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* Posts by Old Handle

1602 publicly visible posts • joined 4 Mar 2011

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Top Canadian court: Cops need warrant to get names from ISPs

Old Handle
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Re: No sympathy.

That Canadian 'civil liberty' groups got involved in trying to help this paedo get his conviction overturned is truly worrying.

I'm more worried that the evidence was NOT excluded, even though the court agreed it was obtained unconstitutionally. Since it's unthinkable that the actual police who made this mistake will be punished, letting him go may be the best way to ensure privacy is taken more seriously in the future.

They obviously just see setting such people free as the means justifying the end.

Uh, no. Protecting privacy is the end. Appealing cases of privacy violation whether the defendant is likable or not is the means. Setting the precedent is the important thing, not the individual case. CCLA regards this as a victory even though they didn't get the defendant off. Though I would imagine they share some of my concern that this outcome reflects a degree of wishy-washiness on the part of the court.

Oh, and by the way, Matt, you seem not to even know what the case is about. They are not trying to overturn a conviction. The state is trying to overturn an acquittal.

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'Hashtag' added to the OED – but # isn't a hash, pound, nor number sign

Old Handle
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Re: Pound sign

It's also somewhat strange because in the US (and I assume Canada) the symbol is practically never called pound except on a telephone keypad. I'm trying to recall I've I ever actually seen it used to refer to the unit of weight. Maybe like once?

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US Marshals seek buyer for Silk Road's Bitcoin

Old Handle
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Re: Um, what?

Sending them to a "random" address as you say doesn't prove much, but sending them to something like 1USGovBitcoinDumpSayNo2DrugsSk3lMp would also be a valid method. Not that I can think of any reason they would really want to do that.

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Kids hack Canadian ATM during LUNCH HOUR

Old Handle

Reminds me of when I read that a maintenance menu could be accessed on soda vending machines by pressing--I think it was--the 1st, 3rd, 2nd and 4th drink selection buttons in that order. Not much of a security risk on that one, but it really worked on some of the older machines I tried it with.

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Marc Andreessen: Edward Snowden is a 'textbook traitor'

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Headmaster

Nope, I just checked (Wikipedia) and it showed Guy Fawkes, not Snowden.

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Everyone can and should learn to code? RUBBISH, says Torvalds

Old Handle
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Re: Depends what you mean by 'code'

Exactly. I think almost everyone would benefit from a little experience with scripting or macro type programing. Obviously most people will not be developing full fledged applications, much less working on OS kernels. But any time you find yourself thinking "I just wish I could tell the computer to..." chances are you can, using a script or macro. Especially if what you want to tell it is to do some repetitive task on a bunch of different files/lines/whatever.

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How Bitcoin could become a super-sized Wayback Machine

Old Handle

Interesting...

OK, so I read the whitepaper or whatchamacallit, and some of the technical aspects went over my head, but I couldn't help but come away with the impression that the whole thing is very speculative, whereas Bitcoin was surprisingly solid right from the original published idea. This plan is definitely intriguing, but they've left out some key parts.

For instance they start out talking about a "trusted dealer", which if I understand right is the entity who wants their data backed up. But this kind of central authority clearly won't work in something intended to replace Bitcoin. They address this by saying that role will be filled by the network itself, which must mean, as this article says, that users would be able to nominate data to be stored, but details about how this would work were sorely lacking.

Also, in my opinion, to be useful, there needs to be some built in method of actually retrieving the data. It's all very well that it can be proved your business records are safely backed up, but when your office burns down you need to be able to actually get them back! It sounds like they're saying you would have to manually arrange this on the side, which is hardly convenient.

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Old Handle
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I as I understand proof of work (POW) would be replaced by proof of retrievability (POR). In other words you would mine coins by proving you currently have the data.

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TrueCrypt turmoil latest: Bruce Schneier reveals what he'll use instead

Old Handle
Alert

Worst Case Scenario

Someone in the metafilter thread linked to from comments on the previous article suggested a particularly grim possibility: That some fatal flaw has been discovered that renders existing TC volumes vulnerable. The developers therefore want to warn people to stop using it, but at the same time they don't dare point out the exact flaw since that would guarantee it gets exploited sooner rather than later.

That would somewhat explain their strange behavior, although if true I would have expected an ever stronger warning. In any case seems unlikely. It's not like TrueCrypt is based on some exotic poorly understood cypher, it uses AES, plus a couple other options. And the details of how it uses them are public and reasonably straightforward. So unless one of these well known cyphers is broken and the TC Team were the first people to notice, it's hard to imagine what kind of bug would be that catastrophic.

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Snowden never blew a whistle, US spy boss claims

Old Handle

The constitution: A trivial legal matter.

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Google's driverless car: It'll just block our roads. It's the worst

Old Handle
Go

There are some valid criticisms here (such at the platoon as barrier problem), but the green light thing is silly. All they're doing is emulating what human drivers typically do. In my experience people only very rarely actually start moving the instant the light changes. They might do it if they're in a big hurry or they want to get ahead of everyone else so the can change lanes. But normally attention starts wander and they could easily take a second to react to the green light.

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'Hello? Hello? Yes, I'm calling you on my WEB BROWSER'

Old Handle
Stop

Does the word BLOAT mean anything to you Mozilla?

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It's Google's no-wheel car. OMG... there aren't any BRAKES

Old Handle
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Pint

Re: Bar Transport

True. You'd have to be drunk to trust Google with your life.

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Shockwave shocker: Plugin includes un-patched version of Flash

Old Handle

Shockwave still exists? Huh. I was under the impression it had essentially been rolled into flash. Why make to plug-ins that do almost the same thing?

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Look, pal, it’s YOUR password so it’s YOUR fault that it's gone AWOL

Old Handle
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You don't wanna LOSE your ass, do you?

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Hackers lay claim to exploit that defeats iPhone anti-theft tools

Old Handle
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Re: It would appear

No need for C4, just short the lithium battery.

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eBay slammed for daft post-hack password swap advice

Old Handle
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Re: About http://xkcd.com/936

It's reasonably good advice. I think he underestimated the entropy of Tr0ub4dor&3 somewhat. And 1000 guesses per second scenario is kind of strange. But the basic point stand.

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Old Handle
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Re: Password strength

You had a good point, but then kind of ruined it by claiming an attacker would "have" to go through every combination from A to ZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ before trying AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA. They won't do it that way, because AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA will be in their password dictionary. A 16 character, all capital letter password would be as strong as you say only if it was random, or at least meaningful only to the creator (like the initials of their best friends or something).

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Old Handle
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Re: Someone please enlighten me...

What you missing, I think, is how people go about "decrypting" passwords. You actually do it the other way, you encrypt your guesses until you find one that matches. You have to test the guesses one at a time, for each password. Never the less, this can be done frighteningly fast on consumer hardware. And that's where the difference between bestjetpilot and ju2*kG2#1f9p becomes important.

Actually bestjetpilot was not in the one password list I looked at, but best and jetpilot certainly were. It's not really a terrible password, but hardly something to hold up as an ideal. Where as ju2*kG2#1f9p is just about impossible to guess. The only way would be to try every combination of symbols, which really would take hundreds of years.

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E-cigarettes help you quit – but may not keep you alive

Old Handle
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Re: Addicts

What you say about ADHD and stimulants is true, but it's fairly well known that nicotine has both stimulant and relaxant effects. Which seems strange, but presumably that's part of what makes it such a popular drug.

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350 DBAs stare blankly when reminded super-users can pinch data

Old Handle
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Re: Edward Snowden gives whistleblowers a good name

Who here would not be happy if a DBA published evidence of gross malfeasance that lead to steps being taken to prevent such malfeasance happeing again?

Raytheon.

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OpenStreetMap declared ready for paid use after satnav app debut

Old Handle

Google crowd-sources map data too, in a sense. I've personally submitted a correction, which was accepted. Come to think of it, it's slightly embarrassing that I've contributed to Google maps but not OSM.

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'My house is on fire m8 lol' ... 911 texting tested in the US

Old Handle
Go

This could also be useful in a kidnapping or home invasion situation where making a voice call would attract too much attention.

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James Bond producers sign on for Edward Snowden movie

Old Handle
Joke

They're gonna mess it up, probably move it to a tropical island and give him a girlfriend who looks like a stripper or something.

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Comcast exec says wired broadband customers should pay-as-they-go

Old Handle

I don't like it either, but there's no denying that a pay for what you use system is basically fair.

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Mozilla agrees to add DRM support to Firefox – under protest

Old Handle
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Firefox already supported plug-ins. (In theory, they do keep breaking comparability with their endless updates.) Adding a second type of plug-in just for malware is bloat at best and at worst it will impose design constraints that impact other, useful, parts of the browser.

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Old Handle

Another giant leap backwards for Firefox. Why does Mozilla so love trashing what used to be a great browser?

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Whoa! NUDE! SELFIES! for! Marissa! Mayer's! Blink-gobbling! Yahoo!

Old Handle
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Re: Serious Question

Presumably on some level they realize their inability to create a product people actually want to use, so buying a product people already like is very tempting.

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Boeing shows off 7-4-heaven SPACEPLANE-for-tourists concept

Old Handle

Why is it lit with black-lights? That's got to be uncomfortable.

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Nintendo says sorry, but there will be NO gay marriage in Tomodachi Life ... EVER

Old Handle
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Do you seriously think children will be "confused" by finding out gay people exist, or do you really just mean you are confused by it? Because usually children take new information in stride pretty easily.

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Old Handle
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Trollface

Re: And this from the company.......

I thought they were brothers... oh dear.

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Old Handle
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Re: They have learned actually

Removing the option for same-sex relationships from certain localized versions would be trivial, though. It's not uncommon to have content changes in those, especially cutting out things deemed offensive in one culture or another.

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You'll hate Google's experimental Chrome UI, but so will phishers

Old Handle

This reminds me of the other day when I was walking my retirement age father through upgrading a program that came in a zip file (rather than a fancy self-installer). Obviously this should have been an easy task, and he's not stupid, but even with directions he struggled, because like most users he's only comfortable with the part of the computer he uses every day.

And that's why I think this trend to "simplify" everything is so horrible. The more they hide the more helpless the users become. When I encounter a new application the first thing I do is explore all the menus and buttons. So when I need to do something later, I already know where to find the right command. Clearly not everyone has this impulse, but recent software designs seem actively hostile to that way of learning. They apparently want to make absolutely sure that users don't even accidentally discover any features they before they need them.

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HALF of London has outdated Wi-Fi security, says roving World of War, er, BIKER

Old Handle
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Trollface

Re: He is NOT a biker

So you're telling us that people who ride BIKES are CYCLISTS and BIKERS ride motorCYCLES?

That's highly illogical!

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French software developers are all beautiful women

Old Handle
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Re: Something strange

It does look strange, but the extra arm belongs to the guy in the middle.

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White House to world: We don't hoard IT security vulnerabilities

Old Handle

Are there any examples where the NSA did reveal vulnerabilities?

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PARTY TIME! MIT slips $100 to each student ... in Bitcoin

Old Handle
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Re: In other news...

What do you have against ฿? It's good enough for Thailand.

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Target finally implements chip and PIN card protections

Old Handle

That's a step up I guess, but as long as we're moving away from plain magnetic strips I would rather have a system where you digitally sign the complete transaction including quantity, recipient and a time stamp.

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AMD adds ARM security core to new, low-cost x86 mobile processors

Old Handle

So in other words their crippleware is even harder to repair now?

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Trolls and victims watch Supremes for definition of meaningless patents

Old Handle
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Re: Dear Reg editors:

Yeah, what's wrong with "SCOTUS"? I always that that had an interesting ring to it.

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Facebook preps ad network to TARGET YOU WHERE YOU LIVE

Old Handle
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Permissions

The Facebook app for Android requests the ACCESS_COARSE_LOCATION and ACCESS_FINE_LOCATION permissions. Installing it at all allows it to access GPS. The only possible way to not allow it to find your location is to not install it.

This isn't true, although I certainly wouldn't expect the average user to know this. There are apps for individually restricting permissions. And Cyanogenmod comes with it build in. Whether the Facebook app still works with these turned off, I don't know.

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Friends don't let friends use Internet Explorer – advice from US, UK, EU

Old Handle
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Heartbleed was unusual because it was so stealthy. This is a more common memory execution bug. It's harder to use, especially without being noticed, but potentially more devastating since it could let an attacker take full control.

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Lost artworks by Andy Warhol found on 80s-era FLOPPY DISKS

Old Handle
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You actually have a decent paint program on your phone?

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Teen girl arrested with 70-year-old man's four inch weapon inside her

Old Handle
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Outside a nudist beach, quickly retrieving items from this type of storage could be inconvenient. Plus some women may prefer larger weapons.

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Apple patent LOCKS drivers out of their OWN PHONES

Old Handle

Good!

Now I'll never have to worry about encountering this "feature" on an Android.

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FTC: OK Facebook, swallow WhatsApp – but NO selling people's data without permission

Old Handle
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Re: /sigh

No, But at least that way people have a chance to stop using it if they don't want their data taken.

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T-Mobile US increases pressure on rivals with fondleslab freebie

Old Handle

They still won't let you get just a data plan. I tried, but they won't sell that by itself. I have no idea why. I ended up going with one of those cut rate pay as you go companies instead.

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Google-funded boffins figure out age-busting facial prediction system

Old Handle

It would be alot more convincing if they showed unfudged output images side-by-side with the real pictures. Photoshopping them into the real pictures ruins the credibility in my opinion.

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Google kills fake anti-virus app that hit No. 1 on Play charts

Old Handle

It's funny that it didn't require any permissions. Given what it was supposed to do, that should have been a dead giveaway that it was fake. But I guess that just shows most people pay no attention to app permissions (which we already knew).

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