* Posts by frank ly

6077 publicly visible posts • joined 10 Jun 2009

This story is no more

frank ly

Ah, Memories

I read the story when it was here, in all its glory. It didn't last long but it burned brightly. Maybe it used up all of its fuel?

Samsung's Shixby: Reviewers unimpressed with S8 digital assistant

frank ly

Picture ....

"... the embarrassing Apple camp where people shove unwanted apps forced on them by Cupertino into an "Apple shit" folder."

.... or it doesn't happen!

Microsoft and Rambus will get schwifty in quantum-cum-cryogenic computation collab

frank ly

There's an amusing fifteen second vignette at the end of every episode. My OCD habit of watching all the end credits has payed off with this series.

Oh snap! UK Prime Minister Theresa May calls June election

frank ly

Re: So...

This one is also amusing and is 'mainstream':

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/reluctant-theresa-may-reluctantly-calls-general-election-a7688796.html

That apple.com link you clicked on? Yeah, it's actually Russian

frank ly

I'm using Palemoon 27.0.3 on Linux and those first two links have different behaviour. The first one shows as "https://xn--80ak6aa92e.com/" and the second one shows as "https://www.epic.com" when I hover the cursor over it.

Australia scraps temporary visas for skilled workers

frank ly

Re: Intetesting

I didn't realise there were people who made spelling mistakes in one-word titles and then failed to notice and correct them.

Switch on your smartphone camera and look how fertile I am

frank ly

".. I have no interest in childish double-entendres."

You can't do it twice then? (That sounded a lot more funny immediately after I'd thought of it.)

Sysadmin 'trashed old bosses' Oracle database with ticking logic bomb'

frank ly

Re: Conversion?

Not a stolen hammer. I pick your hammer up, break your window with it and then put the hammer down where I found it.

Note: I've just been reading about 'conversion' in Wikipedia. It has a long and complicated history in law. The hammer scenario is probably not conversion but only a lawyer could say for sure.

frank ly

Conversion?

If I use your hammer to break your window, do I get charged with two crimes?

Free health apps laugh in the face of privacy, sell your wheezing data

frank ly

Re: If enough people

I've told my Health-Track-O-Tron app that I have low blood pressure, rabies and bubonic plague. I'm waiting for adverts for pills to see what it comes up with.

UK.gov cuts deal with Microsoft to avoid £15m post-Brexit price hike

frank ly

Cloudy Outlook

"... increase on-premise licensing by 13 per cent and cloud licensing and services by 22 per cent. It blamed "sustained currency changes" which led to a "price misalignment" of the pound."

So, the on-premise licensing contract was to be paid in 'real' money and the cloud licensing in 'cloudy' money. Hence the different increases? I've always found finance to be confusing.

Ofsted downplays site security concerns

frank ly

The truth is out there

On the one hand:

"There is no mechanism for verifying the person providing feedback is a parent, no token or means of identifying the person, any email address can be used to sign up and the process could easily be automated," according to Oli.

On the other:

"Parents wishing to submit a review must first register with a password, verify their email address and accept the terms of use." [An Ofstead spokesman]

They sound mutually exclusive but in fact, they are not.

Subpostmasters prepare to fight Post Office over wrongful theft and false accounting accusations

frank ly

Words

"In 2015, the Post Office refuted the findings of that report, ..."

Did they refute the findings or did they deny the findings or did they disagree with the findings? There is a difference.

Apple’s premium TV plans – the hobby doomed to stay that way

frank ly

Eating dinosaur droppings

I don't want to subscribe to a channel or to a 'bundle'. I just want to watch every episode of The Expanse, Better Call Saul, Preacher, Black Mirror and a few other series shortly after they're made available. If only there was some kind of common micropayment system that every provider used. In the meantime, I'll carry on using a different and very convenient way of watching them.

Germany gives social networks 24 hours to delete criminal content

frank ly

This will be interesting and maybe nasty

"... those who feel aggrieved by material posted about them should be able to learn the true identity of the poster."

Maybe the US Department of Homeland Security could apply to a German court to force Twitter to give them the identity of @ALT_uscis.

Ubuntu UNITY is GNOME-MORE: 'One Linux' dream of phone, slab, desktop UI axed

frank ly

"Ubuntu offers a good compromise between solid but out of date Debian Stable and bleeding edge Debian Unstable."

There's Debian Testing of course.

Adblock Plus owners commandeer Pirate Bay man's tip jar Flattr

frank ly

One wallet to pay them all

That could be risky. Will it be topped up using your credit card, Paypal, Bitcoin, etc?

McAfee is McAfee again, promises security with kum ba yah

frank ly

Together Is Power

Slogan Is Nonsense

Wi-Fi sex toy with built-in camera fails penetration test

frank ly

Details

I assume the 'device' has a light at the tip. Considering the skill level shown so far, I wouldn't be surprised if they'd forgotten that on the prototype.

Hundreds of millions 'wasted' on UK court digitisation scheme

frank ly

Re: Introduction to CJS Common Platform Programme

That was confusing.

Ubuntu 17.04 beta FACT: It's what's on the inside that matters, not looks

frank ly

Testing in a VM

It's not expensive or difficult to buy/have a spare hard drive and fit it into your desktop/laptop for a 'real' installation.

Lochs, rifle stocks and two EPIC sea gates: Thomas Telford's Highland waterway

frank ly

I'm sure the original specification was for 109.9ft and 49.8ft and the article has simply converted those specifications to SI units.

Uber wasn't to blame for robo-ride crash – or was it? Witness said car tried to 'beat the lights'

frank ly

Re: Yellows, no

I remember, one day years ago, seeing an amber light with a good distance to go so I took my foot off the throttle and pressed the brake for a smooth controlled stop. There was the sound of squealing tyres behind me. I was being followed by a driver who applied the 'accelerate on amber' rule and thought that I would too.

From what I've heard, the 'accelerate on amber' rule is quite common in Ireland.

Is this a solution to Trump signing away your digital privacy? We give Invizbox Go a go

frank ly

Re: Opting Out?

I've noticed this VPN blocking by some websites. It seems to be sites that do sign up and payment processing. I think they're trying to prevent fraudsters from misusing credit cards.

Financial fraud losses in the UK last year topped £20m a day – report

frank ly

I can do that for £2m a day

Just send your money to ......

Creators Update gives Windows 10 a bit of an Edge, but some old annoyances remain

frank ly

Getting Creative

"Download options now include "Run" for executable files ..."

They need to have 'Run As Administrator'. That would give one heck of a Creators facility.

I shall look forward to getting this eventually. I know, from experience with the Anniversary Update, that I'll have to set aside about an hour or so for the update process and I'll never be sure if it's finished, what with all those restarts.

I've stopped/blocked LAN access because it started writing its crap onto my network drives. I thought that they were MY network drives but I was obviously wrong. Now, I use a FAT32 USB stick if I want to transfer anything into Windows on the rare occasions that I use it (Daz Studio 3D and Photoshop CS6).

'Trash-80' escapes the dustbin of history with new TRS-80 emulator

frank ly

Re: Z-80

I used to design and build prototype industrial controllers and display equipment. The 6502 had 2kB of on-board RAM so it was easier and cheaper to lash up a prototype and cheaper to produce the final product. The Z-80 did have a very nice instruction set, as you say.

frank ly

Z-80

I spent a year writing assembler code for the Z-80, then I moved on to the 6502 ..... ahhhh, memories (and registers).

One in five mobile phones shipped abroad are phoney – report

frank ly

Re: Are we defining "fake" here as...

I bought an IoT lighting controller from that store. It was called the 'Shady Hans Make Light Work'.

ESA picks final two ExoMars landing site candidates

frank ly

Google Maps link

I had a look. It has some kind of false colour satellite view but no road maps and no street view. It really is a backwater.

Alabama joins anti-web-smut crusade with mandatory opt-out filters

frank ly

Nice work on the final paragraph

I smiled :)

So my ISP can now sell my browsing history – what can I do?

frank ly

Dual VPN?

I have a PIA VPN service and my Firefox browser has the Zenmate VPN plugin and my Opera browser has its own built-in VPN capability. If I activate the PIA VPN and enable the browser VPN, then I get a dual hop whereby my exit point and website destination is known by the browser VPN operator but they don't know where I come from. Similarly, PIA know where I come from but they don't know where my browser connection eventually goes to (they know it initially goes to another VPN provider).

This seems to be more secure in terms of privacy if you're very concerned about that. I think you'd have to clear all cookies and maybe randomise your User Agent string, etc.

Your internet history on sale to highest bidder: US Congress votes to shred ISP privacy rules

frank ly

You are what you read

"... whether you have any medical conditions; and so on ..."

Any time I read about or hear about some medical condition, I read about it on Wikipedia (and other sites) and follow any interesting looking links. If a similar law passes in the UK, they'll send a medical SWAT team round to my house to seal it off and isolate me.

It may be time to start using a VPN more often. The Opera browser has a free one built in to it.

Note: My ISP (Virgin Media), along with others I'm sure, has the ability to inject their own tab into my browser session to show me anything they want. They have used this technique in the past to nag me about selecting a service option. I would not be surprised if the ISPs themselves started injecting adverts into their customer's browsers in this and other ways.

FYI Docs.com users: You may have leaked passwords, personal info – thousands have

frank ly

If they'd done it 'properly'

If Microsoft had set the default option to 'private' then they'd have been inundated with help-desk calls from people who were trying to make documents public and failing because they hadn't read the details or been able to find the options menu item. This is how most people are, in the 'ordinary world'.

I remember, years ago, using Limewire and being amazed by how many people were sharing their entire C:drive because they hadn't found the menu item to control which folder(s) were to be shared.

It seems to be difficult to make software that does everything that people want it to do, need it to do and to do that without an arcane menu system and/or an annoying set of questions before it allows you to start using it.

UK digital minister Matt Hancock praises 'crucial role' of encryption

frank ly

Marconi, victim of 'scientific hooliganism'

I've never heard that story before and yet it seems like something that would have been repeated often, especially in recent years with people's concerns about security and privacy. Apparently, it happened in 1903.

http://herc-hastings.org.uk/marconi-caught-out-in-1903-by-john-heys-g3bdq/

https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg21228440-700-dot-dash-diss-the-gentleman-hackers-1903-lulz/

How Ford has slammed the door on Silicon Valley's autonomous vehicles drive

frank ly

I can imagine

"Imagine manipulating Spotify via your steering wheel controls, for example."

This should also flash all the lights on the car as a warning to other road users to stay well away from that vehicle.

Douglas Coupland: The average IQ is now 103 and the present is melting into the future

frank ly

Random!

"Speaking to an audience of Konica Minolta customers in Berlin ..."

For some reason, I'll always remember the start of that sentence.

Ubuntu 17.04 inches closer to production

frank ly

Try the next Debian

After four years with Linuxmint, I got Debian 9 RC2 about two weeks ago and it's what I use now. I had to track down and install a few things (not difficult) and do a bit of wrangling here and there but it looks good and works well. For any of you who use Ubuntu or Linuxmint, I'd recommend giving it a test drive. You can keep it updated to the current standard and the final release standard as time goes by.

Bloke whose drone was blasted out of sky by angry dad loses another court battle for compo

frank ly

Re: It's too bad

"... get a cheap drone yourself and kamikaze it into the opposition !!!"

It could be marketed as the 'Predator' drone, perhaps.

Yet another job menaced by AI! Uh, wait, it says here... Dance Dance Revolution designers

frank ly

Dance Wellies

Is that a thing now?

Good news, everyone! Two pints a day keep heart problems at bay

frank ly

A question

What is the cause/mechanism that gives 'never drinkers' a worse outcome than moderate drinkers? Do they never exercise whereas moderate drinkers have regular walks to the pub?

Defence in Depth: A 'layered' strategy can repel cold attackers

frank ly

Analogies

"Oh, incidentally: if you Google the military concept of Defence in Depth, ..."

The military have a concept called 'counter-attack' but you probably don't want to go there.

LinkedIn starts piping sales data to Salesforce and Dynamics

frank ly

Flush

I joined LinkedIn a long time ago and quickly realised it was a spam source. I'd signed up with a 'junk' Hotmail address so I just told Hotmail that every LinkedIn email was spam. After a short time, none of them were forwarded to one of my 'proper' email addresses. Yahoo mail has similar facilities and they're very useful for that initial filtering.

Malware 'disguised as Siemens software drills into 10 industrial plants'

frank ly

Re: The ineritors of Stuxnet

Blackmail/extortion and mercenary attacks are all I can think of. It may be possible to do remote monitoring to lift confidential process control 'secrets' I suppose.

Coppers 'persistently' breach data protection laws with police tech

frank ly

How about:

Your new neighbours can PNC check you to make sure you aren't dodgy.

Your daughter's new boyfriend can PNC check you all to make sure he's not getting involved with a criminal family.

Would most people say yes?

$1m Popslate e-ink screen venture tanks, Indiegogo backers flame out

frank ly

Shhhh. Listen to the storyteller.

Fix crap Internet of Things security, booms Internet daddy Cerf

frank ly

Vint Cerf

He's also one of the 'elders of the internet'.

Google Spanner in the NewSQL works?

frank ly

What time is it?

"This is an implementation of synchronized clocks using GPS receivers and atomic clocks in every data center. This can cause problems during a partition if a node can’t connect to a master – its clock will drift, causing the election of Paxos masters to slow down."

I'd have thought that a GPS/atomic clock would have enough accuracy and resolution that any data centre that was unable to connect would still have the same time as other data centres, for quite a while.

Large Hadron Collider turns up five new particles

frank ly

Puzzled, as usual

"Ωc0 is in the same class of baryon as protons and neutrons, made of charm and strange quarks instead of the up and down quarks seen in atomic nuclei particles."

Where did the charm and strange quarks come from, since the LHC throws ordinary nucleii at each other? Did the high energy of the collision convert them from up and down quarks? If so, then it seems that most baryons are 'simply' short lived rearrangements of existing components.

DNS lookups can reveal every web page you visit, says German boffin

frank ly

Explanation please?

I still don't understand how analysis of DNS records for my IP address can reveal that I looked at en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alcoholism (or whatever). Are they saying that Wikipedia's responses are different in such a way that the page can be distinguished from other pages?