* Posts by John Smith 19

16327 publicly visible posts • joined 10 Jun 2009

Of course a mystery website attacking city-run broadband was run by an ISP. Of course

John Smith 19 Gold badge
Thumb Up

Great Plains is starting to sound like a city you might like to move to....

The city council seem quite clued up about technical matters and the citizens (amazingly) seem to grasp that this stuff costs money, but the benefits are quite substantial.

LISA Pathfinder sniffed out gravitational signals down to micro-Hertz

John Smith 19 Gold badge
Thumb Up

"gas molecules bouncing around inside the satellite were sufficient to register as noise. "

So "Must improve initial vacuum" gets added to the to do list.

Which is sort of the point of a "pathfinder" mission.

These are excellent results for a precursor mission but 2034? That said the US project of testing relativity with perfect glass spherical gyroscopes on orbit took more like 50 to get all the tech developed.

Well done.

Vast majority of NHS trusts have failed cyber security assessment, Brit MPs told

John Smith 19 Gold badge
Unhappy

"the NHS could have fended off WannaCry "if..it had taken simple steps to protect its computers"

So b***er the "centralized" whatever.

Most of it could be implemented by each trust if their PHB management (and that's where the ultimate responsibility lies) gave a f**k.

UK Home Office grilled over biometrics, being clingy with folks' mugshots

John Smith 19 Gold badge
Gimp

""I suppose it's because the government runs the criminal justice system.""

But you can bet Facebook would like to do some of that as well.

As others have noted their should be some flga that says "yes, he/she is an active case" or "no, nothing else is happening."

Unless of course the ambiguity is deliberate.

MY GOD, IT'S FULL OF CARS: SpaceX parks a Tesla in orbit (just don't mention the barge)

John Smith 19 Gold badge
Unhappy

probably the *real* achievements are not so obvious.

Stuff like starting up a 27 engine vehicle (biggest since the Russian N-1, which never achieved a single full launch), guiding a payload about 5800x further than GEO, synchronizing the landings of 3 booster stages.

The big surprise is the claim the 3rd booster took out the landing barge, given all the other failed recoveries left the barge pretty much intact.

Nunes FBI memo: Yep, it's every bit as terrible as you imagined

John Smith 19 Gold badge
Coat

I believe Trump will go down as the best damm President....

Russia ever bought.

John Smith 19 Gold badge
Big Brother

"It should be on the pages of an alt-right blog or a Mail Online comment section, "

Patience, Citizen.

We are working as fast as we can.

Russian-monitoring Shetlands radar station was nearly sold off

John Smith 19 Gold badge
Joke

Another President tweets.

<Russian accent >

We wants it

We needs it

Britain must have hard Brexit and leave NATO.

</Russian accent >

John Smith 19 Gold badge
Joke

A President tweets.

And after PM May made such an effort to cozy up to President Putin. Sad..

GCHQ unit claims it has 'objectively' made the UK a less desirable target to cybercrims

John Smith 19 Gold badge
Gimp

"in this case "active" means getting off our backside and doing something, "

Apart from recording a copy of every email, text and phone call metadata for everyone in the UK forever?

How thoughtful.

And because every other bit of UK infrastructure seems to be owned by a foreign company (or even in the case of Thames Water a foreign state owned company) and therefor could not give a f**k about defending itself because it's not actually a legal requirement to do so.

Here's why online social networks are bad for humanity, the nerds who helped build them tut-tut

John Smith 19 Gold badge
Holmes

"Their business models..encourage them to do whatever they can to grab..data"

Who knew?

And you just worked this out after you cashed out?

Seriously?

I smell a "solution" about to be offered.....

Morrisons launches bizarre Yorkshire Pudding pizza thing

John Smith 19 Gold badge
Coat

Sounds nasty...And yet....

Oddly compelling.

New click-to-hack tool: One script to exploit them all and in the darkness TCP bind them

John Smith 19 Gold badge
Unhappy

It's true you can't keep a *really* determined attacker out, but $deity can you stop the

f**kwitted stupid s**t from happening.

And I'd suggest a lot of the time it is the f**kwitted s**t that happens.

And as the Internet_of_Trouble grows more of it will accumulate with more core builds by code monkeys despite best practice reference builds being available.

Let's be real. Patching is always going to be a thing. It's a process, not an event. Get used to it and plan to do it. The test environment and the automation you will need to acquire can (and should) pay for itself in the various other tests you can run on new hardware for security, usability and compatibility. This is Systems Administration for adults, not running round like a headless chicken.

Tell your PHBs "Either we look for the holes in our security now, or let the Black hats find them first and f**k us (and by "us" I mean your bosses) up at their convenience." Because that's about the situation.

John Smith 19 Gold badge
Unhappy

"We're surprised it took this long."

TBH....

Me too.

OTOH this is the open world.

If I were a Black hat I'd develop this for my personal toolkit to increase my "productivity." You'd not know I had it unless you got hold of personal development environment. You'd only be aware of it by the number of hits on the .io database and (possibly) the activity of a metasploit run if I'd hosted it on a (compromised) cloud account.

Think of it as the Black hat equivalent of constructing your own light saber.

So my suspicion* would be top grade Black hats have tools like this but they are smart enough to fly below the radar by keeping them to themselves.

*Just a deduction. I don't know any Black hats. I don't know how to talk to any and I don't know how to find them.

Capita contract probed after thousands of clinical letters stuffed in a drawer somewhere

John Smith 19 Gold badge
FAIL

"In the absence of any agreed and contracted process for handling correspondence for "

If you didn't ask for it (specifically, and in detail) you don't get it.

Now I might think that "S**t's accumulating in our offices" would be a flag to contact someone in the DoH and ask them "What do you want done with it?"

Did this happen?

Maybe and the DoH asked "What's it going to cost?" or maybe they were told "We're not sure as the guy who deals with that stuff was let go two months ago."

or maybe they didn't bother.

Remember the Golden Rule of Outsourcing.

"Everything the client forgets has to get done is another opportunity to charge for additional work. "

Besides the XPoint: Persistent memory tech is cool, but the price tag... OUCH

John Smith 19 Gold badge
Unhappy

Yes. That sounds about right.

It's evolution

if you can't take over another products niche in the chain you're pretty much fooked.

Oxford Uni boffins get things rolling at new electric motor factory

John Smith 19 Gold badge
Unhappy

They key differentiation is that YASA motors are intended to be in-wheel

I don't think so.

That tech's been around (and used) in the Magnequench series since the mid 1980's Solar Challenge races in Australia.

Oh dear, Capita: MPs put future UK.gov outsourcing in the spotlight

John Smith 19 Gold badge
Unhappy

Still sounds like "Carillion 2" to me

But we'll see.

Tech bad-boy Uber crafts tool to make staff follow the rules in future (er, coding rules, that is)

John Smith 19 Gold badge
Unhappy

I suspect it's away of being able to say "You're codes crap" without it sounding personal.

Historically "lint" existed because the Unix C compiler was (AIUI) fast but fairly loose in it's precision, assuming its users were all competent and were only violating the strict letter of the language (as far as there was one) for reasons it would not understand (like needing to trade speed for portability).

But to ensure tighter, more legal code Lint was developed.

However making a cross language "lint" is much harder.

What's are the "semantic primes" (to use a linguistics term) for all languages? What has to be checked in "language specific" modules? and so o.

New York lobs $210m at telcos to hook up 120k homes, businesses with bumpkin broadband

John Smith 19 Gold badge
FAIL

"At Verizon, we don't wait for the future, we build it,"

As long as someone pays us to up front.

What arrant bu***hit.

Is anyone thinking the big difference is competition versus no competition?

Something to keep in mind, perhaps?

Crim-checker IT system update fail has cost UK taxpayer 'MEEELLIONS'

John Smith 19 Gold badge
Coat

Is anyone else thinking.....

"So Mr Warboys do you have any unspent criminal convictions?"

"No"

"Excellent, well then you can start your new job driving our year 10 students to the swimming baths next Monday."

Crowdfunding small print binned as Retro Computers Ltd loses court refund action

John Smith 19 Gold badge
Unhappy

IIRC Sinclair "pre sold" hardware then used the money to get the mfg running.

However IIRC he had the prototype sorted before the ads started appearing.

So he had a design to with a parts list, board layouts etc, ready to go.

Not 2 years from estimated delivery date.

These guys just sound like scam merchants. *

*But of course they might deliver something in the end.

Billionaire bros Bezos, Buffett become bonkers bio brokers: Swap W in AWS for H for healthcare

John Smith 19 Gold badge
Thumb Up

"Looks like he's one management meeting from a David ** moment...."

Nice.

Although, y'know, built a multi $Bn business so not unimpressive grasp of how to operate on a large scale.

John Smith 19 Gold badge
Unhappy

Buffet's often said the trouble with BH being so big is the lack of stuff you can buy into.

I don't mean could buy into but want to buy into.

That is that's well enough run they are happy to invest and gives the sort of return they expect on a long term basis.

I'm betting he's seeing this more from the "Health Insurance" end (BH started in insurance) than the IT stuff.

John Smith 19 Gold badge
Coat

Once they are out of the picture they can then negotiate drug prices on a massive scale.

Meet the new monopoly.

Same as the old oligopoly...

Just can't catch a break, can ya, Capita? Shares tumble 40% amid yet another profit warning

John Smith 19 Gold badge
Coat

Massive share price and recently hired new CEO...

Is anyone else thinking "Carillion 2" ?

What's there cash flow like and have they been doing the whole

1) Wafer thin margins to get the business

2) Using the upfront payments to pay down creditors

3) Delaying payments on the rest of their creditors

4) Borrowing a shed load of cash while hoping interest rates don't rise very much.

Bring the people 'beautiful' electric car charging points, calls former transport minister

John Smith 19 Gold badge
Coat

""Hayes hooks"" The place for a hook up? Like "cottaging"

Well, he is a Tory MP.*

*You know where I'm going with this.

Johnny Hacker hauls out NSA-crafted Server Message Block exploits, revamps 'em

John Smith 19 Gold badge
Unhappy

"Damn, people are still using SMB??" "Also, who the hell exposes the SMB port to anything external?"

Well, yes.

Good questions.

I thought these attack vectors were obsolete as the OS's they ran on.

Clearly these guys think it's enough of a thing to make their time and trouble worthwhile.

So what do they know that we don't?

Terror law expert to UK.gov: Why backdoors when there's so much other data to slurp?

John Smith 19 Gold badge
Gimp

*if* of course this was about "security" and "keeping people safe"

But it's not.

It's about warrantless access to data.

all data

all the time

Forever.

Why you may ask?

Because

<gollum>

We wants it.

Because we can.

</gollum>

And that is all the "reason" any data fetishist has ever needed for this.

UK.gov mass data slurping ruled illegal – AGAIN

John Smith 19 Gold badge

"Quite funny how being in power suddenly re-adjusts your moral compass."

What makes you think Davis is in power?

With JRM already drawing up his charge sheet for the epic round of finger pointing and blame assignment that will happen when Brexit "completes" and people wake up to what an utter waste of time it was* for the UK.

*Although pretty good for D. Trump, V. Putin and R. Murdoch, who all backed it to the hilt.

NASA finds satellite, realises it has lost the software and kit that talk to it

John Smith 19 Gold badge
Thumb Up

Fair to say a real "Citizen Scientist"

As for comments about no archiving....

If all the probes you controlled with this stuff are accounted for and in either known orbits or en route for the next star system (very slowly) why bother? Not to mention yet another budget cut to the planetary programme. :-(.

Very well done for finding it, and getting a response out of it after what 13 years?

GOLD! Always believe in your role. You've got the power to know you're indestructible...

John Smith 19 Gold badge
Unhappy

The inclination of the orbit is way off, which is why they probably lost comms.

This suggests a partial launch failure.

Pity. A5 was around 80 successful launches in a row.

John Smith 19 Gold badge
Thumb Up

The start of a trend?

Note this is not a "secondary payload" bolted to the launcher. It's a secondary payload to the satellite.

IIRC some sats carry transponders for the SAT/SAR (satellite Search & Rescue) service that are distress beacons for anywhere on the planet.

I hope NASA does more more of these. Obviously it has to be something that is small enough for the commercial operators not to mind carrying and provide useful data from the orbit they want to operate in (which sounds a lot like GEO comm sats mostly). Logically they need about 3 of them to get full Earth coverage, and the sats have to be at latitudes far enough apart to get each one at least 120 degrees FoV.

BTW Some years ago JPL looked at doing probes to other planets launched as secondary payloads on Comm sat launches. The payoff was not waiting a decade to get the funding for their own LV. The downside was the very limited (by JPL standards) mass. So a couple of instruments, rather than the half a dozen or a dozen of their typical launch. So 1-2 instruments per launch, but maybe 3-4 launches a year.

This seems to use a similar approach. One really good (and quite heavy) instrument to get a lot of data.

Google yanks cash firehose from Lunar X Moonshot comp. The actual Moon shot one

John Smith 19 Gold badge

Oops. Just rechecked Pegasus XL. It's $40m/launch minimum.

So yes the Electron looks like it in this payload range, unless you fly as a secondary (which can be very cheap, but you're at the mercy of the prime customers schedule and orbit needs).

John Smith 19 Gold badge
Unhappy

Buy a $63m SX launch to win a $30m prize?

Or (maybe) $15m for a Pegasus XL (may have gone up a bit).

Very long odds.

FYI: Processor bugs are everywhere – just ask Intel and AMD

John Smith 19 Gold badge
Unhappy

Microprocessors really are getting just like mainframes,

right down to how they handle a hardware design failure.

Simple.

Patch the microcode.

John Smith 19 Gold badge
Unhappy

you know the list of flaws. They really aren't intended to public consumption,

Because the "public" might decide all microprocessor mfg are a bit s**t?

Quell f**king surprise.

Cold calling director struck off for ‘flagrant’ breach of duties

John Smith 19 Gold badge
Unhappy

Obviously some kind of administrative oversight for which he's being unfairly punished.

Demonstrating why sarcasm is so tricky to pull off on the interwebs, and why we have a "Joke" icon

If you've ever wondered whether the FCC boss is a Big Cable stooge – well, wonder no more

John Smith 19 Gold badge
Unhappy

"Pai is about as smart as a rock and should be replaced immediately. "

Wrong.

He's as smart as a lawyer "formerly" paid by Big Cable companies to argue their effective monopolies were Good For America.

He's not stupid.

He's actively helping their interests.

The best we can hope for is his personality discorder blinds him to how widely hated he is and he (literally) won't see the hammer dropping on him. The "I thought they all loved me," self deluding BS of such people, despite their endless vicious behaviour toward others.

John Smith 19 Gold badge
Unhappy

Pai is what passes for a good government stooge.

Indeed, like that French definition of an honest politician.

"Once we buy him, he stays ours."

John Smith 19 Gold badge
Unhappy

That level of ability to completely ignore anyone else's opinion but your own...

It's almost Presidential.

If you're talking Trump as the President of course.

And we are.

Americans can be so proud of their record on diversity here.

They have at least two people with serious personality disorders in positions of wielding substantial power and influence.

Hey UK.gov – cute tweaks to snoop regime. Your EU law reading needs work

John Smith 19 Gold badge
Gimp

"Office of Communications Data Authorisations"... "would not be a judicial body."

So a less official name would be

"The Office of Rubber Stamping WTF the Data Fetishists Want."

*Making it an "Office of" at the start really helps in making the rest a suitable sentence. A nice touch from the "Home" Civil Service.

Ever wondered why tech products fail so frequently? No, me neither

John Smith 19 Gold badge
Unhappy

" There was an old joke that any component on a cart - that didn't fail one day after the"

It's actually called the "One horse Shay" design, after a short poem about such a cart.

Here we go again... UK Prime Minister urges nerds to come up with magic crypto backdoors

John Smith 19 Gold badge

Where does she expect her hairbrained idea of encryption to come from?

She doesn't have an idea.

It's just like any politician.

<gollum>

We wants it.

We wants it

We wants it.

</gollum>

Pope wants journalism like the Catholic church wants child sex abuse probes: Slow, aimless...

John Smith 19 Gold badge
Coat

It's not like the Russian trolls are literally burning people at the stake

True.

Although with the necessary funding I'm sure they could supply that service as well.

Brit escorts: Without the internet to keep us safe, we'd be totally screwed

John Smith 19 Gold badge
Unhappy

So the internet's not just made for pron.

It's also made for sex.

Yeay.

I'm betting this is what Government Ministers really mean when they talk about "The gig economy."

£60m, five years late... Tag criminal tagging as a 'catastrophic waste' of taxpayers' cash

John Smith 19 Gold badge
WTF?

"when Capita..took over the delivery..electronic monitoring services after Serco and G4S"

So Gold, Bronze & Silver in the large project f**kup* awards then.

This also looks like earning points on the "Look, see, we tried to work with these SME's, like the Cabinet Office said, but they are just don't get it. Now if someone like Carilion had been available, because they really understand us" agenda.

*Silver for their Stirling display of work at the Olympics.

John Smith 19 Gold badge
FAIL

Classice Govt IT F**kup template #3. Implement a good idea in the worst possible way.

See NIRS II etc.

John Smith 19 Gold badge
Unhappy

"we (as taxpayers) have shelled out handsomely for a system that has failed, "

But don't you feel that the criminal has been punished?

Because AFAIK that's the core idea of the British system.

BTW IIRC the UK has both the highest proportion of its population (per 1000 head of population) and the highest repeat offending rates in Europe.

But no one likes a "Bad guy" and everyone loves governments "getting tough" on crime.

With a place at prison costing more than a place at a University (not even a good university) you could (literally) pay each repeat offender £20k/pa to not commit another crime*

Like farming "Set aside" for crims, not famers, which HMG seems to have no trouble doing.

Death notice: Moore's Law. 19 April 1965 – 2 January 2018

John Smith 19 Gold badge

Re: You do know that Moore’s law says nothing about speed?Then it would be Amdahls Law we're after!

Correct.