Posts by Freezus

German political parties accused of microtargeting voters on Facebook

Re: Meta

Unfortunately you're in a tiny minority. Resistance is futile, citizen

UK refreshes national security plan to stop more of China's secret-stealing cyber-tricks

NPSA or NCSC?

The article and NPSA's own web page don't seem to explain how their mission brief differs from that of GCHQ's public-facing offshoot. Both seem to be geared towards hardening businesses and public institutions against attack, and more generally assessing risk.

Any ideas, or are we going for the US approach of having a massive security bureaucracy with overlapping roles?

Chipmakers threaten to defect to US, EU if UK doesn't get its semiconductor plans sorted

Re: >Where's the Brexit bonus?

Part of the problem is that there was/is no clear consensus on what "Brexit" means. It means something different to each person that voted for it and, from the look of the last few years, every person that's attempted to implement it

For password protection, dump LastPass for open source Bitwarden

+1 for Bitwarden

There was a thread on here many years ago that convinced me to get a premium subscription and I've never looked back. The UI is great, straight to point with no unnecessary bloat, particularly the iOS apps... a rare thing these days! The LastPass debacle is making me think I should switch to my own server too. Anyhow... +1 for Bitwarden

Rights groups threaten legal action over NHS data pilot based on Palantir tech

A pint

for the campaign groups and ethical law firms that continue to fight for what little privacy we have left

Musk: Twitter will have 1 billion monthly users inside 18 months

Re: More Twitter numbers

And a partridge in a pear tree

Microsoft's $69B deal to buy Activision Blizzard under investigation by EU regulators

The combination of supply issues and the economic climate have meant Microsoft and Sony have had a tough enough time getting people to upgrade their PS4s and Xbox Ones. The expectation that PS5 owners will sell up, no doubt at a big loss due to a lack games, and buy a Series X/S seems a massive gamble

Big brands urged to pause Twitter ads until Elon's learned how this all works

Re: Because…

The Kingdom Holding Company / Prince Al Waleed Talal / the Saudi state maintained their holding and are still the second largest shareholders behind Musk

https://nitter.net/Alwaleed_Talal/status/1585975226567110656#m

India's – and Infosys's – favorite son-in-law Rishi Sunak is next UK PM

When you're that wealthy it's almost impossible to calculate an actual figure, especially with public information, and estimates can vary by 100s of millions. Relying on tax returns + assets gives a good estimate for you or I but the super-rich will have so many sources of wealth, in so many jurisdictions, that it's likely they don't even know how much they're worth. There are also numerous ways of calculating "wealth".

The reality is that it will be fluctuating with the markets and whichever way the wind's blowing.

Financial watchdogs want to know what traders are talking about on WhatsApp

Question - how?

How could the banks mentioned, let alone the FCA, ever get a proper view of the 'business' that's done on personal-device WhatsApp chats? Is there a legal mechanism (UK) that allows them to spot check?!

BOFH: It's Friday, it's time to RTFM

Re: Watch for hidden acronyms.

A prime example of where the acronym surely came before the word soup used to justify it

Edit: Beaten to it. First I've heard of backronym but I like it

First-ever James Webb Space Telescope image revealed

Re: Frustrating...

Kills me. I just wanna hop in a blue box and see it all

Netflix to crack down on account sharing, offer ad-laden cheaper options

'Peak Netflix'

A large technology platform intent on making the user experience worse with every new step? Colour me surprised. I can't be the only one that's noticed the quality of content has fallen, the price has gone up, and with adverts being introduced it'll turn into an even larger data mine than it already is. It's a shame because I've been with Netflix since the start and it's historically been a great, reasonably priced service.

The experience of the social media giants suggests they'll rake it in for a couple of years before completely losing sight of their core function and fading into irrelevance.

1,000-plus AI-generated LinkedIn faces uncovered

RE: managed to 'sign up' around 2/3 of the available working age population

Given it has been around for 18+ years and it's incredibly easy to create a basic account, it wouldn't surprise me if this figure was correct even if the majority are dormant.

Certainly among office workers everyone I have ever searched for seems to have one.

Sony Interactive Entertainment pulls PlayStation from Russia

Re: War ... huh ... what is it good for?

You're assuming the people are voting in free and fair elections but they aren't. It's just another example of the people never winning

War ... huh ... what is it good for?

Seems the tipping point of large multinationals abandoning Russia has been reached, and decades of socioeconomic development are falling apart at warp speed. The people never win

Grab some tissues: Meta's share price tanks after Facebook emits latest figures

Re: Creepy but...

People that obfuscate data are a tiny minority on social media. The vast majority hand over everything that's asked of them, and more, especially 5-10 years ago when privacy issues were less of a news story. They're also not using any privacy features like VPNs, cookie blockers, ad blockers etc. so Facebook know literally all there is to know about them.

The advertising for this majority is highly specific to the point of being very creepy to you or me, and advertisers lap it up.

COVID-19 cases surge as do sales of fake vaccination cards – around $100 for something you could get free

Re: Forgery

In the UK, presenting a forged vaccine document at an airport or somewhere similar is fraud by false representation and carries a maximum sentence of 10 years.

Numerous people have been charged with using fake certificates, though I've not found anything on the sentences they actually received...

Verified: UK.gov launching plans for yet another digital identity scheme

Laugh, or cry?

"Digital identities could help reduce cases of online fraud because they are much harder for criminals to access"

Facebook uses one billion Instagram photos to build massive object-recognition AI that partly trained itself

Re: 1 billion images

Facebook has been using facial recognition to auto-tag photos since at least 2011, nothing new here

China watches 170,000 years’ worth of short videos every day

Re: Seriously?

Given my experience of people that get sucked into TikTok's infinite-scroll, this is entirely plausible