* Posts by Ole Juul

2726 publicly visible posts • joined 27 Apr 2007

We're Zuckers for a sequel: Brit MPs' battle to grill Facebook boss continues

Ole Juul

These guys are out to lunch

It's painfully obvious what's wrong with Facebook. Talking with Zuckerberg is neither going to reveal nor change anything.

50 ways to leave your lover, but four to sniff browser history

Ole Juul

Re: Look around the disk drive

"After removing Firefox I found over 1Gb of data stuffed into Mozilla and Firefox folders . . .

If you have Firefox folders you didn't remove Firefox. You probably just removed the executable.

You like HTTPS. We like HTTPS. Except when a quirk of TLS can smash someone's web privacy

Ole Juul

Re: Privacy

"What if the details that we are most worried about identifying us aren’t needed to identify us at all?"

I believe that is generally the case. You can identify me by my birth name, my Social Security Number, or my browsing footprint. From a privacy point of view, it really doesn't matter what you call me.

AI-powered IT security seems cool – until you clock miscreants wielding it too

Ole Juul

knowing when to stop

I see a problem with appropriate application of the technology in some cases. Actual output of systems can move in directions that are not desirable and this has been shown in its use in police work. Unravelling such a situation is not easy, if even possible.

Eat my shorts, watchdog tells every city mayor in the US – FCC approves $2bn 5G telco windfall

Ole Juul

"So what you're saying is that once again, an executive has no idea of what they're talking about."

Pai does know what he's talking about, but he is a liar so what he's saying is not important.

'This is insane!' FCC commissioner tears into colleagues over failure to stop robocalls

Ole Juul

Re: @Kernel

There is a cost to both incoming and outgoing calls. How the customer is billed will vary. Many providers offer services à la carte. No phone spammer is going to be using a residential plan.

Ole Juul

I use a blocker

Call me and a voice says press "number" to connect. The number can be as I set it, or a random one. This seems to do the trick.

Linux kernel's Torvalds: 'I am truly sorry' for my 'unprofessional' rants, I need a break to get help

Ole Juul

Re: Congratulations

This is a good step. Congratulations indeed.

You know all those movies you bought from Apple? Um, well, think different: You didn't

Ole Juul

It's a good idea to take things home with you when you buy them.

While I agree that Apple is being deceptive and deserves no respect in regard to their way of doing business, I still think that the gentleman in question is also being deceptive in his story. If I go to a store to buy something, I make sure to take it home with me. I don't leave it there and expect it to be there every time I want to go back and use it. The store could go out of business, for that matter. This gentleman is being naive if he thinks that the Apple store works differently from any brick and mortar store.

Personally, I won't have anything to do with Apple on any level. Hopefully this gentleman will adopt this same stance from now on.

Y'know what? VoIP can also be free from pesky regulation – US judges

Ole Juul

Re: then it becomes their only method of communication not by choice

The problem with cell phones is that there are a significant number of places where they don't work, and it is precisely those areas where either landline of VOIP becomes the primary voice service.

just sayin'.

Ole Juul

Time slots vs packets.

POTS has been using multiplexing since the 1960s. I'm not convinced that that's significantly different from packet switching as it applies to this case.

Crypto gripes, election security, and mandatory cybersec school: Uncle Sam's cyber task force emits todo list for govt

Ole Juul

"And the first company to give in to the 3 letter agencies signs it's own death warrant, no-one will touch their products again."

That hasn't actually been the case in the past. Some people are concerned about this sort of thing and will act, but I don't think the majority of Facebook users would quit if they were spied upon. *coughcough*

PC shipments just rose, thanks to Windows 10

Ole Juul

And how many of those installations get wiped because the computer was purchased for the purpose of putting some other OS on it? OK, I admit that's perhaps not a lot, but I doubt they track that.

Google Chrome update to label HTTP-only sites insecure within WEEKS

Ole Juul

Re: If only it were that easy

@ Dave559 You seem to assume that only businesses use the internet. Lots of private people, hobbyists and even kids run servers and use the internet freely for enjoyment and general communications. Perhaps you're not a server guy (obviously) and perhaps you only use the net for corporate or business purposes, but please don't ignore the general public's right to basic internet freedoms.

"If the company which hosts your website doesn't already offer automated https certs via LetsEncrypt, get a new (and better) hosting company."

You're not talking about servers, you're talking about shared hosting. Not everybody buys that kind of package which is mostly (though not totally) aimed at beginners. Some of us prefer to run servers and enjoy the freedom of using the internet without paying somebody else to do the administration and telling us how to host a site. Perhaps the best way to explain it is to liken it to cooking at home. Some people like to just get the ingredients and cook for themselves whereas shared hosting is like eating at a restaurant.

Regarding moving to another hosting provider, people with dozens of sites aren't going to find moving all that easy. That said, hosting providers have a problem here too. No doubt they'll be able to do some fancy scripting to provide LetsEncrypt to each of their customers in some transparent way, but it's going to take a while for them to get it done.

Ole Juul

Re: If only it were that easy

Easy is a matter of perspective. Some of us like to just put up a page or two on random servers for people to see something and it's not appropriate to be doing certs for everything like that. Not everybody has one server that has everything they do on it. Some people have lots of servers that are just part of their personal net environment. Why is it that there is always the assumption that a site is some big deal that's "developed" and lots of time and effort is spent on it? Frankly, working on assumption is not a wise perspective.

Things that make you go hmmm: Do crypto key servers violate GDPR?

Ole Juul

"An email address is unique to a person. "

No it is not. Many people can share a single address and there are some high profile instances of sharing. Just sayin'.

Google releases lite PC-snooper, 'cos full mobile management is hard

Ole Juul

Don't know why but

It’s billed as a reporting tool,

just get's my back up. Especially coming from Google.

The cybercriminal's cash cow and the marketer's machine: Inside the mad sad bad web ad world

Ole Juul

Re: Big Fuss over Interent Ads

I'm not surprised that Proctor & Gamble found no impact from cutting internet ads. The whole ad business is no more than one of selling prayers, particularly on the internet. You either believe it works or you don't.

Script kiddie goes from 'Bitcoin Baron' to 'Lockup Lodger' after DDoSing 911 systems

Ole Juul

Re: Not quite a master hacker, but still needs a harsh-ish term

"No email, no online shopping, no job resource access, no school resources that require you to go online to retrieve/interact with, no tv set top box/Netflix/Hulu/AmazonPrime/etc, no Youtube nor Porntube, no Wiki, no online mapping for directions, no online translations, no Alexa/Curtana/Siri/etc, nothing that requires "the cloud"... "

Also, no phone. Since they took out much of the copper it's all VoIP even if it's not always obvious. So essentially he likely will have no 911 emergency capability either. That's harsh.

Rackspace starts renting its rack space

Ole Juul
Coat

Will they take Raspis?

Just had to ask.

Internet luminaries urge EU to kill off automated copyright filter proposal

Ole Juul

Where's the line?

The proposal would see all companies that "store and provide to the public access to large amounts of works" obliged to "prevent the availability… of works… identified by rightholders."

With the explosion of cheap servers available these days, a lot of people run things that are very similar to what the, so called, large companies are doing. At what point do I, as an individual, come under attack? Words like "large amounts" don't exactly define my limits in any legally useful way. It seems like these legislators are only able to see part of the internet. I don't personally make copyrighted material available other than my own, but a lot of people do.

Men are officially the worst… top-level domain

Ole Juul

so?

If you get rid of some TLDs the people using them will just use other ones. Those people are not going to go away. It's probably better to have TLDs like .men so they don't pollute .com or other more common traditional ones.

Microsoft will ‘lose developers for a generation’ if it stuffs up GitHub, says future CEO

Ole Juul

EEE

So that's the first E.

The hits keep coming for Facebook: Web giant made 14m people's private posts public

Ole Juul

Facebook chief privacy officer

Chief apologiser officer might be closer.

Ole Juul

Re: Anybody still have sympathy for those that use fb?

Not a lot. It's been like this from the beginning, but at this point it's more than obvious what's going on. There is one group I definitely don't have any sympathy for though, and that's the ones that think this is OK.

US govt mulls snatching back full control of the internet's domain name and IP address admin

Ole Juul

Re: internet freedom @Ole re: alternate root

@tip pc We were doing it like dn42 but by using an IPv6 VPN to our own servers it's possible to use the whole IPv4 address space. Of course this means that one cannot at that point access the ICANN IPv4 address space, but that's also one of the reasons for doing this - to create a whole separate world. This idea of a separate network is not unlike what people do with Tor. But yes, it is often very difficult for people to grasp that there can be different networks that are unable to communicate with one another. (What, no Facebook!) I think the difficult thing for them is that they can see no reason for them doing that themselves - which is fair enough.

Ole Juul

Re: internet freedom @Ole re: alternate root

"It would be possible to use VPNs across the current Internet proper to tunnel a private address space, but you could not really call that an alternative Internet. At best, you would regard it as a parasitic network. relying on the thing you want to replace for it's existence."

Some of us have done that, and it does work. But yes, I'd have to agree that it does rely on the existing infrastructure and is somewhat parasitic. However it does manage to make ICANN totally irrelevant and it routes just fine. We did need the use of an IPv6 tunnel, but then we also ended up with a full duplicate IPv4 space of our own.

In any case I just wanted to point out that there are options worth playing with, at least for the small percentage of technical users. We're not completely out of ideas yet, and greater minds than mine no doubt have more suggestions, but being able to do these things represents some freedom.

Ole Juul

internet freedom

We already have lots of options. There is nothing stopping you from using an alternate root, or tunnelling to a whole separate IP tree. The problem is getting consensus and finding ways to include the great masses - assuming that's part of your goal. We, as individuals can function quite well outside of the established system.

You blithering Ajit! Huawei burns Pai for FCC sh*tlist proposal

Ole Juul
Coat

101-page filing

I hope Fox News does a 30 second story on it so Trump will get it. Though, perhaps not.

Linus Torvalds decides world isn’t ready for Linux 5.0

Ole Juul

Déjà vu

I seem to recall MS Word did that once - going from 4.x to 6.0 just to beat WordPerfect which was at 5.1 at the time.

Ole Juul

Two scroll wheels?

That's the most informative part of this article to me. I've seen a lot of odd tech, but hadn't ever come across one of those. A quick Google and sure enough, there's a number of those.

Stingray phone stalker tech used near White House, SS7 abused to steal US citizens' data – just Friday things

Ole Juul

They might indeed give that reason, but I really don't think they even have a clue.

Ole Juul

Re: Boss said leave it alone.

Wrong boss. Pai works for Sinclair Broadcasting.

FBI to World+Dog: Please, try turning it off and turning it back on

Ole Juul

Re: but

"something accumulates on mine until performance slumps. And a reboot fixes it. "

It sounds like you're using some crap software there. You might like to try something better. What you're describing is exactly the kind of thing which happens with proprietary software when they just want to push stuff out the door. Get something where the writers actually care.

And yes, I understand that only serious computer people like you and I will do that kind of thing. Hence my comment that I think that most people won't even hear about this and reboot their routers, let alone take some measure of control of their software.

So I think you might be a little bit optimistic.

Well I certainly don't think I'm immune to malware or attacks of any kind. Things are pretty tight here - but never say never. :)

Ole Juul

but

Probably not a bad idea, but I'm one of those people who looks at uptime and doesn't step on a crack. Not gonna happen. Besides I don't run proprietary code on my router and I have a feeling that the majority of those that do (barring professional installations) are not going to get this news nor care.

You know that silly fear about Alexa recording everything and leaking it online? It just happened

Ole Juul

May I suggest . . .

Using antidisestablishmentarianism as the wakeup word?

FBI agents take aim at VPNFilter botnet, point finger at Russia, yell 'national security threat'

Ole Juul

wrong people

There seems to be a double standard here. If this was a matter of interest to the MPAA or other Holywood rights organisation, then the router makers would soon be found complicit and blocked from the market. I'm not suggesting they should be, but do think they have more responsibility than they're willing to accept.

IPv6 growth is slowing and no one knows why. Let's see if El Reg can address what's going on

Ole Juul

Re: Not an issue if you already have an ipv4 address

There are indeed some simple issues with IPv6 such as they're difficult to deal with in the same simple manner as we've gotten used to with IPv4. But there are other problems for the end user. Because of the current state of adoption and sometimes broken implementation, IPv6 can cause troubles.

My ISP doesn't offer IPv6 so I need to use a tunnel, which in my case will mean that I'll be seen as coming from the US instead of Canada. That means that some Canadian shows will not let me watch unless I turn off IPv6. Note that Firefox defaults to IPv6 for sites where it is available - which also makes some misconfigured sites not load when they otherwise would. This sort of thing just makes me say, the *ell with it. I'll wait until this all gets sorted out. I'm probably not the only one who's starting to develop that attitude. If so, then we can indeed expect a downswing in IPv6 usage at this point.

Ole Juul

Re: What's the revenue angle?

People selling servers to the public will see an advantage. With costs reaching almost $20 per unit in a /24 quantity, it's a real cost which has to be passed on to the customer. At the same time they can offer IPv6 for free, making for a cheaper overall product.

10 social networks ignored UK government consultations

Ole Juul

mystery

Is there something which actually prevents these people from understanding how the internet functions?

Domain name sellers rub ICANN's face in sticky mess of Europe's GDPR

Ole Juul

Epic incompetence

I could go on.

Ole Juul

Re: Why bother

You might want to check out what ICANN actually does. Although they don't actually do what they're supposed to do, it seems.

US Congress mulls expanding copyright yet again – to 144 years

Ole Juul

Perhaps this latest will be the straw that breaks the camel's back.

DOJ convicts second bloke for helping malware go undetected

Ole Juul

Re: Missing detail

The link to the attorney's office document does give a little more:

Scan4you differed from legitimate antivirus scanning services in multiple ways. For example, while legitimate scanning services share data about uploaded files with the antivirus community and notify their users that they will do so, Scan4you instead informed its users that they could upload files anonymously and promised not to share information about the uploaded files with the antivirus community.

I personally don't think that is good enough, but the prosecutors obviously did. Does that show intent? There are lots of reasons for favouring anonymity, for example when working on proprietary software.

Ole Juul

is there more to this story?

Because the service allowed anonymous uploading and did not share any of samples

Is that the illegal part?

Zuck to meet Euro MPs for ‘please explain’ session

Ole Juul

Re: Web giants must be responsible for the content

Clamping down on what people say does not sit well with me. My solution is to not pay attention to the "vapid and the vile". Anybody who feels obliged to read that crap either likes it or is plain stupid. Mass censorship is not an acceptable solution.

Whois privacy shambles becomes last-minute mad data scramble

Ole Juul

Re: Typical ICANN

I'm hoping that there's a legal case for a class action suit by registries claiming that ICANN was acting irresponsibly. Perhaps there is no legal basis for that, but there certainly is a moral one. I'd love to see ICANN hammered down a notch.

Did I say Chinese jobs? I meant American jobs says new Trump Tweet

Ole Juul

Re: Pot/Kettle.

"... without any court order or other review process."

National security letters, which apparently don't require the approval of a judge, obviously don't count.

How could the Facebook data slurping scandal get worse? Glad you asked

Ole Juul

data use

... a thorough investigation into whether they did in fact misuse any data."

Does misuse even have any meaning in this context.? As far as I'm concerned the fact that they gather it is in the first place is the big issue here.

Africa's internet body in full-blown meltdown: 'None of the above' wins board protest vote

Ole Juul

at least they're competitive

I didn't realise until now that AFRINIC was actually competing with ICANN for the title of most dysfunctional registry.