Posts by Phones Sheridan

Gone phishing: UK data watchdog fines construction biz £4.4m for poor infosec hygiene

A tip-off to El Reg might be in order followed by a bit of investigative journalism, and expose’.

Infosys reverses opposition to staff taking side gigs

Headline:-

“Infosys reverses opposition to staff taking side gigs”

In article quotation:-

“However, to be clear, we do not support dual employment.”

Looks to me like they haven’t reversed opposition at all as reported. Or am I not supposed to point at the naked emperor?

Just $10 to create an AI chatbot of a dead loved one

I can see this becoming completely normalised in the same way that people nowadays keep audio recordings, videos and photos of dead loved ones. At one time people were horrified at the thought of photos, recordings and videos too. I can also see this becoming pro-active, people training their posthumous AI as they live their lives to be a more and more accurate replica of themselves.

Appeals court already under fire for upholding Texas no-content-moderation law

Re: I like this

So what about TV and Newspapers? They must broadcast and publish whatever anyone says or does? Sir you are an idiot.

Former Reg vulture takes on Nominet – by running for board seat

Re: Good Luck Kieren

I always thought that "Have I Got News For You" was partly responsible for the rise of Boris. They kept having him on as Guest presenter, and he clearly was very entertaining in the position. Only problem was it normalised him in front of an electorate that is clearly 3 sheets to the wind. Character and entertainment was more important than truth and ability. Who cares about all the snouts in the trough, as long as the entertainment doesn't end.

That's what I was looking at, only 4 seats out of 9 available. So the 5 looking to maintain the status quo, will always trump the 4 looking for reform?

Has Kieran given up his day job?

Philippines Space Agency warns flyers, fishing boats to avoid falling Chinese rockets

If a chunk of chinese space debris did find it's way to be hurtling towards you, would you be able to do anything about it? What's the thinking time and minimum stopping distance for falling rockets? I can't find it in the Highway Code.

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

"I headed off to the MOT(?? is that right?)"

More likely the DVLA.

MOT = Ministry of Transport

DVLA = Driver and Vehicle Licensing Agency

However, as a caveat, I know you are older than me, so it may have been the MOT who performed this function at that time, and not the DVLA who would do it now.

Nowadays if someone goes for an MOT it means they need their car certifying as "safe" to drive on the road (with the caveat that the small print on the MOT certificate says exactly the opposite, that the certificate cannot be relied upon as evidence that the vehicle is safe to drive on the road).

Re: Queen Elizabeth - demon driver

As I recall, the only person to win a disagreement with the Secret Service over who gets to drive the President :p

Amazon drivers unionize after AI sends them on 'impossible' routes

Re: Routing

I wish that was a joke. Round the housing estate where I live we have a facebook group for exactly that with everyone within a 2 mile radius a member. "Parcel dropped off at mine, name is xxxxxxxxx, is this yours" kind of thing. New posts several times a day.

A refined Apple desktop debuts ahead of Wednesday’s big iThing launch

Re: If only desktop environments...

If it's Windows 11 I can help you with them thar scroll bars.

Settings -> Accessibility -> Visual Effects*

In there I usually turn on Scrollbars, and turn off Transparancy and Animation.

* this is where the setting resides in my current Windows 11, but at the current rate of change, it may have moved again by the time you read this.

Taiwan chip magnate pledges cash for defense against China: 'I'm telling everyone to oppose the CCP'

Re: Interesting...

It says they are providing training. Not arming citizens with ARs.

Re: Another Rich Corn Flake?

It’s all in the article. He’s further funding an existing civilian defence corps to increase its ranks by 3 million per year.

I believe Finland do something similar already, and Ukraine’s civilians caught up pretty quickly and effectively in a relatively short time. Defending your family provides a pretty good incentive to learn quickly.

The International Space Station will deorbit in glory. How's your legacy tech doing?

Re: Software Engineering - NOT

2 reasons,

First is that what we call train drivers, over there were originally called enginemen. Over time this became abbreviated to engineer.

Second is the American habit of adding "eer" onto the end of a verb, to describe what a person does. i.e. engineer - someone who operates engines.

Re: Software Engineering - NOT

Yes, but 640k is 10 x more than anyone will ever need!

FTC sues data broker for selling millions of people's 'precise' location info

Re: In the age of high tech tracking...

A quick goog of "locate active phones anywhere in the world" gets me to this https://www.celltrack.co.uk/

AI detects 20,000 hidden taxable swimming pools in France, netting €10m

Swimming pools tend to be tiled, so my suggestion would be to tile in an ARPAT* pixelated camouflage style, and hide them in plain sight. Same could go for roof tiles of unauthorised buildings and extensions.

*source article

Deluge of of entries to Spamhaus blocklists includes 'various household names'

Re: No case to answer

You’re asking “how does a mail sender opt out of Spamhaus’s service”. That’s easy. The answer is you ask the recipient to whitelist you, because the recipient’s mail server is blocking you, not Spamhaus.

Re: IT much?

What I can’t understand is how this is a story. When will Ms Dobberstein write a follow up “spammers try to get Spamhaus cancelled on Twitter (and we write an article about it). Fails miserably”

Re: Open Resolver Public DNS problem, 8.8.8.8

I'm sorry but nothing you have said there, is relevant to what I said to Wayland.

But to respond to your tangent. Spamhaus service is offered on a "free for non-commercial use" basis. If a commercial service uses it, tough titties if their email breaks, they got what they paid for.

A non response from Spamhaus (i.e. a timeout), should be interpreted by the requesting mailserver as a non-listing because no positive response was made. If it isn't, then that's the local admins choice, or error.

If Spamhaus return a "127.255.255.255" response on any of it's DNSBL services, that response indicates "Excessive queries" and again, the local mail server admin would specifically have to configure his mail server explicitly to reject emails as spam based on this response.

Spamhause responses are either Postive* (found on the list), Negative* (not found on the list), or Informational* (Typing error in DNSBL name, Query via public/open resolver, Excessive number of queries etc). If a local admin has configured his mail server to reject mail, based on ANY response from Spamhaus, Positive, Negative or Informational, then that admin needs to RTFM.

But again, none of this has anything to do with my reply to Wayland.

*My examples are merely that, and are not a complete listing of Spamhaus responses.

Re: Open Resolver Public DNS problem, 8.8.8.8

Hi, a layman's explanation.

Consider the following route that emails follow when Bob emails Joe

Sender (Bob) -> Senders Mail Server (Twiki) -> Receivers Mail Server (Kryten) -> Receiver (Joe)

Bob clicks send

Bob's email is passed to Twiki

Twiki Passes the email to Kryten

Kryten delivers the email to Joe.

- However When a DNSBL is involved

Bob clicks send

Bob's email is passed to Twiki

Twiki informs Kryten an email is ready to be passed to it.

Krytem looks up Twiki on Spamhaus (or other DNSBL) and finds a listing.

Kryten tells Twiki that the email is being rejected, and if configured correctly, gives an accurate reason why.

Twiki tells Bob that the email was rejected, along with whatever reason Kryten gave (if configured)

If anything other than the above occurs, then either Kryten or Twiki is not configured to transport mail according to RFC standards and this is where things go wrong.

So if I read your post above correctly, Bob is emailing Joe, and Joe gets the bounceback notification. This indicates either Twiki or Kryten is configured incorrectly because Bob should be getting the response his email did not get through, This isn't Spamhaus's fault. An admin has configured the mail transport incorrectly on their server.

Back in the consulting days, the conversation tended to go.

Them - "Our emails are being blocked, by Spamhaus, how do we get off it".

Me - "How many addresses are you mailshotting?"

Them (proudly)- "xxxx thousand".

Me - "How many of those do you have a confirmed opt in for?"

Them - " ..............!"

Me - "How many of those opted out, and you ignored it?"

Them - " .............!"

Me - "Stop spamming and the problem will go away of it's own accord".

Them - "We don't spam, these are genuine emails of interest to customers."

Me - "How many of those do you have a confirmed opt in for?"

Them - " ..............!"

Me - "How many of those opted out, and you ignored it?"

Them - " .............!"

Me - "Stop spamming and the problem will go away of it's own accord".

Rinse and repeat.

I've never known Spamhaus to make mistakes, just mailshotters either ignoring opt-outs, or not having opt-ins in the first place. Solve those 2 problems, and the issue simply goes away.

Australian court overturns 'Google is a publisher' decision

Re: Testing boundaries

"So explain to me why Google should be responsible for the web page but not the actual publishers of the web page?"

I said no such thing.

The original publisher is liable for what they have published. Google are choosing to make a copy, and distribute it even further than the publisher did. Google are now liable too. Google are trying to pull the wool over the courts eyes by pretending all they do is link to websites, they have not done this for a very long time. They rip content en-masse, and produce their own edited copy of it in search results. If you click on it, only then you are sent to the end website.

Re: Testing boundaries

"If the article is on the web why should Google not link to it?"

Google are not just linking to it. They are duplicating, indexing and monetising from it. Passing the searcher to the relevant website is just a convenient after affect of Google's publishing.

The days of just linking are long gone. Google duplicate webpages in their vast database and re-publish page contents each time a search is performed.

After eleven-year wait, Atlassian customers promised custom domains in 2023

"I remember two female Project Managers"

That was your problem right there.

Scientists find gasses from Earth in rocks from early Moon

So scientists on Earth, detect chemical compounds found on Earth, in rocks found on Earth.

Does that pretty much sum it up?

General Motors charges mandatory $1,500 fee for three years of optional car features

Re: They might find the use of their wording problematic under UK law

Everything is legal in the states until someone sues and wins. And even then Big Business just keeps appealing until the other side dies first or goes bankrupt.

Re: They might find the use of their wording problematic under UK law

Yeah, but you’re forgetting that we’re now Brexit’d and on the slippery slope to duplicating the US laws that give companies more rights than us consumers.

I see there’s going to be a market for non-dealer activations following each vehicle service.

Rescuezilla 2.4 is here: Grab it before you need it

I'm confused.

Any chance of a flow chart :)

Tim Hortons offers free coffee and donut to settle data privacy invasion claims

I listen to the best music...

Wasn't Robin Banks a DJ on Atlantic 252? Along with Dusty Rhodes and Sandy Beaches :p

Browsers could face two regimes in Europe as UK law set to diverge from EU

By default all UK companies should be complying with the GDPR, as it is currently enshrined in UK law, and therefore should fall under adequacy agreement. After this law passes, no changes are needed for those companies that want to continue doing business in the EU. Just continue to do what you do now, and if your customers want to continue trading with you, they will.

Any businesses that solely want to do business in the UK, go for it, all bets are off.

We've got a photocopier and it can copy anything

1996 I was taking delivery of a new Minolta CF900 colour copier. I got chatting to the copier business owner as he oversaw the delivery of the unit (It cost about £20K so he oversaw all deliveries that being a lot of money in the 90s). I asked if it could copy cash, he rather proudly stated that it would recognize the currency, and print out a distorted copy, so I did, and it did. Out came a distorted black and white copy. Undeterred I slapped the £10 back on the scanner, and pressed Zoom.. 1%..Copy. Out came a perfect replica of the note, and he went white. Using the manual feeder I was able to make a perfect double sided copy of the note.

A few days later he rang me back, to say he took my "feedback" to Minolta, who tested and confirmed the slip-up. But then they told him something that was unknown until then. They told him all colour copies, regardless of source material had yellow dots printed on them, invisible to the eye, but in the right circumstances these dots could be filtered, and the serial number of the offending machine revealed.

At some point the whole industry followed with this approach and now all colour printers and copiers hide the serial number of the machine on prints.

Russia fines Google $374 million for letting the truth about Ukraine be told

"Theoretically, Google can appeal the court's verdict and fine"

But anyone representing Google in court would find themselves arrested and/or disappeared.

In Soviet Russia, you do not appeal to the court, the court repeals your life.

First-ever James Webb Space Telescope image revealed

Re: Correction or have I misunderstood...?

Smarter Every Day did a good video on it, with an interview with John Mather, Senior Project Boffin for the James Webb telescope. One of the things he explains is why they chose L2, in laymans terms too. Other things explained also. Worth a watch.

https://youtu.be/4P8fKd0IVOs

LGBTQ+ folks warned of dating app extortion scams

Dating app extortion? Take a look at e-Harmony where you have to pay to be listed as more attractive.

Tencent admits to poisoned QR code attack on QQ chat platform

"The web giant is now gathering evidence to share with local authorities and has pledged co-operation."

Tencent have been gathering and sharing evidence with local authorities since the beginning. Nothing new here now, move along.

Cloudflare explains how it managed to break the internet

I actually found this post helpful back when I was deciding to use Cloudflare or not.

https://www.devever.net/~hl/cloudflare#:~:text=Websites%20should%20avoid%20using%20Cloudflare,the%20state%20of%20the%20web.

Internet Explorer 11 limps to the end of Windows 10 road

My photocopiers can only be programmed from Internet Explorer. Cant see me replacing them any time soon, far too expensive and far too reliable.

Engineer sues Amazon for not covering work-from-home internet, electricity bills

Re: Can of worms

I have fallen off the floor on two occasions in my life.

France levels up local video game slang with list of French terms to replace foreign words

Re: E-sports professionals?

Even better if it's a 2 player co-op!

Re: Now that is a fine example of administrative busybodies

I had to do a years computing french as part of my time at uni. Only problem was, the teacher, while thoroughly fluent in several languages (including native English, Russian and French, he was a cross breed) he knew not a jot about computers, and there was no formal curriculum outside of "where is the gas station" and "can I have 100 grams of butter please", so he asked us to bring in anything we could find that was computer related, with an English and French translation printed on it, and he'd then teach us it. By the end of the year, I was fluent in Lemmings, Megalomania, Stunt Car Racer, Speed Ball 2 and many other Amiga games that a couple of us had original boxed copies of. No joke, part of our final exam was the question "Please list the system requirements to play the game "Lemmings".

I did get a B, but now some 30ish years later I can't remember diddly squat.

SEC probes Musk for not properly disclosing Twitter stake

Re: Egon Durban...tried to resign

This is probably mirroring that comic skit

You’re going to be fired!

You can’t fire me, I quit!

You can’t quit it’s in your contract!

What contract? You just fired me!

Ah, but we’ve not served you formal notice yet, just notice that you’re going to be given formal notice of being fired!

Reading between the lines, if he resigns he probably is entitled to a golden handshake. If he’s formally fired, he doesn’t get that. Or it’s the opposite way round depending on the lawyers.

Coinbase CEO says everything's OK after SEC filing gives netizens the jitters

Re: At some stage

"I have a lovely tower you could use to store them in..."

Having a lovely tower is all for naught unless you have a lovely bridge you can cross to reach it.

It so happens........

Another ex-eBay exec admits cyberstalking web souk critics

HIMYM

Sign me up for that job PLEASE!

("Provide Legal Exculpation And Sign Everything")

Jeffrey Snover claims Microsoft demoted him for inventing PowerShell

Internet goes boom!

Woke up to a Jeffrey Snover tweet, about a The Register article about a Jeffrey Snover tweet!

https://twitter.com/jsnover/status/1523992647454498816?ref_src=twsrc%5Egoogle%7Ctwcamp%5Eserp%7Ctwgr%5Etweet

UK watchdogs ask how they can better regulate algorithms

Re: how they can better regulate algorithms

No I'm not, I've listed both, because both are fraudulent.

how they can better regulate algorithms

Easy, ban fraudulent ones. Take Google's search algorithm. Anyone with a website wholeheartedly believes that their SEO practices have got them onto the first page in Google. Only problem is, so do the other 1000000 owners of the other websites competing with them. There is only 5 slots available, yet 1000000 people think they have achieved to obtain one of them. The same goes for those people paying to appear in the search results. There is only a few slots available, yet thousands of people thinking they have managed to outbid their competitors. It's a con to anyone that can count.

ZX Spectrum: Q&A with some of the folks who worked on legendary PC

Re: Outrun for the win!

That and Afterburner, both with the supplied music tape pumping out my cheap-ass clone Schneider ghetto blaster. I was a bit disappointed with Space Harrier, not that they didn't manage to squeeze it into 48K, but that they got the up/down controls back to front compared to the arcade machine. I had to crack open my joystick and make a modification using spade terminals to switch it round! No music came with that game tho.