* Posts by wolfetone

4144 publicly visible posts • joined 6 Aug 2011

Jingle bells, IBM tells more staff it is D-day ♫

wolfetone Silver badge

Re: walking dead

I wouldn't say they'll be gone in 5 years, but I definately don't think they'll be an American owned company.

Max Schrems launches privacy NGO, wins €60k within first 24 hours

wolfetone Silver badge
Pint

With all the free pints he'll get from El Reg tonight, he'll be pissed well in to Christmas and beyond.

But he deserves it.

Canadian! fella! admits! hacking! Gmail! inboxes! amid! Yahoo! megahack!

wolfetone Silver badge
Trollface

Re: Yawn

"...maybe the Earth is flat too? Sure, looks flat from my living room so I guess it must be."

The only sure fire way to find that out is for you to bring a spirit level onboard a flight and prove it beyond doubt...

Pro tip: You can log into macOS High Sierra as root with no password

wolfetone Silver badge

Imagine if the space ship in 2001: A Space Oddessy used this version of macOS.

"I can't let you do that Dave"

*clicks unlock a few times*

"OK Dave, here you go."

Russian rocket snafu may have just violently dismantled 19 satellites

wolfetone Silver badge

Maybe North Korea's missle hit it by accident?*

*still waiting for the tin foil hat icon

SpaceX 'raises' an extra 100 million bucks to get His Muskiness to Mars

wolfetone Silver badge

Musk will be on Mars before Tesla pump out the promised numbers of the Model 3.

Surveillance Capitalism thinks it won, but there's still time to unplug it

wolfetone Silver badge

I have told this story before, but 2 years ago we had British Gas come round to quote us on a new boiler. He asked if I wanted the Hive thermostat which I promptly said no to. He was a bit shocked, asked why I said no when usually everyone wants them. I said if I can turn the heating up in my home from my phone, some other jackass could too.

The other week it came out that the Amazon Door Bell webcam thing could be stopped from working, allowing whoever is around to just happily waltz in your home and steal your TV. The most outrageous thing about that was people have actually bought this device!

A few days ago I'm speaking to the wife's friend about Christmas and she said she's bought her fella an Amazon Alexa thing from Black Friday:

Me: "Why do you want that thing listening in to your conversations?"

Her: "It doesn't, it only comes on when you ask it to."

Me: "But it has to be listening to everything in your conversation in order to know you've called it."

Her: ".... Why are you so paranoid? We don't talk about anything interesting."

That, right there, is the problem. Joe Public thinks their conversations are so boring they're not worth listening to. Their lives are so mundane that no one would possibly want to watch them on a webcam. They're not important enough to have someone spy on their baby cams or baby's toys while their child plays with them. If you raise the issue with them, they think you're paranoid. "What have YOU got to hide? What have YOU done that you don't want anyone to find out about? Are YOU a terrorist or a child molester or both?".

At the risk of losing whatever argument on the internet this might generate, I have to bring in the Nazi's as an example. It's that exact context, that exact line of thought that led to millions losing their livelihoods, homes, their life and ultimately their existence through death camps. All because of the line "If you have nothing to hide you have nothing to fear", something William Hauge came out with a few years ago when talking about the snoopers charter.

While I am optimistic that the tide will change against all of this privacy erosion, realistically it's far too late to be worrying about it now. The damage is done. The youth of today have been sucked in to it. Blind ignorance is bliss to them, so why would they bother to step outside the room for a moment and wonder whether corporations and governments should be doing what they're doing.

Me? Well I'll continue to use my laptop with the webcam taped over and the front facing camera on my phone covered until I can upgrade to something more prehistoric.

Tom Baker returns to finish shelved Doctor Who episodes penned by Douglas Adams

wolfetone Silver badge

"Not if they'd used all their regenerations..."

So really the Dr.Who should've died after Paul McGann surely? Or after Joanna Lumley?

wolfetone Silver badge

How can a Time Lord retire and wind down their days? Wouldn't they just regenerate when they kicked the bucket?

Tesla reveals a less-long-legged truck, but a bigger reservation price

wolfetone Silver badge

I don't know how haulage companies will buy these trucks when:

1) They haven't been built yet

2) They haven't been tested yet

3) Not enough have been built or tested yet to say it's any more reliable than a current truck

Haulage companies aren't in the business of buying new fad toys. They want something that will work reliably and if it does go wrong they can sort out quickly. The Tesla doesn't do any of that, not right now anyway. Which presents a catch 22 situation for Tesla. They need people to buy the trucks to prove their reliability and worth, but people won't buy the Tesla until they see it's reliability and worth.

wolfetone Silver badge

Re: Nikola Tesla

DeLorean was a visionary, a lot of the items in modern cars are down to him.

A certain millennial turned 30 recently: Welcome to middle age, Microsoft Excel v2

wolfetone Silver badge

For years I thought "gobshite" was my nickname.

Turned out it wasn't.

wolfetone Silver badge
Coat

I don't know how to feel about being two weeks older than Excel, especially when it's better at maths than me.

Boss made dirt list of minions' mistakes, kept his own rampage off it

wolfetone Silver badge

Re: Fragile. Very fragile.

To be honest the UK have some idiot as health minister who has absolutely no clue in how to manage the NHS or background in healthcare, yet he finds himself able to dictate what the needs and how much it costs.

So I'm not at all surprised at this story.

Linus Torvalds on security: 'Do no harm, don't break users'

wolfetone Silver badge

So if they find a bug with Apache, and the work around is to shut it off, over 75% of the internet would fall offline.

If the issue isn't reported, but the actual flaw is fixed then patched, there's no issue.

Which one would you rather have happen?

Munich council finds €49.3m for Windows 10 embrace

wolfetone Silver badge

They'll be back.

Royal Navy destroyer leaves Middle East due to propeller problems

wolfetone Silver badge

Re: Less is more?

"The reality of this happening today first reared its head to me years ago when I heard a story about a multi-million dollar jet taken down by a low-tech rocket launcher."

Happened when the Royal Navy sank the Bismark too. High tech ship, sank by low-tech/WW1 aircraft.

Remember the 'budget' iPhone SE? Apple plans an update – reports

wolfetone Silver badge

Re: £300 refurbished? You've been ripped off.

32GB for £269 is a good deal.

FCC boss Ajit Pai emits his net neutrality extermination plan

wolfetone Silver badge

Re: Thanks for the pre-holiday downer, Chairman Pai

"I hope somebody pees in his Thanksgiving stuffing."

That's a novel way to baste the turkey, isn't it?

'Gimme Gimme Gimme' Easter egg in man breaks automated tests at 00:30

wolfetone Silver badge

Mama Mia, here we go again with the lame jokes.

My my, how could you not resit it?

Uber: Hackers stole 57m passengers, drivers' info. We also bribed the thieves $100k to STFU

wolfetone Silver badge

I wonder if all those in London moaning about TfL's decision to not award Uber a license are still moaning about it?

Their attitude towards their employees was bad, but their attitude towards the data of their customer is pure disgusting. The hackers got the data, but Uber have their word they just deleted it for $100,000? Bullshit.

Level 5 driverless cars by 2021 can be done, say Brit industry folk

wolfetone Silver badge

"I'm also sure there is a market for cars that can drive people who are unlicensed or incapable of driving."

And here in lies the elephant in the room when it comes to these driverless cars. It does, obviously, have the potential to bring millions of people back on the road. However, even today, roads are struggling to cope with the number of cars already on there. Plus London and (for some reason) Birmingham really don't want cars coming in to the city centres. They want you to use cattle trucks what pass for buses and trains to get there.

There's also the issue with charging the cars. Sure, plug them in to the grid. Well the grid is under pressure every winter, getting more so really, so how will that cope? Plus where do you park them? There are apartments being built in one part of Birmingham where there will be 200 apartments built but only room for 80 cars. So we can park them outside in the city or suburbs, but then we need charging points all around the place to cope with that. Then, say on a long journey and you need a bit of juice, where do you charge them? Can you imagine, with the increase in cars, the queue at the former-petrol-stations-turned-leccy-stations?

I think, if they do hit the road, then they will be the preserve of taxis and ambulances ferrying patients from home to the hospital for an appointment. I don't think, unfortunately, Joe Public will get them.

Royal Bank of Scotland website goes TITSUP*

wolfetone Silver badge
Joke

Re: "New Technology"

"They lied."

Bankers? Lying? Never!

Baaa-d moooo-ve: Debian Linux depicts intimate cow-sheep action in ASCII artwork

wolfetone Silver badge
Pint

Re: How SAD...

Have a pint for yourself Donald.

The Independent 'live streamed' space vid recorded in 2015

wolfetone Silver badge

Re: Explanation.

"I've noticed a growing amount of US English on their pages suggesting that the content is not even locally recycled."

Or they don't know how to change Microsoft Word from US English to UK English?

wolfetone Silver badge
Headmaster

Two wrongs don't make a right

An interesting article as to how The Independent didn't really do their fact checking to make sure the live stream was an actual live stream, not a re-run.

But then we stumble across this paragraph:

"The International Space Station, which US president Ronald Reagan directed NASA to build in 1984, has a mass of 460 tons and orbits 240 miles above Earth. NASA's webpage said that there have been 205 spacewalks since December 1998 – the last was on October 20."

Reagan directed NASA to build a permanent space station for the USA to inhabit, this was called (not surprisingly) "Space Station Freedom". NASA struggled with it, especially during the Challenger tragedy, and it wasn't until 1993 when the Clinton administration made a deal with the Russians to create the ISS. The core component of the ISS - Zvezda - is Russian, and was intended for use on the Mir 2 program.

But hey, what's a bit of fact checking when writing articles eh?

ICO probes universities accused of using private data to target donation campaigns

wolfetone Silver badge

""£9,000 per year per student in student fees not enough for them?"

1) It's £9 250/year now. That kind of attention to detail is what a university education might bring you.

2) Funding per pupil at secondary school is currently £6 300/year. In order for universities to charge more than £6k they need to have 'access agreements'. In effect this is spending millions on poor kids. Now, this might well be a good thing, but it comes out of that £9 250 that everyone pays. It's really about £7.5k net.

3) It turns out that it's expensive to produce really qualified individuals, and engage in world-leading research. Who knew? (The UK has, per capita, the best universities in the world. I mean per capita because the US has more "

Isn't it funny that those who received their university education for free take great pride in telling generations after them how expensive it all is and that we really all should be paying for it.

wolfetone Silver badge

£9,000 per year per student in student fees not enough for them?

Lloyds' Avios Reward credit cardholders report fraudulent activity

wolfetone Silver badge

"A very small number of Lloyds Bank Avios Rewards American Express credit card customers have been affected by recent fraudulent activity. This has affected less than one percent of customers who hold these cards and we have introduced additional controls to provide further protection."

But it's happened. How did it happen? That's what we want to know.

Ever feel like you're in front of a dam, and you can see a few little holes in it pissing out tiny little streams of water, with cracks eminating from them? That's how it feels with the finanical industry and other utility companies and their attitude to holding customer data.

Connected and self-driving cars are being sent to Coventry

wolfetone Silver badge

Well if a self driving car can navigate the Coventry ring road without problems then I'm sold on the idea.

Car tax evasion has soared since paper discs scrapped

wolfetone Silver badge

Re: No car tax?

I drove a brand new car for 6 months with the wrong number plate on it, and the only time it became apparent was when I took it to another garage to get serviced. The number plate didn't exist. So back I went to the garage I bought it from, and they very hastily changed the number plate.

Quite simply, the way we pay for car tax now and the method is brilliant. No one I know has moaned about it. The issue is remembering it's due. Thats where the tax disc was brilliant as it was a visual reminder. Now we don't have it.

Tesla launches electric truck it guarantees won't break for a million miles

wolfetone Silver badge

It has to be built before it can break down.

Amazon Key door-entry flaw: No easy fix to stop rogue couriers burgling your place unseen

wolfetone Silver badge

The only thing more surprising that it could be that easy to disrupt the webcam like this, is that people are daft enough to actually have it installed in their homes right now!

They might as well leave the key in the door with a note saying "Hey courier, please let yourself in. But don't take anything! That's not nice!"

Help desk declared code PEBCAK and therefore refused to help!

wolfetone Silver badge

"The user asked if she could access the appropriate help desk ASAP, but Ben's colleague “simply said 'No' and hung up.”"

Torn on this line. While the user quite clearly has troubles wiping their own arse, not sure that line was the best thing to help solve her soiled arse.

Pastry in a manger: We're soz, Greggs man said

wolfetone Silver badge

Re: Hmm Halal pork sausage....

I don't know, but it's always fun to mention it to certain Daily Fail readers and watch them blow up about how the animals are euthanized without being stunned (which is half true, some halal meat is stunned). But they never consider the welfare of the animal before it meets it's end. Only the fact that to be outraged by halal is to be outraged at Islam without looking like a giant raging racist.

wolfetone Silver badge

Well, the retail sector is getting a battering at the moment by the Christians. First they boycott Tesco because they showed some muslims celebrating Christmas (but said nothing about the lack of religious imagery), and now they're boycotting Greggs because Jesus has turned in to a sausage roll. I mean, of course, that's only if they're not already boycotting Greggs because they use halal meat which is "cruel" to animals that have spent their lives cooped up in cages.

I bet none of the wankers even bother going to mass on a Sunday, just on the main events like Easter and Christmas. Y'know, the days when the commercialisation of religious holidays is front and centre in everything we see and do so they see it as an excuse to chow down on chocolate and sprouts.

But that's all none of my business.

Think the US is alone? 18 countries had their elections hacked last year

wolfetone Silver badge

Re: Hacked?

Can you get a transmission rate of over ~38MB/s from America to Russia? Or actually, America to anywhere in Europe?

Because it's a tall order.

wolfetone Silver badge

Re: Hacked?

"The gulf between "we can't prove beyond doubt it was Russia" and "it was a local hack" is very wide. It gets even wider if you go for "it was a local hack and Russia wasn't involved in any way.""

No it isn't. They looked at the file, the size of it, forensically. The file could not have been downloaded via a network. It was downloaded locally. They have the transmission rates which could only be attained via local access.

That's beyond doubt.

wolfetone Silver badge

Re: Hacked?

You have to also remember that the NSA are the only security agency in the USA that said it couldn't be proved beyond doubt the "hack" originated from Russia. The FBI and the CIA were quick to say it came from Russia, but neither of those have the ears the NSA do in terms of network capabilities.

wolfetone Silver badge

Re: Hacked?

And, interestingly, that hack occured internally at the DNC headquarters. Former NSA guys conducted a study, and found that the transmission rates of the emails were at the maximum about ~38MB/s. The best speed they could come up with coming from Europe was a data transfer from New Jersey to London, which gave about ~10MB/s. Now if the Russians were hacking the DNC coming from the Ukraine or wherever, they would not have been able to download those files at the recorded speed without being in the building.

Add to this, Donna Brazil in her new book has said the hack started from a DNC staffer listening to a voicemail message left by a Russian pretending to be a reporter. That voicemail message, apparently, allowed the Russians to hack in to the servers and steal the emais. That's the story coming from the DNC. And the above paragraph comes from guys working with the NSA, who as we all know wouldn't miss a webcam girl farting on camera to some guy in India. Nothing goes on without them knowing. And even they didn't see this hack occur.

Who are you going to believe?

Apple succeeds in failing wearables

wolfetone Silver badge
Pint

Re: "You have to tap or flick your wrist."

Have an upvote and a pint for your troubles.

Crap London broadband gets the sewer treatment

wolfetone Silver badge

"We're delighted to be able to have fast internet at long last" - The Sewer Rat King of London

"We can't wait to catch Ratatouille on Netflix!" - The Sewer Rat population of London.

Christmas is coming, the goose is getting fat, look out for must-have toys that are 'easily hacked' ♪

wolfetone Silver badge

Re: specific sequence of events huh

So, eh, where do you live?

Asking for a friend.

wolfetone Silver badge

"Hasbro, manufacturer of the Furby, took issue with Which?'s test. It said: "We believe that [hacking into the toy] would require close proximity to the toy, and that there are a number of very specific conditions that would all need to be satisfied in order to achieve the result described.""

Well, under a certain condition of it being night time, me being out of the house, there being a power cut, someone with a brick could gain access to my house. But I still invest in security for the house to mitigate that issue.

Because that's common sense.

EU court advised: Schrems is a consumer in Facebook case, but can't file class-action

wolfetone Silver badge
Pint

In Schrem we trust,

In Zuck we're bust.

Mm, sacrilicious: Greggs advent calendar features sausage roll in a manger

wolfetone Silver badge

Re: BLASPHEMY! ?

"Sausage rolls remember, not religion you just can't leave it lay can you"

I think you'll find in this case it's Monty Python, not sausage rolls and/or religion.

wolfetone Silver badge

BLASPHEMY!

wolfetone Silver badge

"Wolfetone said "For once, can we leave the whole "Religion is bullshit" or "Atheists are cunts" thing at the door and JUST ENJOY THE SAUSAGE ROLLS!?!"

Your sentence exemplifies why religion is a bad thing, atheists don't like religions but religious people don't like atheists i.e. people rather than ideas.

For saying the "jealous god" religions are presented as being "good" they always seem to promote intolerance."

My sentence exemplifies one thing which you don't want to admit: I want to enjoy the sausage rolls without getting in to an argument that can never be won by either party.

This is a discussion about sausage rolls. Not religion.

wolfetone Silver badge

For once, can we leave the whole "Religion is bullshit" or "Atheists are cunts" thing at the door and JUST ENJOY THE SAUSAGE ROLLS!?!

Parity's $280m Ethereum wallet freeze was no accident: It was a hack, claims angry upstart

wolfetone Silver badge

Re: Whilst I have sympathy..

"Even with the examples quoted by @scrubber, nation-state Fiat currency is an order of magnitude more stable. Sure it can become worthless quickly, but nowhere near as quickly as someone can fettle with your e-tulips."

How? Look at what happened with the UK Brexit referendum, overnight the Sterling lost 30/40p against the dollar. If investors are spooked by anything, they sell their currency which in turn brings the prices down. It's quite different to the "gold standard" set out after WW2, as currencies were backed by a physical asset. But no currency has been backed by gold since the 1970's and has been backed by nothing more than pure faith since then. Quite a lot like the cryptocurrencies today.