mjr
@mjr@infosec.pub
- Comment on UK fines Reddit $19 million for using children’s data unlawfully 4 days ago:
This seems like one of those cases where you wish both sides could lose. Reddit are up to no good, but lack of identity document demands isn’t it.
- Comment on BBC CENSOR “Free Palestine” At BAFTAs, Racial Slurs Allowed 5 days ago:
Baftas 2026: BBC apologises for not editing out racial slur shouted by guest with Tourette’s - BBC News – www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cz6edwg06n1o
Some are unhappy with how weak the apology is.
- Comment on Americans are destroying Flock surveillance cameras | TechCrunch 5 days ago:
Paint seems easier to detect and remove.
- Comment on Andrew charged taxpayers for massage when envoy, claim ex-civil servants 6 days ago:
What were the rules when he did so? Was this mere arrogance and poor taste, or was it effectively stealing from the expenses account?
- Comment on I’m putting tech firms on notice: deal with the appalling abuse of women online – or we will deal with you 1 week ago:
Take it off the money they hold in or try to transfer out of the UK, same as some other criminal enterprises. They sell ads and subs here.
- Comment on I’m putting tech firms on notice: deal with the appalling abuse of women online – or we will deal with you 1 week ago:
Actually charge them the threatened £ millions or percentage in the online safety act that closed, exiled or scared so many small forums, perhaps?
- Comment on Local reporter ‘shocked’ over picture of his face on punchbag at UK town hall 1 week ago:
Far more likely to find the prime minister’s face there than some local journalist’s!
- Comment on Local reporter ‘shocked’ over picture of his face on punchbag at UK town hall 1 week ago:
For what?
- Comment on Lobbying firm co-founded by Mandelson on brink of collapse 1 week ago:
Global Counsel? Pedo counsel, more like!
There should be a review of all government contracts with their clients or their involvement, including Palantir.
- Comment on Android will become a locked-down platform in 194 day 1 week ago:
There are countries that joined the EU both before and after Spain that are not NATO members. Membership of one is not a prerequisite for another. If any politicians told you otherwise, ask them why.
- Comment on Android will become a locked-down platform in 194 day 1 week ago:
The EU was formed not with peace and stability in mind, but with neoliberalism and anticommunism, otherwise it would have never adhered to NATO
The EU is not a NATO member. Many of the EU’s members are also NATO members, but not all.
- Comment on Android will become a locked-down platform in 194 day 1 week ago:
Fascism is not even Russian funded or American spread, Europe is perfectly capable of growing its own fascism as we saw 100 years ago,
Capable and seen in the past, yes, but the current wave of it is indeed funded and spread by Russians and Americans.
- Comment on Android will become a locked-down platform in 194 day 1 week ago:
Remember that the EU arose in part from the institutions set up to deter the same type of nationalist fascism rising again, such as the ECSC. Sadly, we may have encouraged Russian -funded American -spread international fascism in its place, although they don’t seem to control the EU yet.
- Comment on Google criticizes Europe's plan to adopt free software 2 weeks ago:
Sacrificed on the profit altar, it would seem.
- Comment on New And Upcoming IRCv3 Features 2 weeks ago:
Is this another “corridors”, the freenode attempt to turn IRC into something incompatible?
- Comment on Peter Mandelson Sold Off Britain to the Super-Rich. He’s Not the Only One 2 weeks ago:
The deal is probably described in some media response from Network Rail or Transport for London. Global Counsel won’t be mentioned. I guess Chase Bank is part of JP Morgan still.
- Comment on Ping! The WhatsApps that should have been an email 2 weeks ago:
You may be relying on Big Tech to provide your Outlook or Gmail account, but you can switch easily if you don’t like it any more.
Microsoft and Google’s “spam” filters (that downscore anyone who isn’t them) make that less easy. I had to jump through hoops to email my mother this week because Microsoft say one of my email hosts has a poor reputation and nothing stops hosts bouncing or shadowbanning any emails they choose.
- Comment on Oatly banned from using word ‘milk’ to market plant-based products in UK 2 weeks ago:
Only if it stays the hell away from my coffee! 🤮
- Comment on Peter Mandelson Sold Off Britain to the Super-Rich. He’s Not the Only One 2 weeks ago:
Through lobbying firm Global Counsel, Mandelson sold what really matters in modern Britain – access. Global Counsel’s client list reads like a directory of corporate power: JP Morgan, Accenture, Palantir, Shell, Nestlé, Anglo American.
And the government will be reassessing those companies’ contracts Real Soon Now.
- Comment on Alton Towers bans people with anxiety from using disability pass 3 weeks ago:
Merlin run lots of stuff, including Sealife and Warwick Castle. I’ll avoid the lot.
- Comment on Alton Towers bans people with anxiety from using disability pass 3 weeks ago:
So Merlin Entertainment basically thinks it knows better than doctors, some disabilities aren’t real and it’s fine to make people with severe anxiety stand in line until they suffer an attack. Lovely(!) Somewhere mistreating people with mental health issues is not a place I’ll go for fun.
- Comment on Facial recognition error: Customer misidentified by Sainsbury's 3 weeks ago:
And the dataset is prbably racist, although in the reported case, it sounds like good old unreliable cross-race recognition by humans, with the evil eye pinging because it spotted someone and the store staff then telling the wrong person to naff off. It seems like a process or training failure if they don’t ask the evil eye to confirm they’ve got the person it flagged before upsetting them.
- Comment on Should I be using Debian? 3 weeks ago:
In the stable repo, but there are backports, testing and unstable repos too, if you want later versions and accept more risk of bugs.
- Comment on Coastal road swept away into the sea in Devon 3 weeks ago:
Because that’s a freshwater lake on the inland side with interesting wildlife. Letting the sea in is a big call.
- Comment on 'It is jaw-dropping': Ian Hislop on Mandelson and Epstein 3 weeks ago:
“there was no justification, knowing what he knew, for appointing him as ambassador” (03:22)
I disgree with Ian Hislop there. The justification was pretty obvious: appoint a friend of Jeffrey to work with the friend of Jeffrey that is US president and maybe spare us some of Trump’s strange attacks. It’s not a great justification and probably shouldn’t have been enough, though. The way his appointment insults Epstein’s victims should have been enough to stop it, and the risk of it failing like it has was just a cherry on the cake.
- Comment on The BBC’s proposal to switch off Freeview is a threat to its universal service | Letter 4 weeks ago:
Except they don’t, which is why they’re losing ground. Also, the BBC mission is “to serve all audiences” and “inform, educate and entertain” and not simply to give people whatever junk TV gets the biggest audiences: that’s more ITV/STV and 5.
- Comment on The BBC’s proposal to switch off Freeview is a threat to its universal service | Letter 4 weeks ago:
Why would the BBC, which believes in the benefit of its output, suggest closing itself?
It won’t, but if the primary aim of change is to save money, then it’s the logical conclusion of that argument. This is proof by absurdity that the argument is flawed.
Right, I’m sure the BBC advertising iPlayer is why YouTube is now the second-most-watched “broadcaster” in the UK.
It’s not the whole reason, but it is part of it. The public have been told repeatedly by Auntie that being tracked and studied is fine.
This change in habits has been gradual but inexorable. The reason for it is obvious: because streaming at any convenient time is more convenient than being locked into a broadcaster’s schedule.
But we’re not locked into a broadcaster’s schedule! We have recording devices that now perfectly display any broadcast programme at a later time of our choosing. Maybe you didn’t realise that and I can’t blame you: the BBC haven’t been advertising it regularly for the last 15+ years.
The biggest benefit of streaming is that you can watch things that haven’t been broadcast or that your device didn’t store, but the cost of that is your privacy.
Your privacy objection is bogus. Here is the relevant section of the privacy policy.
That’s not the privacy policy, but it does link to it. It’s a misleading partial summary of some of it. If you click through to the full policy, you’ll find the stuff I quoted.
- Comment on Ex-Tory Home Secretary Braverman defects to Reform UK 4 weeks ago:
Read what I said again: we’ll be using gas in 50 years.
We’ll have to wait 50 years to know, but even if we are, it’ll be much much less under any sane government, but it would be more if left to Reform.
Your cherry picked statistics for a windy day at 22:30 are a poor example. Check again at 17:00.
It’s absurd to accuse someone of cherry-picking and then cherry-pick a time when the National Energy System Operator has invited bids for the Demand Flexibility Service because the price of gas-generated electricity is too high.
Maybe have a think about the majority of homes central heating.
A majority, but not a supermajority. Only about 60% of UK homes burn gas for heating despite all the encouragement and inducement since the 1970s in a scandal that makes promotion of diesel cars look like playschool stuff, and a farcical and pathetic target-missing attempt to encourage heat pumps in the last 10 years (target: 600,000 heat pumps per year by 2028, latest number I’ve seen: 91,000 per year and no, that’s not missing a digit).
Oh and we have never been a major importer of Russian gas.
So? Buying gas and thereby driving the market price up is enough to benefit Russia. When you hear a gas boiler roar, it’s helping fund Putin.
- Comment on Ex-Tory Home Secretary Braverman defects to Reform UK 4 weeks ago:
You’re just showboating because we’ve had nine Putin-friendly Reform UK policies so far:
- building more gas turbine power stations
- cutting stamp duty on the biggest properties
- pulling out of the European Defence Fund
- cancelling our human rights act
- repealing the Equalities Act
- “scrapping” the BBC
- stopping the boats (any method that really does it will be basically either impossible or illegal)
- defending our borders (more insular isolationism is what Putin really loves)
- deporting illegal migrants (which would quickly become an ICE-style scandal deporting natives who look different and dwarf the Windrush scandal)
- Comment on The BBC’s proposal to switch off Freeview is a threat to its universal service | Letter 4 weeks ago:
What are you talking about? Whose argument should be that? The BBC’s? Why would they say that broadcast is worth user privacy, when they aren’t violating anyone’s privacy?
They might not be violating it, in the sense that they operate within the law, but they do invade your privacy if you use iPlayer by collecting “your name and contact details, your date of birth or financial details […] your email address and age. Device information […] Location information […] Information on your activities outside the BBC […] the articles you read and the programmes you watch.” They use it, among other things “to check if you’re using BBC iPlayer and to keep the licensing database accurate […] to personalise services and give you things more tailored to your tastes […] to show you relevant advertising on another company’s site […] to help us understand what kind of services you might use And sometimes how you might share things with other people g. to recommend things we think might interest you […] to show you advertising when you access a BBC service from outside the UK”. They share it with other companies “When we use other companies to power our services […] When you use another company’s service that connects to us […] When we do collaborative research” (all quotes from the BBC Privacy and Cookies Policy).
I don’t think most viewers realise the broad consent that the BBC demands before it will let you watch iPlayer. Just the privacy section of their terms is 20 screenfuls on my laptop: it’ll be more than that on a smart TV, so it’s obviously going to be “too long: didn’t read” for most people. It’s not an informed choice. Once upon a time, the BBC would have been educating the public about these privacy drawbacks with streaming, not only marketing its own streaming services.
The BBC would say that some broadcast costs are worth more viewer privacy if they cared about public benefit.
It’s even cheaper for the BBC to close what? iPlayer?
No, close the BBC. If the BBC want to say that cost is the main problem with broadcasting, then the next step is to say we close BBC TV entirely (or maybe except for one or two news channels) and save even more. Saying it’s cheaper to close things that deliver public benefit is an absurd argument for them to use.
But the proportion of video content being watched by streaming is increasing; cutting it makes no sense at all. Maybe you meant something else, in which case you should be more precise.
The proportion of video content being watched by streaming is increasing because even the BBC is advertising and marketing streaming over all else. There are numerous adverts/trailers for its programmes shown on its broadcast services which don’t give a time or date of broadcast, but simply say “watch on BBC iPlayer” at the end. Unsurprisingly, if you have something the size of the BBC saying repeatedly to do something, the number of people doing it will increase.
Broadcasts still have value and should be the core of the BBC. It’s not the BSC, after all.