Posts by Emir Al Weeq

That old phone in the kitchen drawer could save an industry

>can be dropped and the world doesn't end

Not an old Nokia then. Drop one of those and it's more likely to survive than the planet it hits.

UK drivers' agency shrugs off claims of week-long booking site smashes, blames browser configs

Indeed. In my time I have been in many a situation where I could think of no current error that would have caused the problem being reported. That didn't mean there was no error, I looked, found*, fixed* and learnt* from it.

* usually

Waymo's self-driving cars face their toughest test yet: London

Ah, Rome. Driving in Italy I've noticed that Italians seem to be able to negotiate their way out of traffic jams (including TS & C's) by speaking entirely in horn.

Do places like India have their own dialects of horn or would they understand each other? Google translate doesn't appear to have options for either. How important is arm waving?

Attackers have 16-digit card numbers, expiry dates, but not names. Now org gets £500k fine

Re: PC world and hard discs

I thought the exact same at the time.

I not sure about the legality of doing that but I suspect that if I did, I'd have just found two people's music libraries, neither of which would have been to my taste and just deleted it all.

PC world and hard discs

Many many moons ago I bought a USB hard disc from PC World. I backed up personal docs (nothing too private) that I planned to store off-site (parents' house).

It died after about a week so I returned it and was offered a replacement. I asked what would happen to the first unit with all my data on it and was assured that it would be destroyed.

I took the replacement unit home whereupon I noticed signs that the packaging had been opened before. I plugged it in and was presented with someone else's files.

I complained and raised by concerns about my data on the first disc. Never heard back, never used that shit show again. I didn't know Currys were part of the same group and may have used them since; bollox!

Hyundai: Want cyber-secure car locks? That'll be £49, please

Re: Why is it so insecure?

To answer my own point about battery life. The car has just advised me that the key battery is running low. That's about 5 months and a replacement battery is about £50. I think I'll be going back to relying just on a pouch and tin.

Re: Why is it so insecure?

> if you've sat in the car...

I have done just this. The car complained when I pressed the start button but I nudged the bag the key was in and all was fine after that. Might be a bit more of a nuisance if it was in a bag in the boot/trunk.

Re: Why is it so insecure?

One of the problems with so-called keyless entry is that no matter how clever the encryption, if the signals between car and key can be relayed man-in-the-middle-style without the need to understand the signal itself (and they can), the car opens and starts. The "security" is provided by the key being too far away, which is crap.

Curiously I have just received a free sleepy-battery from JLR. If the battery doesn't move for 3 minutes, it stops working (until moved again) disabling the key and stopping it responding to keyless requests from the car. I've tested it by leaving it next to the car (ie within range) and it seems to do the trick. I still keep it in a tin though. I don't know how long the battery life is or how much a replacement costs.

Engineer used welding shop air hose to 'clean' PCs – hilarity did not ensue

Re: BS

Back in the mid 70's the ~10 year old me received an "electric kit" that included a build-it-yourself a 3-pole electric motor from scratch: even metal plates and paper to build a rotor and lacquered wire to wind your own coils.

As one "experiment" you replaced the magnet with an electromagnet (pre-wound, thank god) fed from the same power supply. Regardless of which way you connected the power, it ran the same way.

I always wondered if it would work from an AC supply but my parents were adverse to letting me connect to standard UK 240V mains!

Starlink satellite fails, polluting orbit with debris and falling toward Earth

Re: More careful reading

Verbing words weirds language

- Calvin and Hobbes by Bill Watterson

UK Home Office dangles £1.3M prize for algorithm that guesses your age

Re: Very difficult for humans

New keyboard please

Fake CAPTCHA tests trick users into running malware

Re: I hate CAPTCHA's

>Took me an hour though

shibboleet

Security company hired a used car salesman to build a website, and it didn't end well

Re: The dumbest thing about this whole affair

Here's your iPad, we hope it works because the warranty has just expired.

(YMMV depending on local laws and warranty)

User demanded a 'wireless' computer and was outraged when its battery died

"and her solar system's web page."

That made me chuckle.

Where does she live? Here, orbiting Sol, we just have a world-wide web.

British govt agents step in as Harrods becomes third mega retailer under cyberattack

Re: We can't continue to regard these simply as "IT Problems"

Boots and Liquor, you are both right of course. I would follow the "moving on..." with a request to make sure that's minuted.

Also ensure that the design document's second draft's history includes "hardening/resilience removed at the request of A. Countant" and be sure that A. Countant is in the final design's sign-off list.

Keep all design drafts and the emails circulating them.

CYA.

Google goes cold on Europe: Stops making smart thermostats for continental conditions

You may need to define "PoS". I'm not sure that we're aligned.

Re: Meanwhile

Agree. I've said here before: I change my phone more often than my thermostat settings so no use case for me.

I last changed the 12 year old* thermostat's schedule in 2020 when lockdown made home-working a necessity.

*Probably older: was here when we bought the house, fitted by previous owners.

EU: These are scary times – let's backdoor encryption!

Re: What we need is an online document store .....

>The key thing is that you need to know which documents to XOR to get to the document that you want.

And how exactly do you share that information with the intended recipient?

Now Windows Longhorn is long gone, witness reflects on Microsoft's OS belly-flop

Re: UI design

Have an upvote from another grumpy, inflexible, fossilised elitist.

Google admits it deleted some customer data after 'technical issue'

Re: Google admits it deleted some customer data after 'technical issue'

Those who haven't previously lost data like this and don't read the likes of El Reg and arstechnica aren't necessarily morons, they're just ill-informed.

My children's school uses Google Classroom. I would like to have seen them have a similar problem: today's lesson is on the very real risks of storing all your data in someone else's computer.

Weeks with a BBC Micro? Good enough to fix a mainframe, apparently

Re: "I think that transducer has incorrect coefficients"

I'd go with throwing open the switches on the sonic oscillator and stepping up the reactor power three more points.

DoorDash sued for allegedly branding customer a fraudster after delivery photo query

I have a friend who lives in a flat that is part of a large, converted, country house.

He and his neighbours sometimes use the delivery companies' photos to show goods left at the far end of a ~400m driveway that were never received.

Developer wrote a critical app and forgot where it ran – until it stopped running

Re: Serious OOPS!

I thought that, but it only really works if Sam was always first in, last out (a "stack" employee) and never took a holiday.

> For years, it had been quietly running on my laptop

Cheap 'n' simple sign trickery will bamboozle self-driving cars, fresh research claims

I got the impression from the article that the "sign disappearing time" was fairly short, as in: if a sign was seen and visibly of it was subsequently lost, then it was assumed that the sign was still there. This would make sense when, for example, queueing at a junction with an observed stop sign which then gets obscured by a van coming alongside.

I agree after, say, 10 mins this assumption gets iffy given that the sign may be temporary.

This is what made the TSR more susceptible to "appearing attacks": the stickers only had to fool the TSR briefly and it thought it had gotten a glimpse of a sign.

Signal will withdraw from Sweden if encryption-busting laws take effect

Re: Laws of Mathematics

According to the BBC, the Minister of State for Security, Dan Jarvis, said: "What I can say is that the suggestion that privacy and security are at odds is not correct; we can and must have both."

So clearly, the laws of mathematics do need to be repealed.

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c1kjmddx2nzo

HP ditches 15-minute wait time policy due to 'feedback'

Re: "many of our customers were not aware of the digital support options we provide"

Was using Stansted airport's parking website recently: the info that I required was not available there so I tried the helpline. I tried several paths through the IVR and all ended in a message telling me to use the website and then terminating the call.

DIMM techies weren’t allowed to leave the building until proven to not be pilferers

Re: Apocryphal?

But on the plus side they got more hours out of him because, despite leaving home at the usual time, he got to work 20 minutes early.

HP deliberately adds 15 minutes waiting time for telephone support calls

Liars

"We are experiencing longer waiting times"

No, you are creating longer waiting times.

At least we have it confirmed that they're outright liars.

Man who binned 7,500 Bitcoin drive now wants to buy entire landfill to dig it up

Wrong drive?

I hope he's confident of identifying his drive. I don't think I could tell my sorry square of metal pulled from landfill from someone else's. I got the impression it wasn't in a laptop or something he might recognise.

I can see him having to pay for expensive forensics on every drive he finds, and if one is unreadable, he'll never know to stop if it's the one.

I was told to make backups, not test them. Why does that make you look so worried?

Re: a long time

There are at least two managers between you and your goal.

Openreach tests 50 Gbps broadband – don’t expect it anytime soon

Re: At some point in the distant future

>keep rolling out upgrades to those with a decent service

Sadly that's so true. Whilst I am happy to see research into how to improve at the top end of things, a bit of attention to the bottom end wouldn't go amis. An uplift to Gb/s sounds great, but for me an uplift from Kb/s to Mb/s on my uplink would be nice.

Just last night:

"Hi girls, is that the presentation homework with pictures in?", "Yes?"

Checks SWMBO's laptop and sees a grid of pixellated faces with one familiar black rectangle showing the message "Insufficient bandwidth".

"Don't upload it now, Mum's on a conference call".

BT fiber rollout passes 17 million homes, altnet challenge grows

Many, many years ago I attended a UK training course run by Ericsson. I complained that spellings had switched from English* to American-English. The reply was along the lines of:

This product is now available in the US. We translate the documentation into many languages and don't want to have to deal with spelling variations too. We asked our UK and US offices how their respective countries would react to us using the other's spelling; the US said they'd get an almighty fuss whereas the UK said customers would grumble a bit, so US it is. Apparently the trainer had given the UK course many times and I was the first to say anything.

* We often called Ericsson English, "Swinglish" due to the translation curiosities.

Amazon sued for allegedly slurping sensitive data via advertising SDK

Re: Blokada is your friend

I use the Duck Duck Go version.

Serious question: would a Pi Hole help if you're out and about using mobile data rather than your own WiFi.

Canvassing apps used by UK political parties riddled with privacy, security issues

Flogging a dead horse

I hate it, but if the article said: all parties' apps had slurped and spaffed constituents' data then left it on an unlocked laptop on a bus, your average Joe would say, "So what? I've got nothing to hide", etc, etc.

It didn't sound like thorough research to me; however, well done for trying, but don't expect the great unwashed to care.

AI facial recognition could sink this murder probe

MLP

A bit like this?

https://youtu.be/JQoooWVqsJk

Mega UK datacenter greenlit, but we still don't know who's moving in

Good fibre connection?

I live a few miles from this site and I typically get 4Mb/s down and 100Kb/s up data rates. Every time I read about this new datacentre I imagine it with an Openreach van outside and the tech saying "Sorry mate, it's all overhead twisted-pair round here, good luck competing with the Brookmans Park transmitter.

Database tables of student, teacher info stolen from PowerSchool in cyberattack

Not a ransomware attack

"The supplier did say this wasn't an attack involving ransomware"

"We do not anticipate the data being shared or made public, and we believe it has been deleted without any further replication or dissemination".

I wonder how they can be so sure of this? It sounds to me like they've been talking to the perpetrators and reached a deal, ie. they've paid the ransom and trust the perps to delete (for what that's worth). There may not have been ramsomware involved but that doesn't mean they haven't paid the scumbags.

US watchdog sticks probe into 2.6M Teslas over so-called Smart Summon crash reports

Reaction times are a factor!?

"user had too little reaction time to avoid a crash"

How fast do these things go in (Actually) Smart Summon mode?

It's only a matter of time before LLMs jump start supply-chain attacks

Re: The more expensive allowing your LLM resources to be compromised is

Just read "A Logic Named Joe" on your recommendation. Thank you, it was an excellent story.

To anyone who's not read it: it's only takes about 15 minutes and it's time will spent.

Firefox ditches Do Not Track because nobody was listening anyway

Re: Tracking

>to sell that, along with any other data I can glean,

I'm shocked that you would do that with others' personal data. Shocked I say.

No, you strip the most sensitive bits out before selling it. Then, once you've established your customer base, you can add it back as part of your more expensive "premium" package. That's how to really treat personal data.

Tesla sued over alleged Autopilot fail in yet another fatal accident

Re: driver aids

It sounds like you need my wife’s 1959 Austin-Healey “Frogeye” Sprite:

The indicators are a non self-cancelling dashboard mounted switch. No modern, nanny-state, snowflake, safety gimmicks like ABS, side impact bars, airbags, side or rear windows, roof, roll-bars or seatbelts; all UK legal on a car that age. You don’t even have to have one of those fussy MoT inspectors crawl all over it each year*.

Driver aids like electric screen wash, power steering or synchromesh on 1st and 2nd are absent but, let’s face it, if you can’t heel-and-toe to provide the throttle blip during a double-declutch whilst braking and changing down, then you shouldn’t be driving.

It does have one modern feature: keyless entry. No key, locks or even exterior door handles; you just reach inside and open from there.

Seriously though, do we ferry our children around in it? Not a chance! But, if they want, we will teach them how to drive it when they’re old enough (and yes, the change-down whilst braking is as described).

As a daily-drive it would be hell, but as a bit of summer fun it gives you a smile to match its own.

*Despite being pre-1960, hers does need an MoT because it’s had some modifications.

We can clone you wholesale: Boffins build ML agents that respond like specific people

Welcome to Bigtime TV

So this sort of tech is no longer 20 Minutes Into The Future.

Swiss cheesed off as postal service used to spread malware

Re: Is it Worth the Trouble These Days?

Many years ago we were visiting the in-laws. My father-in-law (fil) was complaining that he’d miss the football that afternoon because it wasn’t being shown on any channel to which he subscribed. Another guest says that she’ll call her son (let’s call him Jimmy) who’s “good with computers” and can get the football for him.

A little while later, 13/14 year-old Jimmy arrives and is offered fil’s tablet, I watched what he was up to. There was lots of rapid action during which, if memory serves, he found a website, downloaded something, sideloaded it and then set up as required. Throughout this, multiple warnings flashed up, none of which I had time to read before he accepted them; nor, I suspect, did he. On the first warning I had asked, “What was that?” but was told that “you just say ‘yes’ to all that stuff”.

I allowed the process to continue because (a) I was fascinated to know just how careless Jimmy would be with someone else’s machine/privacy/security etc, (b) I knew the tablet, which had been a gift from my wife, was hardly ever used and certainly had not been used for things like online shopping or banking and (c) fil would not care about, or even notice, the factory-reset that I would (and indeed did) carry out after the football.

Everyone (except me) was impressed with Jimmy’s computer prowess, although I provided a little education after Jimmy and mother had left.

My point: I think that few people give a stuff what the warnings say so long as the immediate result is what they want.

Tech support world record? 8.5 seconds from seeing to fixing

Minus several months

Not a support call but I was once asked to write an extra feature for a piece of config-file driven software I'd written. It was a custom job for one team and, although they'd never asked for a particular feature, I thought it would be useful and took just a few minutes of my time to include.

Several months later the team leader was asked for the feature (they'd not read, or forgotten about, the instructions I'd provided).

I replied to the effect of: "see instructions, section 5, request met before you'd even thought of it, how's that for service?"

She complained to my manager that I hadn't acted quickly enough.

Hide the keyboard – it's the only way to keep this software running

Re: Sunlight

>as it moved towards the widows

Exactly how many men died before you started using the stickers?

Google brings better bricking to Androids, to curtail crims

>I don't see a solution to this.

My house alarm has a duress code. On a phone this could even take extra action like taking photos and emailing them, calling for help etc.

Yes, your network is down – you annoyed us so much we crashed it

Re: Finance dept. are at the root of this issue

Don't forget bearing as a direction:

There's a bare bear bearing their bare baby bear, they're bearing East.

Post Office CTO had 'nagging doubts' about Horizon system despite reliability assurances

Written by idiots

I can't find the link to the actual enquiry document that highlights this but there are several examples of the code available to read that confirm your "written by idiots" point. My favourite was actually a function to return the negative of its argument; ie when given d, to return -d. As if the use of a function isn't pointless enough, the algorithm used was something like:

if d<0 then return abs(d)

else return d-2*d

'Newport would look like Dubai' if guy could dumpster dive for lost Bitcoin drive

Class Action

He's suing for damages because he threw something away that he then wanted?

Is there an El Reg reader out there who hasn't done this?

If he wins we need to get together and launch a class-action case for all those RS-232 cables, USB dongles, etc, etc that must be worth squillions if we add it all up.

Schools bombarded by nation-state attacks, ransomware gangs, and everyone in between

Lack of security - same old story

My children's school is too small to have budget for an IT department of even one, it relies on the Local Education Authority for this kind of stuff. A few years ago they provided a new system to allow parents to see their children's progress, pay for trips etc.

To log in you used your email as an ID, after which you were presented with a list schools that your children attended (my list was one school) and then you entered your password. Yes, you read that right and I trust that your gast is suitably flabbered: you were shown your children's school(s) BEFORE entering your password. This means that anyone could identify your children's schools by knowing nothing more that your email address. I checked this with a non-local friend who'd never used the system before, so it wasn't down to something like cookies.

I raised this with the school and the software manufacturer directly. Despite repeated chases with the manufacturer it took about a year to correct both web interface and app. Offcom's website did not make it clear how you report someone else for poor practice which is why I never got round to escalating it.

Whoever signed-off on this product clearly made no efforts to perform the most basic of security checks; identifying this data leak did not require clever pen-testing, it was obvious (to anyone with a bit of sense) after just one go at logging in. Well done to whoever tests software for Hertfordshire's schools.