* Posts by Dan 55

15337 publicly visible posts • joined 13 Jun 2009

You're a govt official. You accidentally slap personal info on the web. Quick, blame a kid!

Dan 55 Silver badge

Re: Unisys screwed up

I don't know the detail of Canadian law. However, if this had happened in the UK and they wanted to make an example of this young man, our computer misuse legislation would enable them to do so.

Example from 2005.

Man fined due to BT's shitty donation page.

Facebook admits it does track non-users, for their own good

Dan 55 Silver badge

Re: Blocking FB cookies

Disconnect is install and forget and blocks FB, Twitter, and analytics.

Dan 55 Silver badge

Re: And El Reg?

Really El Reg should do something like Bruce Schneier's website does - flick a switch to enable Facebook like slurp if you really want.

More than 87m Facebook profiles farmed, says second ex-Cambridge Analytica witness

Dan 55 Silver badge
Happy

Re: "Try the phrase "getting your hands dirty"

Well, she's American, so you're not understanding her not understanding.

France building encrypted messaging app for politicians

Dan 55 Silver badge

"why Mahjoubi wants a homebrew app is something of a mystery...

... since in common with all modern administrations, the French government has an extensive and encrypted parliamentary network and secured e-mail"

... could it be because they don't yet have a chat app?

ZTE now stands for 'zero tech exports' – US govt slaps 7-year ban on biz

Dan 55 Silver badge

Re: Real risk ?

Having had the pleasure of an ISP-supplied ZTE router, I can believe the warnings.

An earlier firmware version had an exploit on the tr-069 port which the ISP enables so their customer service droid can press a button and reset everything to factory settings to make their lives easier. The answer to any problem is now reset and I'll do it for you in case you don't know how to insert the paperclip in the hole and keep it there for 10 seconds. You had a LAN nicely set up? Own SSID or wifi password? Disabled WPS? Why would you want to do that?

Going online with this version got your router pwned within seconds, the settings were changed so http was enabled on the WAN side and it was now part of a botnet, sort of similar to going online with the original Windows XP.

The fix the ISP pushed out patched the tr-069 exploit, but still left the http port enabled so it was still part of the botnet.

Luckily they're so full of holes that you can run exploit programs to lift the settings out of them and change to another router.

HMRC delays digi tax plans amid Brexit customs woes

Dan 55 Silver badge

Re: I hope that HMRC...

Your Turing completeness algorithm has suffered regressions.

Dan 55 Silver badge

Re: I hope that HMRC...

If the government is hamstrung then it is the government hamstrung by the remain supporting government.

Tautology is a tautology. Brexit is brexit.

Remember that the government were publicly in support of leaving before the referendum and claimed they would be in the referendum (before 'changing their minds').

No, I don't remember that. When was Cameron's government ever in favour of leaving the EU, apart from using it as a threat when negotiating with them that if they didn't give him what he wanted then leave would win in the referendum?

Dan 55 Silver badge

Re: I hope that HMRC...

HMRC are pausing their other projects to focus on the main an important project of the UK leaving the EU.

In codejunky's reality, it's a good thing that government is hamstrung by Brexit.

Dan 55 Silver badge

Re: More brexit fun!

How many times is that he's flounced out of UKIP and left the UK?

Dan 55 Silver badge

Re: I hope that HMRC...

The only party who had all this organised and ready to go was UKIP.

That's why before the referendum he was talking the UK being like Norway and Switzerland and afterwards he wasn't.

There was and still is no plan, by anyone, apart from foot stamping.

Sysadmin’s worst client was … his mother! Until his sister called for help

Dan 55 Silver badge
Flame

And even if your browser saves it, the website helpfully replaces what the browser saved with "Type your comment here — advanced HTML and hotlinks allowed".

Dan 55 Silver badge

Re: My Dad...

Single click to select, double to open. Very easy to remember, at least it was until Web 2.0 came along.

Dan 55 Silver badge

Re: Dad wanted a PC

To be able to take it somewhere if the hardware went wrong and badger them until it's fixed. I guess there's still a lot to be said for that.

Dan 55 Silver badge

Dad wanted a PC

I recommended a Windows 7 one from PC Specialist. He got a Windows 10 one from PC World.

Cue avalanche of problems, although to be fair he did get through a lot of them himself.

But what can you do, people won't be told.

Dan 55 Silver badge

Re: My Dad...

When you see grandads prodding at a touchscreen, it's for a reason. When you get older your fingers become less conductive.

Dan 55 Silver badge

Rubbish touch pads on cheap laptops cause all sorts of strife and user confusion. Some parts of the unmarked pad result in scrolling, some selecting. In these cases, it is not the user's fault if they want to throw the machine out of the window.

Fixed by uninstalling the proprietary touchpad driver/control panel bollocks.

If I came across one which translated Morse to text I wouldn't be surprised.

UK pub chain Wetherspoons' last call: ♫ Just a spoonful of Twitter – let's pull social media down ♫

Dan 55 Silver badge

Re: Or maybe....

Or the social media bloke from the EU that they had on Twitter and Facebook finally couldn't cope with so much idiocy per square mile and packed their bags and went somewhere else.

Go away, kid, you bother me: Apple, Google, Microsoft, Mozilla kick W3C nerds to the curb

Dan 55 Silver badge

Yet, what does WHATWG have to replace the accessibility standards from W3G?

a) Something worse or b) Nothing.

Dan 55 Silver badge

Well it's not just merit. WHATWG is just the browser makers who want to make life easier for themselves. Hence bothersome stiff like accessibility is given a lower priority.

Android apps prove a goldmine for dodgy password practices

Dan 55 Silver badge

Nearly 20,000 apps with insecure keys ... including popular code like Samsung’s "smart" home app

I wouldn't expect anything less from the bigcorp that brought us Tizen.

Whois is dead as Europe hands DNS overlord ICANN its arse

Dan 55 Silver badge

Re: All bow to the data protection Gods

What does this have to do with a fucking counter narrative?

If you have a domain, why should your personal data be available for everyone in the world to see, use, and misuse as they see fit?

Apple leak: If you leak from Apple, we'll have you arrested, says Apple

Dan 55 Silver badge

Re: Leaking the anti-leak memo to Bloomberg

I guess their competitors might be able to get an advantage if they find out some secret proprietary insider information - they're going to release a new phone which is like the old phone from last year, a tablet which is like the old tablet from last year, a new OS which is like the old OS from last year, and not do anything at all with their computer range.

Dan 55 Silver badge

Nobody in the UK would have found out if UK sports rag "journos" had refrained from shaking their fists at someone from the other side of the continent who couldn't give two fucks about their precious embargoed quote.

The last link is doubly funny considering who they both work for.

Hawaii Live-Go! Microsoft launches Honolulu admin tool for cloud and on-prem

Dan 55 Silver badge

Re: Server management?

You're stretching your definition of 'few', because it hit us too. It was >50% of the working day.

What was that you say, people couldn't reply or receive e-mails and the lack of syncing meant people couldn't collaborate on documents? (Putting aside MS' implementation of collaboration which is a whole other argument you're going to lose as well.)

Dan 55 Silver badge

Re: Server management?

Was that before or after Azure and Office 365 had a wobbly for most of the day?

Dan 55 Silver badge

Re: Project Honolulu Because?

Indeed. MS Licensing is like Judge Dread.

Dan 55 Silver badge

Re: Project Honolulu Because?

Because it'll have a terrible confusing UI like everything MS has done after Windows 7, I would have thought.

When SecureRandom()... isn't: JavaScript fingered for poking cash-spilling holes in Bitcoin wallets

Dan 55 Silver badge

Anyone implementing a crypto library in JavaScript is building a castle in a swamp anyway. There's no way you can sign code and it's too easy to fiddle with functions and the DOM in the browser.

Hey, so Europe's GDPR privacy deadline for Whois? We're going to miss it ... by a year or so

Dan 55 Silver badge

Re: @ codejunky

You can search for "the worst of Nigel Farage" and get something too...

Like this.

Dan 55 Silver badge

Re: @ codejunky

If all you can see is black and white extremes you can never understand as the importance is in the degrees.

Was this a sudden attack of lucidity after your first contribution to this thread?

Exactly. We people dont like it and the US is actually powerful militarily, economically and politically. I dont think much comparison can really be made with the EU.

The EU doesn't need to invade ICANN (or Google, or Facebook) to get it to take data protection seriously.

Using Outlook? You should probably do some patching

Dan 55 Silver badge

Haven't they changed that message to "Hey there! We're not responding right now, but we'll be responding again right back at ya real soon now!" in the later versions?

The true victims of Brexit are poor RuneScape players

Dan 55 Silver badge

Re: "Jagex did not say exactly how Brexit will up its costs"

s/52/50

1. Legal opinion is not clear on whether it can be withdrawn, many say it can, even the EU said it could.

2. The rest of the EU can vote to extend the two years if they vote unanimously, and that is what the transitional period is.

Dan 55 Silver badge

Re: "Jagex did not say exactly how Brexit will up its costs"

The decision has been taken

On an advisory vote, so badly drawn up as to threaten to split the UK up, and has been interpreted not to mean "Leave the European Union" (EU referendum ballot paper) but to "taking the opportunity of this great moment of national change to step back and ask ourselves what kind of country we want to be" (Mayhem, Lancaster House speech).

"Oh, you want to leave? Well, we're not going to, forget I asked".

Well it was called to stop the Tory party splitting and to keep their voters from defecting to UKIP. A referendum advises policy, government puts a bill before the house based on that policy, but Parliament always has the last word and has to balance the referendum with stuff like the national interest. They're not supposed to be nodding dogs.

What does that mean, and how were such people omitted? Everyone on the electoral register was entitled to vote.

Commonwealth residents were allowed to vote even if they can't. EU residents weren't allowed even though they can vote (local elections). A whole load of expats were excluded from the vote.

No, the issue was a simple yes/no, stay or leave.

If the question's as simple and as literal as on the ballot paper then we leave the EU but stay in the EEA, single market, and customs union.

"Ah, but that doesn't mean that..."

Dan 55 Silver badge

Re: "Jagex did not say exactly how Brexit will up its costs"

Don't like democracy? Best to move somewhere else, then.

I like democracy, I don't like idiocracy.

That's a very selective single data point. Let's look at the actual history:

Dec 2008 1.023

Er, yeah. Just after the crash. Very non-selective. Let's look at the actual history:

Jan 2007: 1.506984

Apr 2007: 1.471493

Jul 2007: 1.482623

Oct 2007: 1.436291

Jan 2008: 1.339853

Apr 2008: 1.114106

Jul 2008: 1.262073

Oct 2008 1.274994

Dec 2008: 1.104133 - Look here, it's always been low! We're doing better than ever!

So what does this mean. We see two great troughs.

1. 2008 financial crash

2. Referendum vote (AKA Brexit).

Link

But I guess it's all in the presentation, as you were awarded 7 upvotes for your rubbish.

Thanking you, AC.

Dan 55 Silver badge
Facepalm

Re: Funny...

The market response lasted all of a day, the fact that the currency exchange rates have been continually lower since the day the Brexit vote happened has nothing to do with the Brexit vote, neither do the facts that academic projects are ending and new ones aren't starting, investment is on hold, and businesses that can are making plans for leaving.

Dan 55 Silver badge

Re: What a load of old cock

Alternative Facts?

It has never recovered from £1/€1.31 (at the moment it's at £1/€1.14) and as for $ it's only just managed to crawl back up to level it was on Mass Stupidity Day. A graph would be instructive and xe.com has them.

Dan 55 Silver badge

"Jagex did not say exactly how Brexit will up its costs"

Wikipedia says most of the servers are in North America and the EU and I guess the depreciation of the pound is taking its toll.

So this is yet another nationwide foot-gun inflicted enjoyment opportunity brought to you by The Will of The People™.

Mark Duckerberg: Second Congressional grilling sees boss dodge questions like a pro

Dan 55 Silver badge

Re: Nice article

Then there's this and this and I wonder just how useful this exercise is going to be. Probably this is so we can be told that Something Was Done later on.

Dan 55 Silver badge

Re: Strangely, reminds me of an Eric Idle joke

What does it stand for? Making money by mass surveillance and brazenly lying when the mask slips to ride out the shitstorm.

Google's not-Linux OS documentation cracks box open at last

Dan 55 Silver badge
Facepalm

Re: Call me a cynic....

Yay progress.

Dan 55 Silver badge

Re: Call me a cynic....

Yes, but apps that call Play Services have problems. It seems only Amazon has a drop in replacement for Play Services, and it's more limited.

Skype for Business has nasty habit of closing down… for business

Dan 55 Silver badge

Re: Utter bollocks

The spell chucker obviously saw the context and changed it for a better word.

Dan 55 Silver badge

Re: Suggestions?

Wrong Skype. This is Skype for Business, AKA The Client Formally Known As Lync. They have nothing to do with each other except the name which confuses people.

But if you want suggestions, try Wire.com.

Dan 55 Silver badge

Re: End of Life

Out of the frying pan into the fire.

Dan 55 Silver badge

Utter bollocks

If you're sharing just one application window, Lync does not need to make a copy of your entire desktop area to its own memory. Windows from Vista onwards is a composting windows manager, each application window has its own buffer, so the biggest buffer Lync would need would be the same size as that.

But now that we know why application window sharing is bad, what are their excuses for the rest of it?

It's April 2018, and we've had to sit on this Windows 10 Spring Creators Update headline for days

Dan 55 Silver badge

"we've had to sit on this Windows 10 Spring Creators Update headline for days"

Correct, so far for two of them.

European Space Agency squirts a code update at Mars Express orbiter

Dan 55 Silver badge
Trollface

Good job it's not running Android, they'd have to launch a new one.

Get the FTP outta here, says Firefox

Dan 55 Silver badge

Re: "FTP sends data as plaintext and just wasn’t designed for the modern web"

Well you did talk about encryption and I answered...

If performance is an argument for not allowing pages to pull in stuff from FTP, we might as well shut down HTTP/1.0 because it's too slow too.

The important thing is to make the data accessible, but it seems lately that's deemed unimportant.

El Reg needs you – to help build an automated beer-transporting robot

Dan 55 Silver badge

Invented 40 years ago

Advert here.

s/apple/can of beer/g

Still available, apparently.

They know what the trailer was really used for.