Posts by Sebastian A

If another nation's citizen gets hacked by the FBI, surely that becomes an international matter? The US can't simply say "Oh that's legal by the way." and expect the other country to back off.

If twitter were to delete anything that could be considered as an attempt to influence someone's opinion it may as well shut up shop entirely.

Not that there's any point. I doubt anyone's ever changed their point of view based on a twitter post.

A secret court has ruled that a different secret court's ruling about a third secret court's validity stands. You cannot question the secret court. So says the secret court.

Feel safe now? No? Good. That's the point. You're supposed to feel scared. Scared people are easier to manipulate.

Okay, own up. Who's asking for these features? Surely they don't think this kinda crap up in a vacuum. There must be some market research company surveying people and getting enough responses that say "Sure, I'd just love Microsoft to spy on my fridge contents to tell me when the milk is past its best-before date. When can I buy one?".

And *this* is why you properly salt your hashed passwords. I'm talking to you, LinkedIn, MySpace, etc etc.

Hnnnnnnnng.

It's starting to look less like citizens and protectors and more like animals and zookeepers. Does a chimp get to complain? No, if they act out they get segregated.

Can't you just email support@nsa.org and get them to send you a .zip file of all your public and private posts off Facebook?

I have to wonder if they're making themselves a laughing stock internationally on purpose, to undermine their very serious image as a ruthless totalitarian dictatorship that starves its citizens and brutally represses any attempt at improving their lives.

So does that cover only accounts promoting violent Islamic extremism, or also your garden-variety 2nd amendment pro-violence racists and cishet-hating militant pro-castration feminists?

Got busted by the hubby tryin'a get yo dick wet in his girl? Lawsuit time!

Optimised for something that doesn't exist yet. You can tell that the marketing drones have been busy.

Well thankfully there's no way some unscrupulous manufacturer of nasty knockoffs will take this logo and apply it to their kit. None at all.

Can we please not -gate it. Please? Maybe call it DieselDeception? DieselDishonour? DieselDisgrace? VolksWangle?

I think it might be prudent to travel only with prepaid cards for then ext, oh, decade or three?

So what is it? "It was a DDOS" or "There was no DDOS"? I'd bet 2:1 that the person lying is the politician.

Don't worry, the market will sort this out. Yay unchecked capitalism!

Saying your technology is unhackable (unlike everything that has ever come before) is at best hopelessly optimistic and at worst criminally misleading. The best you can say is "We've implemented protections against every known and hypothesised attack and are continuosly improving our defences as new exploits come to the fore." Of course that's not as peppy as "We're unhackable!" but it's also not as stupid.

These kinds of stories make me wonder if we're not in the "great filter" stage of civilisation now. Where all other civilisations in the past have managed to wipe themselves out. We have the capabilities, certainly.

Didn't Lastpass just get compromised, losing users not just one password but all of them?

Get your extra-large baskets here, perfect for all your eggs! Now with extra-shoddy handles!

Suing for $15m in "damages" after the kid got to meet the president? Now you know they've assimilated, that's a truly American thing to do.

Old-fashioned physical crime just doesn't compare anymore to these digital shenanigans. Why skim a card at an ATM when you can just compromise a payment system at its global root and effectively skim a million cards? It's staggering.

I know the focus in these cases is on the individual unit, but we also need to look at the greater picture. Get enough devices like this under your control and you can cause some serious issues for a power grid. Just turn everyone's heating on full at a time of low demand...

Time to pick up some cheap VW shares in the next few days?

But... spam is already canned.

As long as you can turn it off, I'm fine with it.

The care.data rollout sounds very similar to the Windows 10 rollout. Are you sure he didn't do some moonlighting at Microsoft?

Adblocking isn't just a personal preference anymore, it's a vital security precaution. The industry really needs to change if it expects to survive, let alone thrive.

In the lycra, the skin-tight lycra, the li-ion burns tonight...

So, no more Java downloads (with optional crapware). No more flash (with McAfee and Intel garbage). And no more anything-at-all from Cnet.

Microsoft also sought to win back users who disliked the dual personalities in Windows 8

Except they haven't managed to get rid of the bipolar nature properly. There's still two different control panels. And now there's two separate browsers as well. And they don't even share favourites.

It's still a discordant mess.

Knowing which data is eligible for deletion...

is most of the work. You have to make sure it's filed/classified/tagged correctly when it's active. Of course, most IT people aren't in a position to tell management from 5+ years ago how to tell their staff to manage documents.