* Posts by Andrew Yeomans

54 publicly visible posts • joined 6 Jun 2007

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BOFH: It's Friday, it's time to RTFM

Andrew Yeomans

IBM Jargon dictionary

See https://comlay.net/ibmjarg.pdf

Ubuntu Focal user? Expect a Jammy upgrade popup soon

Andrew Yeomans
Stop

Release is Delayed until Aug 11th

https://discourse.ubuntu.com/t/ubuntu-22-04-1-delayed-until-august-11/29859

Raspberry Pi OS update beefs up security

Andrew Yeomans

Failing micro SD card

You can try blkdiscard to reset to factory setting, though even this might be difficult if the card is not in /dev. Try on another machine?

What could be worse than killing a golden goose? Killing someone else's golden goose

Andrew Yeomans

Re: One place I workded...

...thousands of numbers with 0 calls where ditched.

And then they tried invoking the DR plan using those "redundant" circuits :-)

BOFH: Switch off the building? Great idea, Boss

Andrew Yeomans
Alert

We had a car breakdance award

Of an upside-down Dinky car, for the company car driver that decided the wheels needed a bit more sunlight.

Not on your Zoom, not on Teams, not Google Meet, not BlueJeans. WebEx, Skype and Houseparty make us itch. No, not FaceTime, not even Twitch

Andrew Yeomans

Maybe

Teams generally works as well on Linux as on other platforms.

Which means that it's often pretty good - providing you don't have to use more than one Teams account. And know when to ignore the nags to download a client. And reboot when it loses your camera or microphone. Whether on Linux, MacOS or Windows.

As soon as you need to use two accounts (two companies, home and work, etc) you may enter the hell of being partly logged into both. Sometimes using the native application for one account and the browser for another might work. But sometimes the only fix is to delete all the 250 MB (!) of local Teams data and start again. At least that deletion is easy on Linux, no registry stuff to mess with.

Personally I prefer Jitsi, just click on the link of your choice and go. No need for an account or anything. If keen, you can run your own private server. WebRTC is close to a standard and hopefully will kill off the multitude of clients.

Ah lovely, here's something you can do with those Raspberry Pis, NUC PCs in the bottom of the drawer: Run Ubuntu Appliances on them

Andrew Yeomans
Happy

Too simple for The Register readers?

From the comments so far, I think the average Register reader must prefer something more complex!

I see this announcement as simplifying the installation, so that anyone capable of installing NOOBS or Buster on a raspberry Pi can now get a full-blown appliance.

One catch not mentioned in the article is that this is for Raspberry Pi 2/3/4, it does NOT work on Pi 0 or 1. Due to the different CPU architecture for Pi 0 and 1, Ubuntu Server does not run on those devices, and the appliances are based on that plus snap images. I suspect too that Pi 0 and 1 might be a bit underpowered, but might try NextCloud Pi on a 0 sometime.

It's certainly convenient to have the auto-updating snap packages so it stays up-to-date. Of course you have to trust Canonical and Nextcloud, but you are doing that already if you run their software.

Re PiHole - Adguard Home has a comparison of features https://github.com/AdguardTeam/AdGuardHome#comparison-pi-hole - I'm sure our lovely commentards will comment on the accuracy of that list.

Hooray! It's IT Day! Let's hear it for the lukewarm mugs of dirty water that everyone seems to like so much

Andrew Yeomans

ISO 3103

But do you prefer ISO 3103:1980 or ISO 3103:2019 ?

Mirror mirror on the wall, why will my mouse not work at all?

Andrew Yeomans
Facepalm

Even easier to get wrong with Sun optical mice

Remember the Sun Microsystems optical mice, which had a reflective pad with a black and blue grid printed on it?

Rotating that grid pad by 90 degrees meant the mouse became very erratic.

Baby, I swear it's déjà vu: TalkTalk customers unable to opt out of ISP's ad-jacking DNS – just like six years ago

Andrew Yeomans

Can be done on the router

I have a TalkTalk Sagem router, and found it is a bit confusing. There are two DNS settings, the one to alter is TalkTalk Wifi Hub" -> "Static DNS Server Configuration" which actually sets the DNS addresses sent by DHCP to connected devices. Set those to your preferred provider. Leave the "Internet Connectivity" DNS settings on 79.79.79.79 / 79.79.79.80 so the router itself gets DNS from TalkTalk,while your devices get it from elsewhere.

The Internet of Things is a security nightmare, latest real-world analysis reveals: Unencrypted traffic, network crossover, vulnerable OSes

Andrew Yeomans

Supported or vulnerable?

"Not supported" doesn't mean the device is vulnerable, just as "supported" doesn't mean it is secure. The survey states "57% of IoT devices are vulnerable to medium- or high-severity attacks" which is worrying. However it doesn't distinguish between the vulnerabilities due to poorly configured devices (which can be fixed quite easily) and vulnerabilities that require software update to fix.

LastPass stores passwords so securely, not even its users can access them

Andrew Yeomans

Re: KeePass CSV import

I use KeePassXC, which is a native code fork of KeePass / KeePassX, but uses the same database format. That allows "CSV import from other password managers (e.g., LastPass) ".

KeePass v2.0 also states it imports from LastPass. https://keepass.info/help/base/importexport.html.

So have another look!

As HMRC's quarterly deadline for online VAT filing looms, biz dogged by 'technical difficulties'

Andrew Yeomans

QuickFile is free for small users

QuickFile https://www.quickfile.co.uk/home/pricing is free for up to 1000 transaction entries per year.

That includes any bank account transactions you choose to import into the system, but simple use by contractors should use far less than 1000.

It's a full online system for business accounting and invoicing.

If Uncle Sam could quit using insecure .zip files to swap info across the 'net, that would be great, says Silicon Ron Wyden

Andrew Yeomans
Alert

Re: Use 7-zip .7z with AES256

Also use a 40+ character randomly generated pass-phrase.

Otherwise there's no point in using AES-256, the weakest link will be the pass-phrase.

Gov.UK to make its lovely HTML exportable as parlous PDFs

Andrew Yeomans

Multi-page documents

The other advantage of a *good* HTML to PDF system is the ability to select multiple web pages, and combine them into a single PDF document, with sections in the correct order.

For example, try to print the NCSC CLoud Security Principles starting from https://www.ncsc.gov.uk/index/topic/151. Similarly try printing appropriate employment and tax pages. The next trick is to make it print double-sided.

I have - once- come across a system which would let you select the desired sections of a larger set of documents, then it would generate a single PDF of them all, in a suitable format for printing.

Quantum cryptography demo shows no need for ritzy new infrastructure

Andrew Yeomans

Man-in-the-middle

> isn't this still susceptible to man in the middle attacks?

Not on the quantum channel. Check out "BB84". The key is transmitted with random encoding (i.e. with a second random key), the receiver makes a guess on each bit of the encoding. Some time later, that actual second random encoding is sent via a normal non-quantum channel which does not have to be secret. If the guess was wrong, throw away that bit.

A MITM has no way of knowing that second encoding until it's too late, and so any interception can be detected.

That's assuming the MITM can't spoof the authentication on that second channel.

LESTER gets ready to trundle: The Register's beer-bot has a name

Andrew Yeomans
Pint

User Friendly's version

http://ars.userfriendly.org/cartoons/?id=20180420

(and a few earlier ones too such as http://ars.userfriendly.org/cartoons/?id=20180403)

I couldn't give a Greek clock about your IoT fertility tracker

Andrew Yeomans

Swagging breaks

And I thought "Networking coffee breaks" were to see how much swag you could extract from vendors who you would never buy from.

'Quantum supremacy will soon be ours!', says Google as it reveals 72-qubit quantum chip

Andrew Yeomans

Re: What's the application?

>> elliptic-curve cryptography is not affected

Don't tell NIST [https://nvlpubs.nist.gov/nistpubs/ir/2016/NIST.IR.8105.pdf] as they say ECDSA and ECDH (Elliptic Curve Cryptography) are both "No longer secure".

And don't tell the NSA [https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2015/08/nsa_plans_for_a.html] who are recommending against migrating to Elliptic Curve cryptography.

Guess what bitcoin uses to control access to your funds? ECDSA of course. So you can fund that quantum computer from the bitcoins released once you crack everyone's public keys on it.

ISPs: UK.gov should pay full costs of Snooper's Charter hardware

Andrew Yeomans

Electronic protection?

Just use optical storage to circumvent the rules.

So just what is the third Great Invention of all time?

Andrew Yeomans

Surely money itself is the great invention?

As it makes trade possible without the need for direct bartering of goods or services. Thereby allowing specialisation to develop economies of scale, leading to cities and nations.

WIN a 6TB Western Digital Black hard drive with El Reg

Andrew Yeomans

He kept badgering me, but there's not mush room here!

Europe approves common charger standard for mobe-makers

Andrew Yeomans

What happened to wireless charging?

Much better if the EU provided some arm-twisting (or even ARM-twisting!) to get all manufacturers to support a common wireless charging standard. Plugs and sockets are SOOO 19th Century.

MIT boffins show off spooky human action at a distance

Andrew Yeomans

The Riven map table had much better resolution!

See here http://www.mystjourney.com/img/screenshots/riven-38.jpg

Crypto protocols mostly crocked says euro infosec think-tank ENISA

Andrew Yeomans

Re: Cross platform password standards

Those password rules are just copying what people have done before (with a few variations to annoy the victims).

For online systems such rules are a defence against the poor implementation of an authentication server, which allows hackers to steal the entire database. Which just should not be allowed, we've had much stronger technology for years.

What should be required is

a) strong hardware-based protection of the database - think HSMs or single-function appliances in a monitored datacentre that provides no admin or physical access to the database.

b) lockout against brute-force attacks, either 5-stikes and out or exponential backoff.

With those provisions, 4 or 5 digit pins should be adequate for most online functions. Just as is done for credit cards.

Printing the Future: See a few of UK’s 6.2 million 3D-printed ‘things’

Andrew Yeomans

Re: Yes, but is it art? Photo

They are actually models of a building and 30cm high!

Down with Unicode! Why 16 bits per character is a right pain in the ASCII

Andrew Yeomans
Headmaster

The historical accident of little-endian

On a purely technical basis, little endian representations of numbers are much easier to parse and handle. I'm meaning proper numbers, not the arbitrary computer representations. Take the number 12345675679274658. Quck now, is that one quadrillion, twelve quadrillion, 123 trillion, or what? You are going to have to do a right-to-left scan of the number to find out.

The Arabs had it all sorted out, with little-ended numbers (written right-to-left of course). But when the West appropriated the idea a few centuries ago, they omitted to reflect them to convert between Arabic right-to-left and Western left-to-right writing direction. So we've ended with the current confusion.

Oh well, it could have been worse. We might have been using Roman numerals still, with no zero, if it hadn't been for the Arabs.

Your encrypted files are 'exponentially easier' to crack, warn MIT boffins

Andrew Yeomans
Black Helicopters

Re: Compression

But how do you know that the NSA or GCHQ dosn't monitor all the results random.org generates?

BOFH: Dawn raid on Fort BOFH

Andrew Yeomans

Retirement plan

Hey, have you seen the prices of PC133 RAM - that's not made any more? Worth a BOFH's ransom to those companies still running critical business processes on a massive 128MB RAM server.

Andrew Yeomans
Linux

Windows recovery

Reminds me of the Tomsrtbt floppy I used to have lying around. Labelled "Windows Recovery Disk" of course.

Christmas headaches? We prescribe a year long course of BOFH

Andrew Yeomans

Expensive pints?

You can also get the previous 6 years for £3.58.

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Bastard-Operator-Omnibus-2004-2010-ebook/dp/B005BCP7WI/

Keep it simple with one-size-fits-all networking

Andrew Yeomans

But it's still so passive!

Current cabling still costs a small fortune in copper, much of which is unused. Standard 10/100 Ethernet only uses half the conductors in the cable. Desks are over-provisioned with cable just in case future needs increase.

But the cost of making a passive termination socket is not actually much different from adding a few chips and making an active socket instead. That active electronics might be used to report on cable condition and faults (heck, even BT has slightly active master phone sockets with a resistor and capacitor so you can remotely check there's a continuous path to the socket). Or could be used as a mini-router, allowing a few workstations to be connected down a single shared cable.

Jack PCs (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jack_PC) have been able to add significant intelligence to the socket, so certainly the concept is valid.

So why doesn't someone run with this opportunity?

Google and co join gov's identity marketplace

Andrew Yeomans

Not gone...

"The midata vision of consumer empowerment" http://www.bis.gov.uk/news/topstories/2011/Nov/midata

"Midata - access and control your personal data" http://www.bis.gov.uk/policies/consumer-issues/personal-data

Strategy document: http://www.bis.gov.uk/policies/consumer-issues/consumer-empowerment

Here lies /^v.+b$/i

Andrew Yeomans

Non computo, ergo non sum

I do not compute, therefore I am not.

Andrew Yeomans
Flame

JCL - still understood next century?

//VERITY DD DSN=STOB,DISP=SHR,DISP=(NEW,CATLG,DELETE)

Peugeot compo cam aids amateur espionage

Andrew Yeomans

Also try looking on this one

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-13200114

The Reg guide to Linux, part 2: Preparing to dual-boot

Andrew Yeomans
Thumb Up

Ccleaner is your friend

Ccleaner from http://www.piriform.com/ccleaner makes the housekeeping cleanup much easier and safer. Free download, then run it under each user account.

'Switch to Century Gothic to save the planet'

Andrew Yeomans
Go

They are advising Century Gothic 11pt

See http://www.uwgb.edu/compserv/ehelp/office2007/fontchanges.htm for the suggestion to change the font size in Word and Excel. That's close to Arial 12 pt.

Taking an identical sample of text at *screen resolution*, the average colour of Arial 12 was 23.6/255 black, Century Gothic 11 was 22/255 black. So CG11 was 93.2% as dark as Arial12. Readability seemed comparable. If anyone wants to repeat as higher magnification they might get a closer approximation to the print ink savings.

ISPs slam Digital Economy Bill's multi-million pound price tag

Andrew Yeomans
FAIL

Madness or bad statistics?

So the plan is to charge the British consumer £5 billion over ten years in order to pay the entertainment industry £1.7 billion?

Either madness or bad statistics. Or maybe both.

(Note the comparison of a yearly figure of costs against a ten-year figure of industry "rewards" to hide the huge discrepancy. And the claimed £500 million sounds about right - the Office for National Statistics lists 18.3 million households, times £25 per year = £475 million. Allow for new subscribers and you get the £500 *per year*.)

Google open sources flash-happy Chrome OS

Andrew Yeomans

The follow-up device

Must be a gears-enabled caching proxy, so you *can* work on a plane.

Early adopters bloodied by Ubuntu's Karmic Koala

Andrew Yeomans
Gates Halo

Windows the success it is among regular PC users?

Google currently has 21,200 references to the search "windows 7" "installation problems", but only 802 references to "ubuntu 9.10" "installation problems". [And altering the quotes or giving alternative strings also has Win7 outnumbering Ubuntu every time.]

Does this prove Windows 7 is harder to install than Ubuntu 9.10? Probably not, you really need to know the number of people trying to install either system.

But it does strongly suggest that the article is poorly researched and biased.

Will Google regret the mega data center?

Andrew Yeomans

Don't forget Moore's law

Cloud providers also need to watch Moore's law. You've just invested megabucks in your new cloud-centre, but 18 months later someone can do it for half the price. "First mover" might easily become "first loser".

Microsoft grabs Office.com domain in Google Apps assault

Andrew Yeomans
Gates Halo

Who is going to grab documents.com?

.. from Palo Alto research centre, who are not using it right now.

Which would be a much more meaningful name. Or don't people believe in "name follows function" any more?

Government rubbishes ID card hack report

Andrew Yeomans
Megaphone

"the data on the chip cannot be changed or modified"

Quite so. But that's not what Adam did, he made a *copy* and changed the data in the *copy*.

As John Lettice points out at the end of http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/07/09/id_cards_nir_tory_lib_plans/, the chip is intended to help detect tampering with the information printed on the card.

If you can make good forgeries of the card, then Adam's cloning lets you make the chip data match. But the reported Home Office statement is still factually correct, just not what it appears at first reading.

Amazon Kindle doomed to repeat Big Brother moment

Andrew Yeomans
Pirate

Stealing content

Anton Chuvakin makes a good point in http://chuvakin.blogspot.com/2009/07/more-on-kindlegate.html :-

"As a result, I suspect that the more stuff like "KindleGate" happens, the more the following perception (whether true or not!) will grow, strengthen and develop:

When you "BUY" digital content, you don't really BUY it - it is not really a PURCHASE.

THEREFORE

When you STEAL digital content, you don't really STEAL it - it is not really a CRIME.

NHS Direct gets to be number one, one, one

Andrew Yeomans
Badgers

Phantom calls

Back in 1992, trials of the "112" number led to many false alarms, see http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg13518280.400-cut-lines-led-to-phantom-calls.html.

"111" would be even more susceptible to line faults pulse-dialling the number.

(Badgers, as their setts could break the cables.)

Google uncloaks Chrome OS hardware pals

Andrew Yeomans
Linux

Surely ChromeOS is a competitor to Splashtop?

From current information, doesn't ChromeOS look more like a competitor to instant-on Splashtop http://www.splashtop.com/ rather than Windows or Ubuntu NBR?

Copyfraud: Poisoning the public domain

Andrew Yeomans

Modified versions of copyfraud

There's a variant when an older work is "updated" - maybe to "correct" old spellings or political incorrectness, and then re-published as a "new" work. Certainly happens with old hymns - just compare the words you used to remember with the latest text.

Now would that apply if the republished work had deliberate misprints to try to create a new copyright version?

Software body slams uk.gov's 'special treatment' of music biz

Andrew Yeomans
Linux

Include *all* the copyrighted content, if there's a tax

If there really is a tax or other protection on copyrighted work, it would seem reasonable to apply this to all copyrighted works. Working out how to divvy up the spoils could be "interesting". Surely that 700 MB download of Ubuntu must be worth at least 175 times that 4 MB MP3?

Apple MacBook Air

Andrew Yeomans
Jobs Horns

What's it like for RSI?

Has anyone tested extended use of a flatter keyboard for Repetitive Strain Injury? Still, I suppose the future court claim is one way to get your money back!

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