* Posts by Infernoz

597 publicly visible posts • joined 20 Sep 2006

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Hackers actively stealing Wi-Fi keys from vulnerable routers

Infernoz Bronze badge
Facepalm

Simples, buy your own better router and secure it properly.

Relying on fixed ISP provided router WiFi passwords was always a stupid idea because it is probably in an ISP database or easily calculated, which may get stolen/cracked eventually.

I parked the unreliable 2 Chinese boxes, and installed a combined Draytek VDSL2 and WiFi router, use my own long-random alpha-numeric WPA2 AES passwords for its WiFi names, and have configured the transmission power to only be enough to get reliable reception inside my house, so people outside will have a tough time getting a reliable signal outside for mischief attempts.

Apple again late to another market others pioneered. Or is it?

Infernoz Bronze badge

Re: Revisionism

BS, Creative moved from a CD size MP3 player (with a scroll wheel and high end audio support!) to a smaller than "Walkman" sized player, so Apple were not first at all!

Apple were sued by Creative for copying an MP3 player UI design; so Apple paid up!

Minidisc was too expensive, tiny capacity spinning optical media, and short lived; early MP3 players were better, used mini/micro Hard Disks, then flash players took over, and now mobiles/tablets do this.

I regarded optical media as an effectively obsolete nuisance 4 years ago, including all Blu-Ray, and moved all my optical media to my NAS then, and shredded all my recordable CDs and DVDs, I saw data corruption on several carefully-stored 'decent quality' disks much earlier and then due to dye layer rot, this rot was part of my motivation to migrate all my optical media!

Loyalty card? Really? Why data-slurping store cards need a reboot

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Mushroom

F'em, when benefits no longer worth the effort and loss of privacy.

Tesco card was worthless because the shop sucks.

Holland and Barrett card only worked on-line so can't be arsed to use it even on-line now and I can buy most stuff cheaper and better quality from bulk internet retailers.

Nectar Card benefits degraded so much, with unreasonable spending triggers or timed out too fast, and the credit card was a waste of time, so both out of my wallet.

Bulk Powders give points on my main account and regular heavy discount promotions, so easier than a separate loyalty card.

If benefits cards don't give me enough benefits, goodbye, I can save more with less hassle and more privacy by keeping an eye out for promotions, so what's the point.

And frack all Social Media regs/links too cheeky fracking re-tard-tailers!

Frack demographics, I generate plenty for view noise for ebay and amazon too, just for the hell of it.

The future often starts as a toy, so don't shun toy VR this Christmas

Infernoz Bronze badge
Meh

Really...

That friend must be loaded if they are considering giving a child an expensive VR system, which many adults couldn't even afford to justify for themselves, let alone a child!

Mobile phone VR is an insulting joke; decent VR currently looks to cost thousands of pounds on a high end, gaming desktop computer, a proper VR headset with 3D specific controllers (£659 in Currys just for a HTC Vive!). The HTC Vive looks like it still needs work and needs a significant 3m by 3m of clear floor space e.g. a large bedroom or lounge with wall mounts!

Most toys should be relatively cheap so that you can still afford to buy more of the same or different toys e.g. a Raspberry Pi or Ardino and bits rather than expensive VR kit. Technology can change a lot in just five years, so a child's tech. toys can rapidly become obsolete, as I've discovered repeatedly as an adult too!

Creative play is fine, but consumption tech., including games, can become an expensive and/or stupefying trap for children and adults. See the book "Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business" by Neil Postman.

Structuring our work and our lives around play is a nice idea, but requires a supportive environment including finance, spare mental energy, time and autonomy which can be really difficult as an employee, especially if your work is silo-ed and it, perpetual tech. catchup, research and other life stuff saps your mental energy. Academics and writers can seem rather cheeky with some of their suggestions given they probably have more freedom than most people, who have to produce work to meet bottom line targets for business.

No super-kinky web smut please, we're British

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Websites by torrent

I forget where, but I saw some work is being done to distribute web sites by torrent, so websites no longer need a domain name or IP address; you just need a magnet link and peers, which will be much harder to block.

'Fascist' seizes supremo search slot on Trump triumph

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Re: Fascism, bigotry, xenophobia, racism, and misogyny?

Agreed, Milo Yiannopoulos is brilliant at demolishing all the destructive crap the thick left wing thugs deposit!

Why I just bought a MacBook Air instead of the new Pro

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Meh

Re: A fair response.

Agreed laptops are a significant compromise. I had a work 16GB (two channel) i5 T450 Lenovo Ultrabook with SATA attached SSD, but cursed the lack of IO bandwidth; my new i7-6800K desktop, at home, with NVMe attached Samsung SSD 950 PRO, 32GB RAM (4 channel) and NVIDIA 1060 GPU is so much faster and easily worth the extra cost! My stopgap i3 HP laptop at home is now rarely used on a Dell USB3 dock.

Out of curiosity I did some research on the /costly/ Razor Core GPU enclosure for laptops and apparently you lose half the speed of a GPU mounted in a desktop PC, so it looks dire value!

I stopped bothering with fake RAID in desktops years ago, I now use and occasionally build new FreeNAS boxes with many-TB ZRAID2 arrays of WD Red drives and Parity RAM which are /much/ safer and faster than fake RAID and tired RAID 1 or 5; I share these on my Gigabit LAN and WiFi with multiple devices including Android tablets.

British banks chuck smartphone apps out of Windows

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Holmes

UWP is effectively a dead API

Windows phone is effectively dead and the tablets were underpowered and too expensive, so why bother, so the API is effectively dead!

PoisonTap fools your PC into thinking the whole internet lives in an rPi

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Facepalm

Re: Hmm...

Talking about ADSL is like talking about obsolete tech. like ancient phone modems, CDs and even BluRay; 21st century broadband should now be at least FttC or better FttP, and 21st century media should be on Flash and/or Cloud, it is tragic that anyone still has to make do with flaky ADSL now!

A broadband connection should be handled by a dedicated router with proper security (NAT, firewall, DoS protection), something a Raspberry Pi can't do, especially with only one /slow/ Ethernet port, so can't act as an Ethernet filter!

Antivirus tools are a useless box-ticking exercise says Google security chap

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Facepalm

Windows is insecure because it doesn't have a lean Micro Kernel

Having a bloated macro kernel with loads of legacy cruft like in Windows is a major reason why it is so hard to make and keep secure.

The Android model looked promising initially, but is seriously compromised by Google conflicts of interests, sloppy coarse permissions, lack of roles and lack of user choice/limits on permissions. Microsoft has also further compromised the security of Windows leading up to and in Windows 10 with it's own conflicts of interest!

Infernoz Bronze badge
Holmes

Re: less effort indeed

Use of NoScript, Request Policy Continued and other Browser security extensions in Firefox (expensive in Chrome, SRWare Iron or Opera because webkit uses a very memory expensive process for each!) are probably why I have very very rarely seen an anti-virus hit. I'd argue that a lot of commercial JavaScript scripts, inline content, links and cookies, are significant anti-privacy threats, so switching to HTML5 from Flash doesn't fix all the security issues!

I only run the light weight Avira anti-virus because bloated shit like McAfee can make an SSD machine seem nearly as slow as a spinning disk machine, this is especially curse inducing on I/O bandwidth crippled machines like even a 'decent' i5 ultrabook!

All the f'ing retarded websites, including corporate intranets, which /still/ haven't migrated to HTML5 from damned insecure Flash should have just be told to just die already by /all/ the browser providers!

The Java plugin will disappear when Oracle finally releases Java 9, assuming the released doesn't get delayed again past summer 2017, and it will probably be /much/ more secure due project Jigsaw, so all the anti-Java trolls can just STFU then.

IT outsourcing is soooo passé, says outsourcing giant Fujitsu

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Devil

Wolves and Vultures trying newer style smoke and mirrors

They are moving work from the workers of the same country/culture of the client to less capable workers in other countries who are not of the same culture (so cultural disconnect), basically disguised outsourcing, so FUs and greater costs for the client will be more likely; this asserted "transformation" is Horse Shit and disguised greed! Who do they think will provide the currency to pay for their services if they keep damaging the client countries economies like this?

I'm fed up seeing avoidable corporate FUs and the executives not having skin in the game to /really/ loose, and even perversely getting paid for mediocre performance and even failure, it's negligence and insane Psychopathy!

Race for wireless VR headset heats up

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Having a large Lithium battery or a pulsed Microwave transceiver on your head will always be a bad idea, the first could burn your head (even kill you), the other may cause Brain damage or cancer especially after long periods of use! The larger Lithium batteries get, the more dangerous they become, as illustrated by the exploding and flying Lithium cells when a Tesla car hit a tree recently!

No way is a power constrained CPU going to do high spec. VR, especially at higher display resolutions; what is needed is a VR headset with display units and sensors with a light power and optical data cable plugged into a vertical stand overhead, connected to a powerful _desktop_ gaming computer. Moore's Law is already in decline, so don't expect much more processing power for the same electrical power now.

Facebook agrees to dial back 'racial affinity' ads

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Big Brother

Both this Frankfurt School cultural sabotage and corporate abuses are evil

People of different cultures often respond more favourable to their cultural content despite the cultural/social propaganda & sabotage of multi-culturalism, Political Correctness, Victim cults, etc. spawned by the evil Communist Frankfurt School, spawned by insanely greedy banksters! Employers also naively take advantage of these toxic ideas to shift work to lower paid other culture workers, out of greed, but are ironically digging their or their children's early grave.

Facebook, like some other major corporate social media platforms, is a façade of shallow social interaction which abuses and censors user content and views, for corporate control and profit, so anything which hinders it is helpful. The corporate mainsteam and social media behaviour during the UK referendum and the USA elections revealed just how shockingly biased it has become to corporate and collectivist interests rather than real people's interests; this is dangerous because a lot of lazy and less intelligent people can be deceived into thinking and acting stupidily.

Google's new VR Daydream View will cripple your phone

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WTF?

Re: not a big problem

That picture is dumb and heat pipes suck because they use inflexible metal pipes and tend to require significant heatsink area/volume, so better to have the phone back resting on a silicone water bag, on a foam pad (to apply fitting pressure for different phone thicknesses and profiles), with flexible water pipes and have the water pumped through an external water cooler radiator, possibly not on the head unit. Using cool bags and other stuff below condensation temperature maybe a bad idea because any condensation could be a nuisance or even cause damage!

Brexflation: Lenovo, HPE and Walkers crisps all set for double-digit hike

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Re: You know the joke meme about how do you confuse a blonde ?

No, the smart ones will just think you are a dickhead because they not confused at all.

It is all about reclaiming /our own/ sovereignty so that we can stop & undo the damage caused by the undemocratic and fraudulent EU's legislation after it was stolen from us under false pretences and handed to criminals in Brussels.

Infernoz Bronze badge
Mushroom

Re: don't for get the Chocolate 'repackaging'

I don't give a frack about junk food from an even worse junk drink retailer and real Chocolate will probably be unaffected because it has far less unhealthy junk in it like sugar, over processed milk, and no heat poisoned other vegetable oils and synthetic junk.

Too big government eventually collapses the whole economy and the EU/Euro straight jacket is already crushing Europe e.g. Greece was already made 3rd world by their Ponzi government and criminal, Ponzi fraudster, central banksters!

No, you miss the point, we will only see downside until we complete Brexit, then things will get a lot better because we can start to slash away the business/trade choking weeds of EU legislation disguised as UK legislation, and have much freer and cheaper trade with non-EU countries. We can also slash all the very costly benefits and counter culture immigration (including from the Middle East and Africa) too, which is impossible while in the culturally suicidal and effectively bankrupt EU!

I will soon lose my job, not because of Brexit, but because of gross corporate management/sales incompetence and executive greed, and good riddance to them! I have skills, resources and savings (including devaluation proof Bullion) now so can be much more careful about my future employment.

Amazon guarantees bitterly contested Ohio wind farm project

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Alert

That's if people can find the space for, can afford the extreme cost of a vast number of wind turbines and can find enough sites with just the right amount of wind, and can afford the backup power generation for when there is not enough wind i.e. probably not!

If people expect to rely on gas turbines for backup power, that is probably foolish, because the oil economy will apparently be thermodynamically uneconomical in 10 to 15 years, world wide, so no more gas as a bonus of drilling oil wells!!!

Infernoz Bronze badge
Facepalm

The relatively power density and reliability of wind farms is poor (zero in high winds), maintenance will be expensive and the lifespan will probably be short; the noise, the required large amounts of wasted space and wildlife erosion don't help either.

Solar may be better because it could be spread over a huge surface area without wasting much space and can be very close to were the power is used, especially if the tyrannical and inefficient compulsory requirement of connection to grid infrastructure is dropped e.g. a lot of use could be made significantly more efficient by using relatively lower voltages from the batteries via efficient DC to DC SMTPs. There is even tech. being researched to coat solar panels with a layer which can generate power from the salts in rain water.

For higher power it'd make more sense to install distributed, small scale Thorium fission reactors where larger sub-stations would normally be and only use grid transmission for excess energy balancing and for industrial supply. Thorium fission reactors require an external neutron source to drive fission so they could probably be much safer and better for variable power output than Uranium based fission reactors. The post turbine heat may also be usable for heating/cooling local buildings.

Euro Central Bank backs money laundering rules for virtual currency exchanges

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Facepalm

Re: Glass Houses

Money Laundering is just an flimsy excuse by governments to control populations, including for taxation, yet all the big players have the resources to bypass it, including by sacrificial diversion for Police Theatre.

The City of London is a parasitic state in England, much like the Vatican in Italy, neither should still exist at all!

The currency distortion by central banks actually makes criminal finance easier and 'legalises' it!

Infernoz Bronze badge
Devil

Fiat Currencies are mostly legalised fraud, as is the fragile Glass House EU.

Government and now (often private) central bank currencies are only notionally legal and most is actually illegal because it is fraudulent, virtual, fractional reserve debt which cannot be viewed as contractually valid, and is only really supported by threats/acts of violence, hot air, faith and sentiment, for a finite period, until they defraud holders by devaluation or death from hyper inflation and catastrophic loss of confidence.

Purely electronic virtual currencies at least have publicly known, much stricter limits on issuance, so are less likely to be fraudulent, but that doesn't mean that I'd trust them for long periods. The reason why interfering centralist bodies like the EU and governments don't like cash or independent currencies is because they are much harder to track, tax and manipulate to enslave populations.

Marmite's not the only national treasure hit by Brexit. Will someone think of the PCs?

Infernoz Bronze badge
Mushroom

Re: Ah, the year 1 school of thought

Being an intellectual is overrated as Nassim Nicholas Taleb has pointed out, practically is more important, he also pointed out that more centralisation leads to more fragility; the cracks are quite blatantly growing in the EU and it's stupid Collectivist dictates are causing growing cracks in member countries too e.g. from the growing chaos caused by large numbers of Refugees from incompatible cultures and the unsurprising growing native hostility to this!

British people have had centuries of healthy distrust for Continental intellectuals, who often complicated or wrecked things e.g. the Normans who replaced an arguable better Saxon culture in the UK, and the incompetent French intellectual world war refugees who introduced the toxic bureaucracy which caused the economic decline of the UK to the 1970's.

I voted for a Brevit expecting that there would be a period of pain following a Brexit, because freedom is not free, so I'm not crying at all, but that after that period the UK will probably be in a much better position than if it had stayed in the crumbling EU. When a lot of the EU regulations and fake laws have been revoked, a lot of trade will probably become much cheaper, and served more by other countries outside the EU if the EU is so stupid as to try to damage trade with the UK.

Infernoz Bronze badge
Holmes

Re: Stupid?

The real benefit is regaining most of sovereignty a past __treasonous__ government tricked people out of via the 1975 Referendum (I could not vote in!!!) leading to the Common Market Act, by not telling them that __they knew__ it was really a political/legal/finance EU "Wolf" in Common Market "sheeps" clothing i.e. a Collectivist Trojan Horse.

By exiting the EU, we will be able to scrap a mountain of bureaucratic, anti-capitalist, crony-capitalist regulations/'laws' which hamper SME business, regain control over our borders, regain full control over taxation, stop wasting Billions on anti-capitalist/wasteful agricultural subsidies and other counter productive & political vanity projects, including the powerless EU 'parliament' and it's pointless regular migrations, and not be part of an effectively tyrannical criminal organisation with no valid accounting for many years which is getting very close to the edge of a very steep financial cliff face.

A lot of the freed up EU 'fees' (extortion) could be redirected to more productive investments like much delayed infrastructure repairs/replacement and other things net helping the UK get better, maybe even allow less taxation, so more available for genuinely productive private use.

Trade will happen if two parties chose to, it doesn't have to require inter-nation agreements, if inter-nation agreements are needed, this won't require the EU at all and probably will be much faster, easier and cheaper!

When a major Euro-zone member country fails (e.g. Italy is a current favourite) the Euro is probably toast, it is doubtful that the EU will survive for long after that! When the UK has exited the EU, we will probably see far less fallout from such a collapse.

SOHOpeless Seagate NAS boxen become malware distributors

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Facepalm

It is a really stupid idea for most people to make any SOHO device internet visible.

Most people are probably not competent to manage device security for SOHO internet servers unaided, so the devices should require passing _up-to-date_ security validation checks before internet visibility can be enabled, good luck finding this in most NAS firmware/OS!

My FreeNAS is only rarely configured for secure internet visibility and has configured user, group and client device security to stop LAN based abuse.

For outside use, a Portable WiFi HD (like the 1TB one ALDI sold on Sunday) is probably less risky and can be configure to use WPA2 only and a secure WPA2 password.

This is why Huawei's cloud is not like Amazuregoo

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Facepalm

Spelling mistake, hmm

But it isn’t quite so simple. Huawei operates a cloud in China – outside China it partners to *buld* the nuts and bolts for enterprise and telcoms clouds. ...

should read:

But it isn’t quite so simple. Huawei operates a cloud in China – outside China it partners to *build* the nuts and bolts for enterprise and telcoms clouds. ...

BBC detector vans are back to spy on your home Wi-Fi – if you can believe it

Infernoz Bronze badge
WTF?

Re: Once upon a time detector vans existed

Yes, it was always ridiculous farce and BS for analogue TV because of various technical reasons too boring to list. Non-CRT displays and Satellite TV only made it even more ridiculous. The idea that this can be done for more complex, _encrypted_, WiFi just takes the farce to the next level! It's all deceptive FUD to trick people to self-incriminate themselves; if you don't write and sign anything, they are powerless!

I get letters, but don't use their junk media 'services' at all, but am getting very very bored shredding this fake-legal junk mail.

Frankly the BBC is obsolete, broke it's charter many times (like the EU fails it's yearly audits) and needs to be shut down as a waste of time and currency, so that it and it's agents stop doing fraudulent mischief. BBC, please just die already!!!

Ofcom should push for fibre – Ex BT CTO

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Facepalm

Re: "leave Europe, that needs everything in its favour"

People will give a shit when their 4K TV(s) can't play internet streamed video at full resolution and they start asking why not!

The internet speeds in this country are an utter disgrace for home and business, and far behind some far Eastern countries, some Nordic countries and even some ex-soviet countries!

What 100MB, I think you mean 80MB?

On "80MB" FTTC, typically at best 70MB, but actually significantly lower (measured by router) VDSL speed because of noise and VDSL re-sync caused by the pathetic, mere telephone grade cable.

FTTP and FTTH fibre could be significantly better than any Copper, both FTTC and I assume coaxial cable for the 300MB Virgin service, because it doesn't suffer from moisture, LCR electrical losses or interference because it carries light rather than electricity, and could be much faster, say 1GB or more!

Infernoz Bronze badge
Headmaster

Re: Cui Bono?

BS, better quality and faster connections are critical for content, including growing web pages with busy AJAX and various spies, complete loading in a reasonable time with minimal retry delays, caused by dropped packets, caused by connection congestion and connection noise.

Trying to send high frequency ADSL and now very high frequency VDSL for FTTC over unscreened (noisy) twisted-pair wires only designed for low frequency analogue audio were always a nasty hacks because of moisture, crosstalk from various other cables and wireless RFI! 80Mbps, not happening, 70Mbs, LOL, 50+Mbs, more like, with regular VDSL channel renegotiation. ADSL is much worse because there is a lot more telephone cable to go wrong and it is noticeable very slow and unreliable for current websites!

Fibre for FTTP and FTTH does not suffer from moisture, LCR signal loss, crosstalk or RFI, and can reliably carry much higher data rates over much longer distances than any Copper cable, and may end up much cheaper including maintenance costs, it may even be easier to install, with far less maintenance, it is also not attractive to Copper thieves!

A small site for a big corporation I work for (same new town) can have over 10 or more employees streaming corporate hosted training videos or doing remote access at the same time and other traffic, but the connection struggles, WTF!

BT customers hit by broadband outage ... again

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Facepalm

Indeed, isn't critical infrastructure supposed to have fail-over to another site so that one site failing is annoying, maybe with some speed reduction, rather than stopping service completely...

TalkTalk: 9,000 broadband customers did the walk walk last quarter

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Flame

Waiting for a FTTP availability @ home and end of TT contract

I don't see much point jumping ISP while BT Openreach only offers me crap twisted pair wires for FTTC, which cap speed via variable LCR attenuation and crosstalk, so significantly worse than the 'estimated' speed; new modulation tech. won't properly solve this!

BT Openreach must get their fingers out and roll-out FTTP a lot faster to replace half-arsed FTTC already!

UK gov says new Home Sec will have powers to ban end-to-end encryption

Infernoz Bronze badge
WTF?

Re: It's good legislation

I assume you forgot to add a sarc. indicator, like the get my coat icon, because I can't take any of this nonsense seriously.

RFC 3514 looks like it only makes only dubious sense for internal networks which are completely secure, I very much doubt that a MAN or WAN can be completely secure *, so that 'legal' argument will be incinerated! A network hub/bridge/router/firewall/gateway etc. compromise could easily clear the "Evil" bit! I suspect that this is a deliberate joke RFC.

This nonsense contradicts the whole point of cryptography, which is security, a process which has to be made progressively harder to break because all attackers get progressively better at breaking it.

Infernoz Bronze badge
FAIL

Utter anti-security nonsense

Any end-to-end encryption service which has a decryption spy facility would be much harder to verify secure against unintended attack surfaces including multiple exploits of the clients for the decryption spy channels too; any sensible e2e business would tell these state idiot spies to get lost.

Any security aware person would use a direct, point-to-point, verified & signed OSS, chat client which doesn't use a 'cloud' server for any cryptography and instead used secure session public key exchange directly with the other client, with security verification at both ends to detect a Man-in-the Middle 'client' or a modified client software. It should also be possible to have a user side monitoring tool to detect less secure data transfer or decryption spy channels and instantly kill the connection.

Quick note: Brexit consequences for IT

Infernoz Bronze badge
WTF?

The UK will be free to cut a lot of regulations and costs

Regulations can have steep enforcement costs for business and government, so even if some EU import/export regulations apply for transfers to and from the EU, business could still save a lot from less regulation, especially for business with non-EU countries!

The argument about freedom of movement of labour is disingenuous because Europe can't afford to do this if they want to trade with us, and we gain the ability to keep out the benefit tourist parasites which should allow a lot of savings which will affect business too!

Botnet-powered ballot stuffing suspected in 2nd referendum petition

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Holmes

Bots could be blocked by a unique checked page token, possibly from variable sources.

If the returned token doesn't match what is expected, the request fails. If too many fails, escalating IP address bans and IP address range bans too.

Who'll guard your personal data post-Brexit?

Infernoz Bronze badge
Stop

More remain smoke, this time regarding data protection and big business hassle.

The EU looks to me like a failed experiment in elitist political/corporate authoritarianism (Fascism) with stagnating, crony capitalist protectionism (via lobbied regulation), with the toxic side effects including reducing small business, uncontrolled immigration, mass fraud/waste (routine failed audits) and progressive usurpation of /our/ sovereignty, and it is already cracking, so we best leave and ASAP to significantly reduce our exposure to the growing fallout.

Many of the so called benefits either don't adequately compensate for the total costs, or are net harmful. We also need to leave so that we can recover the sovereignty and finance to better improve the UK too.

Tor torpedoed! Tesco Bank app won't run with privacy tool installed

Infernoz Bronze badge
FAIL

Re: Best security practice

I would rather not use/buy anything from Tesco anyway, because they are effectively a low end supermarket now. As for firewalls, I use NoRoot Firewall on Android, which implements a firewall inside a VPN facade, so I can selectively block lots of apps which should never ever have WiFi/Cell internet access anyway!

A basic internet app like one use for banking should not even be allowed to know that Tor is installed because it should never be allowed those kinds of system access privileges, because it is a security risk; only explicitly, user approved, proper security/system apps should ever be allowed those kinds of system access privileges. If I see any non security/system apps request excessive privileges I flame the author, then delete it, or if it can't be uninstalled because of manufacturer or google arrogance, I disabled it! e.g. most of the * Play apps are disabled on my Android devices...

Rats revive phones-and-cancer scares

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Holmes

This just shows what lies by selective statistics the '29' year meta study was.

It is easy to design a meta study to indicate a desired result by excluding studies with unwanted results and including studies which are poor or fraudulent science. You should not automatically trust any study where there is a possible conflict of interest e.g. via lobbying, career corruption, corporate sponsorship or direct corporate involvement.

This was a better designed /lifetime/ study not designed for mobile corporation/cronies agenda, so the full effects were seen, and not absent due to poor environment design and not enough time for cancers to form.

The reason that the modulation type makes a difference is because it is the microwave pulsing patterns which cause cell damage, not heating, and the study was designed to eliminate any heating effects.

Symantec antivirus bug allows utter exploitation of memory

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FAIL

Symantec is Toxic Waste

I'd never ever run Symantec or McAfee anything on my own hardware, because they are bloated and stagnant junkware, from personal experience with their enterprise products. Security needs to be in depth, not bloated and brittle layers. McAfee is also crap because it only supports obsolete fat32 for virtual disk encryption on Windows and can't even do file encryption properly to ensure that virtual disk and backup software is usable.

Security software must implement the highest defensive programming standards, including against value range or buffer overflow exploits.

Running anything risky with the highest security permissions is a complete security fail and insanely negligent 'design', /all/ security testing must be in a lower permissions sandbox, and only when really necessary so as not to cripple performance.

Sick of storage vendors? Me too. Let's build the darn stuff ourselves

Infernoz Bronze badge
Holmes

Use FreeNAS or TrueNAS (pro. version), and decent hardware.

Hardware like:

* RAID or enterprise grade hard disks

* A server grade 64-bit motherboard supporting ECC RAM (e.g. Asrock, Supermicro), some cheap mini-ATX ones even have SAS on board!

* An Intel CPU supporting ECC RAM

* Lots of ECC RAM, never ever non-ECC unless you like doing ZFS read-only recovery, been there!

* At least 6 disk RAID arrays i.e. ZRAID2.

* Possibly some SSDs for ZFS read and/or write buffering.

The tiny OS runs off Flash Sticks (supports mirrored flash sticks), supported OpenZFS properly for ages (unlike Linux), is dead easy to set-up, has a web interface, ZFS makes lots of stuff easier, needs no messing around like Linux, and gets frequent updates.

FreeNAS 10 sound like it will be even easier.

Flaw-finding Ruby on Rails bot steams past humans

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WTF?

This is one of several reasons why major systems moved to Java.

So some people are /still/ using Ruby for software systems especially the security bug feast called Ruby on Rails, WTF!

Dynamic typed languages like Ruby and Python are fine for limited scripting, but not smart for larger programs, especially when they can become write-only code due to unknown interface typing and meta-programming confusion!

Any kind of duck typing is liable to type ambiguity/abuse and any lack of strong typing of declared function/method parameters can easily become a quite stupid ticking bug-bomb, because it can make automated/manual analysis/re-factoring/testing/runtime-optimisation much harder and/or much less reliable!

A lot of these kinds of vulnerabilities can be detected in Java by IDE source editors and existing compilers, and most of the rest get detected by the mature static analysis tools Java has had for several years now, including FindBugs and PMD.

Devs, skill up and help teach Alexa new tricks

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Flame

IoT fraud of ownership

Anyone with any sense should shun consumer slave shit like this and it should be made illegal to sell stuff with unnecessary external dependencies like this.

Local automation is only OK if the device(s) can be fully used with no internet access, with secure external corporate servers only providing enhancements/information like weather forecasts and not required for normal operation and configuration, otherwise it is bad and even evil design!

Compulsory operational automation dependency of devices on external corporate servers is fraudulent deception of ownership, a critical point of failure when the internet connection is not available (/not/ unusual), an obvious security risk vector and may even result in physical damage or death! Some evil server providers are WTF even cheeky enough to claim ownership over the local data sent to them!

I'll keep my NAS and jail hosted automation server thanks, and prefer automation capable devices I can control myself, like a RaspberryPi 3 for automation, rather than deceptively pay less for an IoT device which becomes a costly ownership, data, security or total liability!

Let’s re-invent small phones! Small screens! And rubber buttons!

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Holmes

Yes, proper, actual buttons on devices for common stuff!

I had a damned touch-screen heating control effectively become scrap because the touch screen became unusable on a damned critical area for the screen for some virtual buttons, twice! F-up brand will never get any more money from me!

At work I see people with stupidly huge tablet size phones and they look even more WTF ridiculous with a protective case on them, no fracking way will those bricks fit in most pockets! It reminds me of an old comedy sketch with a comedian talking loudly in public into a huge mockery of a mobile phone.

Ages ago I did an Human Computer Interface course at university, the purpose of which was to make interfaces usable by normal people, not be some colour blindness frustration, hipster tosser design or other fashion disaster. Interfaces can be aesthetically nice, but they must be easy to use with our common physical, sensory and mental limitations, and those of the artefacts too!

Adobe will track you across all your devices with new co-op project

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Devil

Re: Note to Adobe:

I'd be nice if Flash, with its retarded insecurity and demonstrated significant slow down of browsers, just died and was forgotten, similar for Microsoft Silverlight too.

I will always use SumatraPDF in preference to bloated Acrobat PDF reader.

Clear April 12: Windows, Samba to splat curious 'crucial' Badlock bug

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Yet another reason why of-the-shelf NAS are a bad idea, and why FreeBSD based and actively maintained FreeNAS is a much better idea.

Californian tycoons stole my sharing economy, says Lily Cole

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Devil

Miss clueless doesn't get that Socialism is an economically bankrupt idea.

Only nothing is free, everything else has some cost attached which someone has to pay, even just in effort and time. She didn't model for free, did she, and is quite welcome to use her wealth to pay for her stupid ideas...

The whole idea of capitalism is property ownership and its incentives to do the right things enough to prosper, and fail when you do the wrongs things too much. This would work if Socialist governments hadn't distorted markets so much with disincentives and incentives to do the wrong things, and require wasting resources on pointless junk, so cause new and smaller businesses to die prematurely!

McAfee gaffe a quick AV kill for enterprising staff

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Flame

Because windows security granuality is too coarse and static!

The reason that a lot programs run at admin level is because of the crap static way, user access levels work and quite stupid default security restrictions on commonly used resources, so it is often much less faff to use compatibility mode with admin level or even turn off user access control!

This keeps biting me as a developer, so damned right I need admin level access!

I will agree that software trying to store config./extensions in Program Files is quite stupid, and too many programs still do this! Junk like Chrome goes too far and stores the software where only config. and extensions should be stored, SRWare Iron shames it!

I hate that stodgy slowness call McAfee, especially on laptops, where the limited CPU and I/O bandwidth it wastes is even more costly!

Amazon kills fondleslab file encryption with latest Fire OS update

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Facepalm

Idiots

The fire sales will end for users with at least adequate computer security awareness.

I had considered one for non-media purposes, but won't any more...

I refuse to get a Kindle too, because I detest the Amazon lock-in and the non-zero possibility of deletion of content!

I have minimal trust for most mobile device security anyway, so limit how much information I keep on them.

Raspberry Pi 3 to sport Wi-Fi, Bluetooth LE – first photos emerge

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Pint

Not having BLE on perfect for IoT board was quite stupid

The Arduino is a nice idea, but crippled by lack of /built-in/ BLE, and too costly and clumsy via shells. The Pi is even more stupid without /built-in/ BLE for low power wireless comms and peripherals, because USB is a clumsy way to add extra features to tiny computers.

BLE should be consider as compulsory for any tiny device now. WiFi is a nice to have when you need to use a LAN or WAN with a device and wired Ethernet is a pain or a security risk.

A project I have in mind will need loads of BLE attached battery powered, wireless environment sensors, so I'll need loads of tiny cheap computers with built-in BLE which I only need to add environment sensors, storage and batteries to, the new Pi 3 looks like it may be suitable and economical for this.

Canonical accused of violating GPL with ZFS-in-Ubuntu 16.04 plan

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Re: One last missing point on distribution

The problem is, ZFS would be excellent for boot disk protection, and to do this, it would need to be loaded early by or in the OS.

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Facepalm

An OS without ZFS support sucks, because journalling filesystems are so dated.

ZFS is not just seriously more robust, it doesn't need nonsense like partitions or bolted on versioning/RAID, and is transactional and multi-threaded, so does need breakable stuff like journalling.

It can also be repaired on the fly without OS reboots, unlike in-use journalling filesystems.

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