* Posts by TheVogon

3511 publicly visible posts • joined 17 Jan 2013

DoJ: Look! Google is giving up overseas data for warrants outside Second Circuit

TheVogon

"I never understood the Microsoft case anyway, there have been rules in effect for decades on getting this information - you petition the Irish courts (in this particular case) with the assistance of the local authorities"

But that would acknowledge that US law doesn't apply globally which is what they have tried to pretend to date - despite evidence to the contrary: https://www.theregister.co.uk/2005/04/08/wto_online_gambling/

TheVogon

"the DoJ said: “In the wake of those decisions, Google has reversed its previous stance and informed the government that it will comply with new Section 2703 warrants outside the Second Circuit.”"

Presumably Google can look forward to some exceedingly large fines in the EU under the GDPR then:

"Breaches of some provisions by businesses, which law makers have deemed to be most important for data protection, could lead to fines of up to €20 million or 4% of global annual turnover for the preceding financial year, whichever is the greater, being levied by data watchdogs. For other breaches, the authorities could impose fines on companies of up to €10m or 2% of global annual turnover, whichever is greater."

Unloved Microsoft Edge is much improved – but will anyone use it?

TheVogon

Re: The interface is terrible

"The biggest irritant with Edge is that if you use a Microsoft account, it's next to impossible to get it to not sign you in by default. "

In Edge goto the Options menu (the 3 dots), then Settings, View Advanced Settings, Manage Passwords - and you can right click on and delete anything you don't want remembered. (At some point you must have clicked the please remember me on this PC option if it's doing it automatically). Then it will always prompt you.

TheVogon

Re: The interface is terrible

"You have to switch to private browsing mode after starting to avoid sharing everything you do with your browser with Microsoft."

Agreed - which is relatively easy to do if you care about such things. It would be nice if there was a single "I'm paranoid don't send anything to anyone" button option. It is possible to disable it altogether for normal browsing (although a bit of a PITA) - If you want to do that here you go:

* To stop Microsoft Edge general data forwarding, under Microsoft Edge Options, Select View advanced settings and Turn any of these off:

Use page prediction to speed up browsing, improve reading, and make my overall experience better

Show search and site suggestions as I type

Help protect me from malicious sites and downloads with Windows Defender SmartScreen

* To stop Microsoft Edge from collecting your browsing history:

Go to Start , then select Settings > Privacy > Feedback & diagnostics.

Under Diagnostic and usage data, select Basic.

*To stop Microsoft Edge from collecting your browsing history for Cortana personalization:

On your PC, select the search box on the taskbar to open Cortana home. On your mobile device, select the Search  button.

Select Cortana’s menu  > Notebook > Permissions.

Find Browsing history, and turn the switch to Off.

TheVogon

Re: Seen in the wild!

"I helped a customer out just yesterday and was flabbergasted that she was running Edge as her browser of choice."

Well "customer" implies a work environment - and lots of corporate stuff is still IE only - which can be directly launched from Edge.

Or maybe they are performance sensitive? https://microsoftedge.github.io/videotest/2017-04/BenchmarkMethodology.html

Or maybe they care about battery life? https://www.windowscentral.com/microsoft-battery-life-test-gives-edge-leg-over-chrome-and-firefox

TheVogon

Re: Every time you visit Google with Edge, you see an ad for Chrome

"How do Goodle still get away with this? "

They haven't in the EU.

Unfortunately in the colonies, money is king and they just pay lots of politicians lots of money and the problem magically goes away.... See https://www.ft.com/content/6b637b56-53da-11e4-80db-00144feab7de

TheVogon

Again, not ideal, but you can install the "Save HTML in Edge" app from the Windows Store

TheVogon

Re: Javascript ?

"And who uses Bing as their first choice search engine?"

it's far less irritating than Google for sponsored content. However if you were going to change it, DuckDuckGo is my preference, (which does include content from Bing).

TheVogon

Re: The biggest issue with Edge

"Is that I cannot imagine anyone with any regard to privacy running a win 10 integrated browser rather than one from another company."

Versus say Chrome which is Spyware by design?!

TheVogon

Re: I was prepared to give it a try when I first installed Win10...

"Whilst the idea of Edge being gung ho on ad's may seem reasonable, it's quite terrible. Websites that rely on adverts to pay the bills (i.e. most of them) would simply block Edge with a "we don't support Edge, please use Chrome...."

Edge now has various Ad Block options including Ublock Origin. And if you ever do hit a website that denies access to Edge, all you need to do is hit F12, click the "Emulation" tab and you can be pretty much any browser you want to be...

TheVogon

"For me the single biggest reason I don't use edge....I cannot right click anywhere on a page and select back."

In Edge, click on the menu options (3 dots on the far right), select Extensions, then Get Extensions From The Store, then install the "Mouse Gestures" extension. That should be everything you need.

I agree this should ideally be built in, but I think this is due to Microsoft's attempts to keep the attack surface and code base to an absolute minimum...

TheVogon

"The current version of Edge on Windows 10 Mobile works very well"

Agreed, but a) there are no add-ons as yet - and add blockers on mobile are really a must these days have with so many websites having popover adverts that obscure the entire screen, and b) to get mobile website to actually show modern content it seemingly pretends to be an Android browser meaning you are forever being offered useless apps from the Google Play Store...

I really liked Windows Mobile, but primarily because of App availability I got myself a Samsung S8+. I could spend a day writing abut how many things suck on Android / Samsung - for instance nearly every app sending lame notifications. Bixby not being able to be uninstalled, and even though I disabled it and denied all rights to every installed Bixby app I still get repeatedly prompted to update it! But if you need a wide selection of current Apps - it's either that or pay the Apple tax....

What doesn't make sense to me is Microsoft releasing zero handsets whilst still updating windows 10 Mobile....They need to release something very good very soon or concede total defeat In mobile.

TheVogon

Re: And its only Windows 10?

"No, Edge should've been left in it's box 'til it was ready. Shipping it incomplete in Windows 10 gave everyone a chance to use it, find it was inferior to whatever they'd been using before, and promptly ignore it forever after."

Agreed, but you could to a degree say that about Windows 10 in general. The RTM version was awful - they wanted to get it out the door before it was really ready. If you install a current version it's a lot more bearable.

Ditto Edge. Now that it has a selection of add-ons including Ublock Origin etc and because it's very fast it's the preferred option for me.

TheVogon

Re: The interface is terrible

"There is something just terrible about the interface, it's difficult to pinpoint but it just feels uncomfortable..."

Short learning curve to understand what the (not very intuitive) icons actually mean, but once you know that I find it preferable to Chrome or IE.

"even though I know that Edge is more secure ( or at least that's what we're told)..."

In terms of vulnerability counts it consistently beats Chrome. And it's faster.

"Flat is boring"

They can make the interface look like whatever the fashion of the day is. However I guess it was originally called Spartan for a reason....

123-Reg customers outraged at automatic .UK domain registration

TheVogon

Re: Customer retention -> vendor lock-in

"By automatically registering the .uk for customers, they increase the number of domains that customers would have to transfer to another registrar should they be inclined to leave 123-reg."

Domain transfer is selective. You only update the IPS tags for the one you want to move...

TheVogon

"therefore 123-Reg may have quite a few court cases to fight in 2 years time when they ask their customers for payment."

If they really are automatically signing you up AND autorenewing with a charge then I can't see they have a leg to stand on to enforce it.

However they might well be simply planning to refund on demand and likely will still make bundles from those who don't notice or decide to keep them....

Signing you up free automatically I don't have a major issue with (although opting in would be better), but the auto renewing for something you didn't specifically agree to seems terribly shoddy.

As I understand it, it is also illegal to sign you up in this way under the Consumer Contract Regulations that came into force in 2014...

TheVogon

Re: Unsolicited Goods Act 1971

"Basically after (60/90?) days, if you have notified the company of their error, they become your property. So we flogged them on eBay."

Surely if actually sent to you then they are "unsolicited goods" and are your property for free anyway?

TheVogon

is that danielmcintire.co.uk or danielmcintyre.co.uk the notorious spam, phishing and malware hosting site.

See what I did there? Same difference.... Not a new problem.

TheVogon

Re: How much

".co.uk now £23.98 for two years."

A quick look shows £8.95 for 2 years at LCN.

TheVogon

"Why is there a need for the doubling of names by direct .uk registration in the first place? It's only for registrars to make money."

No need to double - 2 years free gives you the time to switch to .uk without additional cost.

A straight .uk is better than the relatively pointless .co addition imo.

TheVogon

"It strikes me that a lot of people moaning about "having to pay for these domain names in 2 years time" aren't aware of turning the automatic renewal off on these domain names."

LCN defaults to it turned off. I just registered my reserved .uk domains with them for free for 2 years. I get the choice though - they don't register them unless I say so!

Microsoft fixing Windows 10 'stuttering' bugs in Creators Update

TheVogon

Re: Disabled update service before "Creator's Update"

"As of today I still haven't enabled it again and while I worry about bugs and unpatched exploits"

I would recommend that you at least download the Windows 10 media creation tool and complete an in-place upgrade to the latest major release. They have fixed lots of bugs, performance issues and glitches since RTM.

TheVogon

Re: WAAS

"The big question is when does it start and how much do they think they can get away with ?"

Well it likely won't start without buying a new device in the future if and when they decide to launch such an option. Windows 10 is supported for "the life" of the device it's installed on.

I suspect you will in future get say Windows Basic free and can then choose to rent OR once off fee upgrade the Windows version IF you need / want to for more advanced features. I would also expect to see the Windows upgrade rental included "free" with an Office 365 sub, etc....

TheVogon

Re: Sigh, Poor Ordinary Folks

"Looks a useful site. Unfortunately with the BTInternet account, (because set-up couldn't complete due to outdated information?) the option to modify settings wasn't shown."

It should be. Open the Windows Store app and check for updates - so that you ensure the Mail app is the current version. The RTM version was very buggy.

TheVogon

Re: Sigh, Poor Ordinary Folks

"When you went to manage accounts there was simply the option to change the mail box name or to delete the account. "

See https://www.tenforums.com/tutorials/6135-add-delete-account-windows-10-mail-app.html

It's September 2017, and .NET lets PDFs hijack your Windows PC

TheVogon

Re: Still nope

" but Microsoft Word could not detect what encoding it had."

"Libre Office would open it but the formatting was off and it was almost frozen."

Sounds like a non standard encoding PDF to me as both had issues. Is the source by any chance a non western country?

"so I installed the same font into Win 10. No change, Win 10 is a POS!"

if the issue was Windows 10 encoding support, then you would likely have needed to install the relevant language support - for instance Russian, Chinese, Arabic, etc, not a font. However I suspect this is simply that Word doesn't recognise the encoding. See https://support.office.com/en-us/article/Choose-text-encoding-when-you-open-and-save-files-60D59C21-88B5-4006-831C-D536D42FD861

Secure microkernel that uses maths to be 'bug free' goes open source

TheVogon

Re: Technically speaking...

"Was it really necessary for MS to change the architecture of the NT kernel just so a server OS could have all-singing all-dancing display drivers?"

They didn't change the kernel at all. They changed the display driver architecture. The micro kernel was not changed by that.

TheVogon

Re: Technically speaking...

"Think display driver in kernel."

Most of it runs in User mode in Windows: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-hardware/drivers/display/windows-vista-and-later-display-driver-model-architecture

TheVogon

Re: 18+ hoursTo Go

"A microkernel differs from monolithic kernels – such as the Linux and Windows kernels"

The Windows kernel isn't monolithic. It's a hybrid microkernel.

China crackdown: VPN vendor gets prison

TheVogon

Re: that pesky ECHR

"You mean the ECHR that is not an EU thing and so not affected by Brexit?"

Quite. It's not the ECHR that we need to get rid of, it's the CJEU. That's where most of the ridiculous decisions regarding rights have originated...

TheVogon

Re: " ... in line with its policy of adhering to local laws."

"Chinese Law limits the length of the working week to 5 days at 8 hours a day with a maximum 36 hours per month overtime.."

So Chinese factories must use clocks running on Mercury time?

Thousands of hornets swarm over innocent fire service drone

TheVogon

Re: Paraffin is the answer

"Works for nests in attics, although there may be some collateral damage."

Amazon sell little plastic fumigation candles that you light and then burn for about 30 seconds and then emit a cloud of white insecticide smoke. One of those set in the middle of my loft cleared out a large nest in my eaves without issue...

TheVogon

Re: Where's the AI angle? @Stoneshop

"At home we have a smallish industrial unit with two of those blue/UV tubes"

I have an Insectocutor near my conservatory with one round UV tube. It's very effective when fitted to a dusk-till-dawn security plug. The large tray underneath is quickly filled with incinerated insect parts....

TheVogon

Re: "Scumbags" is understating matters

"¿sɹǝpᴉds ɹno ɟo ǝɯos ʍoɹɹoq oʇ ǝʞᴉl noʎ plnoM"

NO

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/video/2016/oct/24/huge-huntsman-spider-tries-to-eat-a-mouse-video

It's official: Users navigate flat UI designs 22 per cent slower

TheVogon

"is costing publishers and e-commerce sites billions in lost revenue."

Surely making them extra revenue? If you spend longer on a page you are more likely to view the product, see adverts, etc. etc

TheVogon

Re: Personally

"And why on earth will they not provide an alphabetical list so you can find a particular channel quickly."

Or not have say Dave and Dave + 1 a hundred channels apart.

Crypto-busters reverse nearly 320 million hashed passwords

TheVogon

Re: Uh, oh!

As is for instance youcunt, motherfucker, suckmeoff, ifuckpigs, and most other abusive terms i can think of!

theregister is also there!

SanDisk's little microSD card sucks up 400GB

TheVogon

Re: It's all well and good... but...

"SDXC is 64GB to 2TB and uses exFAT."

exFAT use requires patent fees to Microsoft - hence why it's not used on smaller devices...

80% of IT projects in public sector delayed due to IR35 – report

TheVogon

Re: Per cent

"the standard British English form"

So the standard English form then. It's the original so needs no qualification.

Deputy AG Rosenstein calls for law to require encryption backdoors

TheVogon

Re: call to arms

"But detecting by looking at the ciphertext that they've been encrypted with a back door is a completely different, i.e. impossible, problem."

I don't believe it is. If you can identify the application / traffic type then presumably you could test it against a known backdoor key and see if the output makes sense / is non random. Or even testing it against a whole suite of keys wouldn't be hard baring in mind the CPU power these guys have leverage.

You could also make "authorised" backdoored encrypted traffic in some way distinctive. After all if you are forcing a backdoor then presumably you can force whatever else you want as part of the package.

Then the use case here is if you know it's encrypted in a "non authorised manner" and the source or destination is something that you have / can compromise then with a bit of extra effort you can still go take a look what is inside it. We already know the security services had exploits for most OS, VPNs, network hardware, etc, etc for many years. And worked by compromising and exploiting internal networks to get access for things they couldn't otherwise crack. I would imagine that they have already replaced all the exploits that were previously stolen and released with new ones.

I wouldn't be surprised if they have exploits in things like imessage, WhatsApp, etc. etc too. They are not going to admit it if they do. In that case they can potentially monitor you just by sending a message or even a packet....

And don't forget there are known security flaws in many of these apps anyway that a well resourced adversary could attack. For instance https://www.scmagazineuk.com/ss7-vulnerability-defeats-whatsapp-encryption-researchers-claim/article/530945/ and http://bgr.com/2017/01/13/whatsapp-encryption-broken-key-generated-nsa-oh-no/

Police deny Notting Hill Carnival face recog tech led to wrongful arrest

TheVogon

"The fact you use the term "each other" shows that you are a racist"

I must have missed the English lesson where "each other" had a racial connotation. As far as I am aware that's an entirely neutral expression.

"You're.. white, aren't you?"

Pot, kettle, black, etc. Talk about enforcing racial stereotypes!

TheVogon
Big Brother

"And yet arrests per thousand attendees are higher at Glastonbury than at Notting Hill."

Glastonbury = 44 / ~ 200,000 = 0.22 / 1000

Notting Hill = 454 (excluding several hundred more related before the event!) / ~ 1,000,000 = 0.454 / 1000

So nope - Notting Hill is higher.

TheVogon

"Targeting a festival of black culture while not using the same technology at all other festivals such as Glastonbury is wrong."

Glastonbury is on private property though.

The Police are apparently after wanted street criminals and discouraging those that would be breaking the law by being there. So surely targeting an inner city location where a higher percentage of the population is likely to be wanted - and has a very high density of people - and has had many issues in the past with street crime makes perfect sense for both public safety and efficient police resourcing?

The reasons they are doing this in that place and for that event it makes perfect sense and seems entirely reasonable to me. So for instance if i wanted to target knife crime, I probably wouldn't setup a metal detector in the Surrey stockbroker belt as a priority...But if I wanted to target Cocaine use then maybe it would be a good place!

'Independent' gov law reviewer wants users preemptively identified before they're 'allowed' to use encryption

TheVogon

So just long i can prove I'm Ahmed Bin Terrorist, The Large Cave, Torra Borra, Afghanistan - I'm good to go?

That virtually impossible classic compsci P vs NP problem is virtually impossible, say boffins

TheVogon

"is virtually impossible, say boffins"

So possible then.

We experienced Windows Mixed Reality. Results: Well, mixed

TheVogon

"Data visualisation is a niche application"

But porn and gaming are not...

TheVogon

Re: Mixed Reality?

"Who are the nitwits who came up with such idiotic names?

The Kin/Zune/Bing people?"

It probably makes more intuitive sense to your average consumer then "AR/VR"

TheVogon

Re: Doomed to fail (again)

"Where Microsoft is surely shooting itself in the foot (again) is requiring brand new PCs on Windows 10 for VR to work."

They are not requiring anything of the sort. They are just installing the capability in the OS so it's built in if you have the hardware to use it. Just like say Direct-X 12 is there for gaming.

VMware-on-AWS is live, and Virtzilla is now a proper SaaS player

TheVogon

Re: Why "4 hosts to build a cluster"?

"Forgive my ignorance but, why a minimum of 4 nodes to a ESX cluster?

n+1 minimum is 2"

Probably it's a limitation to be fully fault tolerant design in the cloud.

TheVogon

Re: All well and good but

"Azure will be king in 5-10 years. AWWho?"

Microsoft already went ahead of Amazon in annual cloud revenue run rate in the last quarter so they already are "King"

I think AWS will always be big in digital as long as it's primarily a Linux / Open Source focused world. But yes Microsoft are looking like the generic enterprise solution that will take the largest chunk of the market. However that digital focus could always change. According to Netcraft over 50% of websites run IIS and they have 10% of the top 1 million busiest sites. From personal experience I find IIS a hell of a lot easier to setup, load balance, distribute content and config on and manage than Linux / Apache / nginx etc. and I have experience of both. And IIS tends to be faster too.

I know for some reason people here don't seem to believe that Windows is often faster / more scalable than Linux, but don't take my word for it, see: https://www.rootusers.com/windows-iis-speed-test-benchmark-2017-results/

I suspect that Microsoft will eventually make all their base OSs free and charge for enabling advanced functionality and support. I think that's the best way for them to compete with Open Source.