Posts by heyrick

Re: thoughts on future regulation of encryption

"Otherwise, it'll simply improve over time."

By what metric? The benefit of a computer playing Go, Chess, etc is that while the game is famously complex with incredible numbers of permutations, the rules are clearly defined, the objective that must be achieved to win is also fairly clearly defined (take/trap the King, etc). All a learning machine needs is to have a sufficient number of games to figure out the best way to get from a known starting position to a desired winning end when playing an opponent whose exact moves cannot be entirely predicted in advance. That's the skill, responding to a "random" behaviour of the human player to keep the best advantage (which probably requires tracking player moves to work out what the human is attempting to do).

Now let's turn our attention to a learning system for spotting terrorists. There's no defined starting situation. There's no defined end game. There's no defined list of behaviours that may occur in a message in order to indicate terrorist activity. "Don't forget to put the cake in to bake at three o'clock this evening" posted on Mumsnet could be a message from one scumbag to another - they're hardly going to say "Westminster, 3pm, bang" are they? So... We don't exactly have a start or an end or even a middle. Good luck getting a machine to "learn" that.

Re: er - call holding in *2017*

"what kind of neolithic outfits are requiring their customers to hold ?"

Let me see. It's probably a premium number. You're on hold, to said number, waiting waiting waiting.

Ketching.

The cops will shoot on sight.

Don't they already?

Re: Dell BIOS update may be a security fix

"And even then only after you have properly tested the floppy controller and the drive,"

WTF? It's too hard to load the data, then perform a CRC check to ensure it loaded correctly before trying to dump it into the Flash? What is this, the '90s?

"Would you really want a hospital where the many different machines ran many different OS's?"

Why is that a problem? A device running a specific piece of application software ought to present an easy to use UI that takes over the screen, so it will appear that only it is running. As long as the UI is clear and logical, it shouldn't matter what the underlying OS is. You're expected to use an MRI scanner to image people's insides, not run Solitaire in a corner of the screen...

Re: One point of criticism though...

"the GPL pushes that all the way downstream."

Assuming the company bothers to pay attention. I emailed MCLSamar a while ago for the GPL code for my buggy-as-hell IP camera.

No response.

I'm not even remotely surprised...

Re: Answer the ringing doorbell, rescue the potatoes etc.....

"They would regularly waste hours doing this until they got bored doing this and reverted back to old fashioned mockery & abuse."

Dunno about you, but I think my free time is more valuable than that...

Re: Bank security is a complete joke

"Worst of all, when calling back they expect you to provide your security details when they have offered no evidence that they really are calling from the bank. When challenged, they invariably seem utterly bewildered and refuse to provide any info, endlessly repeating the mantra of 'Data Protection'"

A few years ago my bank called me. After identifying themselves as such, I asked for the name and amount of any of my direct debits. They kinda freaked out so I politely said they had completely failed to verify that they were in fact my bank. I didn't wait for a response, I hung up.

Re: On fake news

I recently came across this, which if there's any truth in it, is pretty fucked up behaviour... https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/may/07/the-great-british-brexit-robbery-hijacked-democracy

Re: So, just another day in the office...?

"If it does tilt the election and undo the 20 point advantage, that indicates that the French people happen to agree with the Russians about the candidates. There's nothing wrong with that."

Okay. Fair enough. Let's see a dump of Le Pen's data. Then the people can compare one with the other. Without equality, it's a blunt and obvious attempt to subvert the elective process. And while you're all pointing at Russia, to dump the data just prior to the media embargo suggests some inside information in the French process.

[Disclaimer: ex-pat living in France]

Working as an office nerd a billion years ago...

...there was an incident with a CD-ROM and sticky tape. Exactly as described. Even at the slow 4x speeds as was current back then, the disc came apart, the tape stuck to internal stuff while spinning and, well, I dunno what exactly happened but myself and the photocopy girl took the thing apart and that little plastic lens was nowhere to be found.

Re: Couldn't be arsed. Elevenses.

"I'm bored of it and the SNP."

Eh? An independence referendum, an EU referendum, a local election, and an upcoming general election following the one two years ago?

In essence, you're complaining because you were expected to get out and vote for something five times in the last three years? No wonder democracy is screwed.

Re: Meow

"First I picked up the frog and then the frog peed in my eye."

Second question - is "frog" a little green/brown animal, or a euphemism for a person of a certain nationality?

Re: A stupid question

"Without it, El Reg (for example) is a mess. But I'd be happy to support El Reg."

I have Ghostery (Firefox on Android), and while I have no particular qualms about adverts on El Reg, they're still blocked because it isn't El Reg providing the content. It is doubleclick and addaptive and whoever is behind the scenes there. No matter how much I might want to trust the domain I'm looking at, that's not who serves the advertising content and... No. I don't trust random third parties. Just no.

Re: Chrome works better

"Usability and reliability trumps principles when you've got to get stuff done."

I stick with Firefox. If a site has trouble, I just go and don't come back. Their loss.

However a rear of these comments (stupid sound issues, compatibility, reliability, etc) perfectly illustrates why a browser monoculture is a bad thing. You can whinge about the bad decisions of Firefox, but more importantly you can choose something else. If there was only One Browser, you would be beholden to the whims and desires of the company that produce it, you would get the features they think cool and that's that.

Re: Firewall

"on its third motherboard"

There's your problem right there. It's a motor, a heater, a valve, and a pump along with various mechanical sensors.

Our machine gave up last weekend after a long life (bought in 1984). It was entirely mechanical and just worked. I'm dreading finding something useful to replace it with.

”A Govt body managing to negotiate a saving on an existing contract. :)"

Not really. Government pays -x% and we little people get to pay +x% to make up the shortfall.

Re: Thank goodness.

"It could be the spouse with a sudden medical condition you're worried about"

It could well be, but the chance of that actually being that truth, as opposed to some blowhard who uses the phone like on The Apprentice (held on palm, shouted at) is going to be vanishingly small.

Re: telnet??!!?

"you can connect to a web server's port 80 and, knowing the right sequences, pretend to be a simple web browser."

Back around turn of the millennium, I used to use telnet to log into my pop3 server to check mail. A few simple commands, and it was often quicker than starting up the email software.

Now? Thwarted by encrypted connections and no longer necessary since mobile phones and tablets can do mail checking as a background task.

Re: Being on a placement myself...

"has not only learned to make tea but also to drink it"

I almost always make my own tea. Biggest mistake in life[*] is to have somebody else make your tea. It's never exactly right.

* - some exaggeration, maybe

The problem with El Reg is that half of the stories could easily qualify as April Fools.

I mean, wasn't there one just the other day about a bunch of countries on this side of The Atlantic demanding secure encryption with a convenient back door? <sigh>

Re: Squirrels. Mice. Rats.

Last year, lights went really dim at home. I popped open the junction box under the meter and found that there was only around 100V instead of 220ish on two phases, and 80V on the other phase. Phone call to ESC AND in a few hours they turned up, verified that it wasn't us. With the house out of circuit (something they can do by measuring before the meter), they confirmed that one or was dead.

Took them all day to fix it. The scenario - a large bird across the medium voltage lines (what is that, 22kV or something?) shorted which caused an arc powerful enough to sever the wire, which then caused the step down transformer to fail trying to run off only two phases (prob when milking equipment kicked in in nearby farms).

An animal in the wrong place can cause all sorts of havoc.

Re: replacing dangerous things

This presupposes that there are more capable politicians...

Re: @bazza

"Still, I remain sceptical of this "GPS drains battery" meme.

Currently using a Samsung S7, but had similar behaviour with a Sony Xperia.

Using Google Maps navigation, I'm not sure if it is the GPS chip, constant chatter to the mothership, or a lot of graphics grunt, but the activity heated up the phones appreciably. In the case of the S7, I'd be tempted to say "dramatically". That much heat, you can imagine what that did to battery life...

So I use GPS only when needed and keep it off otherwise. Same with WiFi, that's only on when I'm at home. And Bluetooth is only on when required. It's common sense, surely?

Re: Re : I wonder where the scammers got hold of their client telephone numbers from.. India?

"Talk Talk should have at least made this block controllable via a switch/optional-domain-white-list in the user account,

Doesn't that imply that they might have a clue what they're doing instead of, you know, turning everything off at one time...