COMPUTERS, THE AGONY AND THE ECSTASY

[PanBiker]

The laying down H&S protocol is the reason I lose some of the ex service personnel that I distribute remembrance crosses to each year. A lot of stones, particularly in the churchyard get overgrown with moss once they are laid down and are very difficult to find.

When we started doing our family tree, before the advent of the internet we used to go all over the higher dales and up into Durham to look for relatives. We used to pay our kids, Carla and Dan for everyone they found, (they could get round them a lot quicker than we could), it was like a treasure hunt for them.

[Tizer]

`‘Long-term security risks’ from Huawei' LINK
`The Chinese company Huawei has been strongly criticised in a report by the body overseeing the security of its products in UK telecoms. The report, issued by the National Cyber Security Centre, which is part of GCHQ, says it can provide "only limited assurance that the long-term security risks can be managed in the Huawei equipment currently deployed in the UK"....`The report describes "significant technical issues in Huawei's engineering processes". It also says Huawei's approach to software development brings "significantly increased risk to UK operators". Officials say the rigorous system of oversight means those risks can be mitigated and managed. But the report also warns that the current arrangement "can only provide limited assurance that all risks to UK national security from Huawei's involvement in the UK's critical networks can be sufficiently mitigated long-term".

[Stanley]

In other words they want more money.....
Did you see the Huawei revenue? (LINK)

[PanBiker]

We are doomed Stanley, our routers are Huawei, prepare for assimilation.

[chinatyke]

In other words they want more money.....
Did you see the Huawei revenue? (LINK)

Did you see Apple's revenue? 53 Billion USD 2018
Or Intel's? 70.7 Billion USD 2018

Huawei's 100 Billion USD is normal revenue for this class of company. They are at the cutting edge of technology and so they need to make big bucks. As Ian points out, we use their products every day.

[Stanley]

Should we ask them for a donation to the site?
I know Ian, doesn't keep me awake at night!

[PanBiker]

I got on to Talk Talk again yesterday about my auto throttled broadband speed. Chat facility as usual, Donato was my tech support contact this time. It's fortnight since I had the last Open Reach guy here. I have since seen more engineers working in the fibre cabinet I am connected to and around Commercial Street. Donato instigated a speed test on the line and agreed with me that at 16Mbps it could do with improvement and raised another ticket for me with Open Reach, that was around 1.30pm.

Open Reach Engineer number 6 or is it 7 rocked up at 2.30pm at the front door! I sent him round to the back where the line comes in. I was on the phone to friend when he came and there was some line noise which he could sense on his equipment. Off he went at about 3pm, he said he was going to trace back along the line at various poles to see if he could isolate the faulty section. I asked if he would invoke a speed reset when he was done, line dropped a few times late afternoon but I have not seen him since and my speed remains at 16Mbps.

[Tizer]

This was in yesterday's news so I hope it isn't an April Fool's joke!
`Automatic compensation for broadband users goes live' LINK

[PanBiker]

Supplementary since my earlier post. 10.30 this morning, a knock at the door from another Open Reach engineer. He has picked up the job from yesterdays guy. He ran a test from the exchange (which is the norm) when a fault has been reported. This indicated a high resistance on the line so he came to check it from my end. He tested from the junction box into the premises and could not get his test equipment to synchronise with the automatic test routines back at the exchange which was rather strange. After a few attempts to connect everything came back to normal but his equipment showed no apparent fault on the line. A reset command to re enable my full bandwidth did just that and I now have 40Mbps down and about 9Mbps up. He's not happy yet as he knows there is a fault somewhere. I have told him he needs to come when it's raining.

What he has proposed to do is to see if there are any spare lines available on the poles back to the exchange. If there is he will swap my line out to a new pair. He has walked back down the line from ours and noted that the infrastructure on the Croft is not quite conventional, (surprise, surprise). All the lines around us go back to a pole down the back street of Bessie St and Pleasant View. From there they go on a multi-core cable to another pole at the bottom, from there, through the trees on more multi-core cable via two more poles before disappearing underground.

Here is where it breaks convention. Normally there is a pit at the bottom or near where the cable comes from aerial to underground to hold the connection terminations. At the bottom of this one though there is no pit which is a bit of a puzzle as far as the engineer is concerned. He has gone away for his lunch and will consult the network map on his laptop to see what the deal is regarding the missing pit. He will also re run the test that failed this morning from the exchange end.

He said he will ring or text me to let me know what he has found / done. Seems like a plan and a step in the right direction.

On the compensation thing, yes it's real and the point is that you should not need to claim for it, the ISP's and network owners should stump up the rebates automatically.

[PanBiker]

Another update from the engineer that was here this morning, retrieved from my mobile voice mail. He re-tested the line from the exchange and could not repeat this mornings fault. However he feels that this issue as it is a multiple repeat job should be escalated. He is going to contact his line manager and the senior engineer who heads his team and request that he takes a look. He says that chief engineer guy should turn out sometime this week, hopefully when the fault is apparent, he has the required clout to authorise any level of infrastructure repair work that may be required to resolve the situation. Sorry folks but now praying for rain for the rest of the week.

[Tizer]

I hope you get rain and plenty of it. I can see this job escalating to be the subject of a field meeting of the Institution of Electrical Engineers!

[plaques]

to see what the deal is regarding the missing pit

They're buggers in Barlick they'll steal anything. ????

[PanBiker]

[Stanley]

You could do without the stress Ian, commiserations.
My problem this morning is that British Gas site has gone bonkers and I have spent 30 minutes trying to access it with no joy. Bugger it, the gas and leccy are still on so I shall forget it.

[PanBiker]

Not really stressed Stanley, it's just an intermittent fault. Line is solid at the moment though running at 39Mbps. It's damp outside, it might start performing if it turns to proper rain and we get a soaking.

[Tizer]

This makes you wonder if any unexplained losses of commercial aircraft and ships could be a result of the Russians (or others) playing around with this technology...
`Study maps 'extensive Russian GPS spoofing'' LINK

[Stanley]

That possibility has been suspected for a while Tiz. Remember the series of unexplained collisions involving US Navy ships? It's been mentioned in the China Sea as well.
On another computer related matter.... Did you see yesterday's report that the Police Federation has had to cancel its June conference because a hacking attack has rendered their computer systems useless?

[Tizer]

Two related items of news.
The last sentence here is chilling...
`Cyber-attacks 'damage' national infrastructure' LINK
`..."These are multiple, successful attacks on the physical world using cyber-technologies," Eitan Goldstein, from security firm Tenable, which commissioned the report, told the BBC. "That is a really big change and that's why the risk isn't just theoretical any more. "We believe the reason behind it is increased connectivity to industrial control systems. "Today we want to be able to do analytics and predictive maintenance in our power plants, but the proliferation of smart devices and sensors and IoT is really increasing our cyber-exposure to attack. "In many cases, organisations don't even know what is connected to the internet and what can be accessed by hackers....".

`Computer virus alters cancer scan images' LINK
`A computer virus that can add fake tumours to medical scan images has been created by cyber-security researchers. In laboratory tests, the malware altered 70 images and managed to fool three radiologists into believing patients had cancer. The altered images also managed to trick automated screening systems. The team from Israel developed the malicious software to show how easy it is to get around security protections for diagnostic equipment...'.

The program was able to convincingly add fake malignant growths to images of lungs taken by MRI and CT scanning machines.

[Tripps]

The program was able to convincingly add fake malignant growths to images of lungs taken by MRI and CT scanning machines.

But why would they want to do that? Sounds like 'project fear' from a software company?

This however, has already happened, and is quite scary. Ukraine

[Stanley]

I thought it was a sensitive area to experiment on as well David. As for the other attacks, they are a fact of life now. Think of Rolls Royce connectivity to their engines while they are in the air.....
Closely connected is the Boeing admission that it was the automatic anti-stall computer programme that downed both 737-Max aircraft.....
The benefits of modern technology.....

[Stanley]

I watched Panorama on Huawei last night. It's a complicated situation isn't it. The question was should we trust them and my first reaction was who can we trust today? We have enough problems with our own industry and suppliers.

[plaques]

Spent the best part of the day updating the laptop with the latest Kodi issue. 18.1. Ran into loads of trouble getting a suitable build standard. Now its down to Mrs P to give it a road test. Fingers crossed or thumbs pressed together depending if we are in or out of the EU.

[Stanley]

We're still in P, possibly until October. All those news people celebrating today, bags of Brexit to shovel over us and everyone can feel self-righteous!

[plaques]

Has anybody come across anything like this before. Our TV runs via powerline connectors to the TV box and then on to the TV itself. One of the subscription channels 'Universal 320' plays quite happily until you plug in the laptop power supply into the same mains line that feeds the powerline. This is something Mrs P does if she wants to surf the internet while keeping half an eye on the TV. Here comes the problem, plugging in the laptop power cable causes channel 320 to pixelate and brake up. No other channel does this. So why does this voltage stepdown cable cause this interference?

[PanBiker]

The laptop PSU will be a switched mode PSU in other words a high frequency oscillator. It could be that this is inducing a harmonic onto the mains ring which could be interfering with one particular channel on the receiver. Only thing I can think of off hand.