in Jio – India's largest mobile telco

Facebook has a payment service, launched in India first. I'm not even surprised actually. I guess that's an attempt at diversifying.

Python 2 bows out after epic transition. And there was much applause because you've all moved to version 3, right? Uh, right?

Re: Repeat Offenders?

As if C++ could be trusted to always compile with the newer version of the compiler

Re: Python breaking changes

Why can't we have both? Like this for example

Facebook sort-of blocks anti-quarantine events – how many folks are actually behind these 'massive' protests online?

What I find fascinating is that only in the US would people accuse their government of prolonging the lockdown in order to seize freedoms from the population at the cost of destroying the economy. Even French people don't do that, even though they were in full-blown protests for the whole of 2019.

We lost another good one: Mathematician John Conway loses Game of Life, taken by coronavirus at 82

Game over

French monopoly watchdog orders Google to talk payment terms with French publishers

Re: Moneygrab?

This dispute is about whether Google should be able to scrape large chunks of content off these sites in the name of search but then stitch them together as a freebie news site, thus alleviating punters of actually having to go to the source at all.

Well see, that experiment has been done already. Publishers have had the possibility for a while to allow Google to display snippets or not (in Germany at least, France could easily get the option if they haven't already); and all publishers ended up allowing the snippets, because removing the snippets brings less traffic, not more.

Re: Kicking Google might have undesirable consequences

"Illegally"...? Completely legally, and with the permission of the content creators. Publishers have the possibility to prevent Google from displaying their snippets. They choose not to do so, because they know it would bring them less traffic, not more.

The problem of any negotiation is that Google can just say "how about zero? Is zero a good price for you?"

If you let the market decide how much Google has to pay publishers, the answer will be negative. Publishers would totally pay for traffic, and everybody knows it. In fact, they are already doing so, and it's called advertising. Google has some experience in that business as well.

Of course, if the government decides to set a price for those snippets, chances are that Google will just stop showing them altogether... Which usually results in less traffic to publishers (because users are not enticed by the links) rather than more (because users already know what the article says and don't need to follow the link).

Twitter takes away twits' ability to limit ad data sharing – after telling investors its own privacy settings hurt revenue

I do wonder whether there is a measurable effect to this data sharing or not... In the first place, there are good chance that this privacy option they just removed was off by default, which means the vast majority of users did not turn it on.

I'd be extremely surprised if this materially moved Twitter's revenue in any way.

COBOL-coding volunteers sought as slammed mainframes slow New Jersey's coronavirus response

From the article: the least-convenient possible moment

Strange how problems that only occur during catastrophic events always happen at the least-convenient possible moment

UK Information Commissioner OKs use of phone data to track coronavirus spread

So how are those countries getting the data? Google location services can be turned off, as well as location usage in search results. I heard Switzerland is using cell phone operators, which have a rough location from the cell mast users are connected to, and that cannot be prevented (though not as precise). Some countries force people to install an app, which I guess can technically be fooled by a GPS spoofer.

Ah well. There's always ankle monitors like for prisoners on supervised release...

Remember that clinical trial, promoted by President Trump, of a possible COVID-19 cure? So, so, so many questions...

'In a clinical trial, absolutely none of the people treated with cyanide died of the Coronavirus! Feel like giving it a try? Or maybe we should try homeopathy? There are no side-effects!"

There is no situation so desperate that you should try any random crap just because there are stupid people who think it works.

Yeah, that Zoom app you're trusting with work chatter? It lives with 'vampires feeding on the blood of human data'

Re: "Zoom is in the advertising business, and in the worst end of it"

I can only think of DuckDuckGo, because that's the only thing they're known for. I would never bother reading the T&C's of any service to check, though

Internet samurai says he'll sell 14,700,000 IPv4 addresses worth $300m-plus, plow it all into Asia-Pacific connectivity

What would somebody like Google need IPv4 addresses for? Surely they already have enough to serve their current needs, and the usage should be going down rather than up, right?

Microsoft names priority users for new Azure capacity – emergency services, government, remote workers top the list

Re: And how..

If you have to ask...

Google: You know we said that Chrome tracker contained no personally identifiable info? Yeah, about that...

Even with a low-entropy number, it's still possible to identify people with a bit of detective work, so technically, it might be said to be "identification" data. Hell, just your first name is already identification data, and some first names are so common that they give less information than that...

House of Lords push internet legend on greater openness and transparency from Google. Nope, says Vint Cerf

Re: Cerf returned a polite, but firm no

there are plenty of people out-there fully capable of reading and understanding them

Understanding an algorithm developed by machine learning? Er, no. By design, they're a black box which you can only judge by comparing outputs and choosing the one that get better results... Which for Google, means more clicks, not any mushy stuff like quality.

By this point, Google themselves have no idea how the algorithm works and what it does. They only make sure not to give it access to weapons, just in case.

Google sweetens return of K8s cluster management fees with new SLA, Anthos exclusion ‒ and customers aren't pleased

I only wonder why that guy described GCP as the second, inferior choice. Aren't they clearly third?

If you're wondering how Brit cops' live suspect-hunting facial-recog is going, it's cruising at 88% false positives

Seems to me they now have an excuse to check the ID of random people, for a "probable cause", which they would not have otherwise.

And yeah, from the point of view of cops, it's quite a success. If they were generally able to arrest one criminal for every six person checked, they would be over the moon....

Would be nice to know the rate of false negatives, of course. What percentage of people walking in London are are criminals, would you say?

Amazon staffer based just a stone's throw away from Seattle HQ tests positive for COVID-19 coronavirus

Re: Doesn't check out

I would expect a lot of cases won't get reported until later in the United States due to their unique health care system: Because going to the doctor can be so expensive, people tend to wait until they are very sick to do it.

AWS to double sales droids as Google, Microsoft's growing clouds threaten to gobble larger slices of Bezos' pie

Re: 10B growth rate

The basic question is, will those businesses keep growing every quarter by this many millions (linear), or by this much percentage (exponential)?

I guess the expectation is that growth in sales should be exponential — the fact that Amazon growth so little compared to its current customers would indicate they have trouble finding new customers.

That is not a bad thing. Far better to have a three-horses race than a two-horses one.

Brexit Britain changes its mind, says non, nein, no to Europe's unified patent court – potentially sealing its fate

I think they pick all their cues based on WWSD — What Would Singapore Do?

Never thought we'd write this headline: Under Siege Steven Seagal is not Above The Law, must fork out $314,000 after boosting crypto-coin biz

I'm drunk

It's Friday morning 0:40am — what do you expect?

I hope whoever did this now understands whatever it is they were supposed to be careful about — whatever that is. And happy new year to them.

I

How many times do we have to tell you? A Tesla isn't a self-driving car, say investigators after Apple man's fatal crash

Re: Tesla never said it's driverless

They call it autopilot, which is as misleading as it can be...