Posts by Yorick Hunt

Rhysida ransomware gang ships off Port of Seattle data for $6M

Re: ships off Port of Seattle data for $6M

It would be interesting to find out who precisely bought this data if the transaction did take place.

My bet's on some scummy mainsleaze operation.

WhatsApp fix to make View Once chats actually disappear is beaten in less than a week

Meta? Privacy?

Please refrain from using those two words in the same paragraph, let alone in the same sentence - unless you precede the latter with "lack of" or "abuse of."

Microsoft's Copilot 'Wave 2' is a tsunami of unanswered questions

Re: MS Flight Sim

Makes me think of Clippy.

Meta back at it, harvesting Britons' public Facebook, Insta feeds for AI training

Maybe you didn't understand "clue infusion?"

Simple, don't have an account with the leeches to start with. Going over to said third party's house with an educational 4x2 or baseball bat (depending on your geo-ethnic preferences) for a session of clue infusion would also improve your privacy.

Apple AirPods Pro 2 can be sold as hearing aids, says FDA

You can also use them as earplugs; in fact, they're so optimised for use in that mode, that their batteries will last virtually forever.

Oh, hurry up and build the "B Ark" already! These marketing folks desperately need to be exported.

Pokémon GO was an intelligence tool, claims Belarus military official

Intelligence game both ways.

Supplying intelligence on personal movements (while also directing them), as well as measuring the intelligence of participants (not very much!).

Predator spyware updated with dangerous new features, also now harder to track

Predator?

"Defenders can mitigate risks by following cyber security best practices, including regular device updates, using lockdown mode, and deploying mobile device management systems..."

What if we cover our devices with mud?

Boeing's Calamity Capsule returns to Earth without a crew

Re: Which bright spark named it "Calamity"

That's just wrong!

Kilkenny is for rugby.

Guinness is for cricket.

Now go sample a half-dozen of each to get properly synchronised!

Datacenters to emit 3x more carbon dioxide because of generative AI

Pfffttt...

We've known for eons that bullshit and hot air were synonymous.

US govt halts medical study into Havana Syndrome, cites 'coercion' of participants

Re: I Thought I Had a Solution to My Woes for a split-second

Go in as a break dancer; they'll accept anyone for that ;-)

White House thinks it's time to fix the insecure glue of the internet: Yup, BGP

Re: Australia and APAC is pretty bad

Optus needs to disappear in a puff of logic; they've been useless in every conceivable way since SingTel took over.

UK trio pleads guilty to running $10M MFA bypass biz

Re: "Bragged"

They look more like rejects from the "Identikit" game.

SAP CTO bows out over 'incident' at company shindig

Sounds like he might have tried to do to an employee what SAP have been doing to their customers for years.

Zen Browser is a no-Google zone that offers tiling nirvana

Re: Pop-ups

When one pops up, don't just click it away - instead, track down the e-mail address of their hosting provider and enter that into their "please spam me" box ;-)

O2 punters lose cool over Google Pixel 9 delays

So this is the Android equivalent of Apple fanbois camping out in front of the store? There're far better 'phones to be had at far lower prices. I abandoned Google's offerings after the Nexus 4 fiasco many years ago.

Broadcom has brought VMware down to earth and that’s welcome

Brought it down to Earth?

Well that's certainly a novel way of saying "run it into the ground."

China is beating the world at scientific research, think tank finds

Re: the Australian Strategic Policy Institute

It's a PR group for the CIA; the naming merely reflects which region it's supposed to influence.

Don't believe me? Check their web site.

Warren Buffett’s favorite insurer GEICO drops VMware for OpenStack

Re: Hey Broadcom !

I suspect that in the not too distant future, VMware will be spun/sold off just like what happened with Motorola after Google acquired it.

I highly doubt it'll ever get back to mass acceptance though; the well has well and truly been poisoned and is now glowing fluorescent green.

From Copilot to Copirate: How data thieves could hijack Microsoft's chatbot

Well it's nice to see an admission that CopyLot has been reading people's e-mails. Just when did Microsoft think would be a good time to disclose this?

To crew, or not to crew – that is the question facing Boeing's stricken Starliner

Surely I can't be the only person wondering just how much of the movie If You Were the Last is going on here?

SolarWinds left critical hardcoded credentials in its Web Help Desk product

Re: MZ Back when Hungarian Ruled

Yeah, I don't think the photographer trying to earn a living by licencing stock photos would've had any input into - or access to - SolarWinds source code.

More likely nobody bothered to review the code after that fateful week years ago, when they had a work experience kid in at the office to write the product for them.

Microsoft sends Windows Control Panel to tech graveyard

But it looks so pretty and shiny, who cares if it's useless?

Re: cue the wailing

Using undocumented commands - which will eventually be documented, but by then they'll be deprecated.

Cisco calls for United Nations to revisit cyber-crime convention

Re: Think of the children

Don't worry, they'll grow up under a Zuck-designed one, with a little help from his friends of course.

Prior UK government planned £485M four-year budget for Palantir-based healthcare system

The only difference is the hair style.

Microsoft closes Windows 11 upgrade loophole in latest Insider build

I'm just happy...

... That disabling the TPM in BIOS still prevents Windows 10 from downgrading to Windows 11.

Palo Alto Networks execs apologize for 'hostesses' dressed as lamps at Black Hat booth

You would think so, wouldn't you?

Sadly we've gone straight past 1984.

Good luck with getting a BOfH to stand there cordially without wanting to reach out and throttle anyone who ventures near!

I'd dare add though that any worthy BOfH wouldn't have allowed him/her/itself to be laid off without taking several corporations down with them.

Microsoft really wants those old Exchange 2016 servers put out to pasture

"SQL server was a bought in product."

That explains why unlike most other M$ products, SQL Server actually works.

Give them time though; they've already mastered the art of stuffing massive bloat into it, it won't be too long before bits start falling off.

NT was a brilliant product when originally written by ex-DEC developers, now look at it.

Re: Ah, Microsoft

I said it in Satya Nadella's voice, and pictured him as Street Fighter's Dhalsim (complete with outstretched arms reaching for customers' wallets).

There are plenty of open source replacements, and even more commercial (but nowhere near as expensive as Exchange) replacements. The problem (if you can call it that) is that there is so much choice - just as with Linux, there's no one single product that people can point to and say "there 'tis."

AD implementation in Linux is only ever a few apt (or whatever your distribution's package manager is) lines away; the first time I implemented it in a production environment was back in the mid 2000s.

Over 40 million Kakao Pay users' data somehow ended up with Alipay

Kakao -> Kaka

What's wrong with requesting data per transaction, just like banks do when using someone else's ATM?

Given the rest of the reported processes, it seems like their developers - just like their managers - are well out of their depth, so chose the easiest solution.

Who uses LLM prompt injection attacks IRL? Mostly unscrupulous job seekers, jokesters and trolls

HR...

First they took job application processing away from the people who knew the business and gave it to external agencies who knew nothing about it.

Now they've taken the task away from the semi-literate minions working at the agencies and given it to very flaky automated processes.

... and they wonder why their new hires are completely useless and need to be trained as if they'd just come out of high school?

Intel's processor failures: A cautionary tale of business vs engineering

Boeing already went down the business-vs-engineering route; a prudent Intel would've learnt from someone else's costly mistakes, not embark on making their own.

US elections have never been more secure, says CISA chief

Re: "convincing people not to buy into the propaganda"

South Park, season 8, episode 8 - watch it for full insight.

NASA mulls using SpaceX in 2025 to rescue Starliner pilots stuck on space station

Re: Boeing should provide Test Pilots

"They can send two Boeing employees executives up..."

FTFY.

NASA pushes back missions to the ISS to buy time for Starliner analysis

Re: Hmmm.

"A three-hour tour..."

Apple Intelligence beta lands in iOS 18.1, macOS 15.1 previews

You're showing your (lack of) age... We had emoticons back in the '90s, long before the notion of fondleslabs with software keyboards was foisted into the world.

I'm still wondering how/why/when/where it was decided to replace the perfectly functional English word "emoticon" with a Manga alternative.

Microsoft finds a new way to irritate Windows 11 users – a backup pop-up

On my own computers, yes... On my family's computers, yes...

On my customers' computers though, which run proprietary software that will only work on a recent version of Windows, the only choice is to get a massive mallet and knock it into submission.

To make things even more interesting, the specialised test equipment they use only runs on old (<= XP) versions of Windows (insert facepalm icon here).

1. NEVER use a Mickey$oft account to set up 'Doze; always create a local one (there're plenty of references online on how to do this, even with the "Home" flavour thereof).

2. ALWAYS use a reputable de-bloating script and third-party uninstaller to get rid of the bloatware, both at installation and after every forced update.

Malaysia is working on an internet 'kill switch', says minister

ITYM "would stifle advertising revenue and inhibit regime change operations."

Customer bricked a phone – and threatened to brick techie's face with it

Re: If I were Henry...

I had a Nokia P4000 back in '92, the thing could've easily been used to bludgeon someone to death.

Yes, no SMS, and the 20 memories it had were only capable of storing numbers, not associated names... And a battery would last six hours if you were lucky.

Beware of fake CrowdStrike domains pumping out Lumma infostealing malware

In theory, perhaps - but is that behaviour absolutely assured? What other manner of droppers are left there to wait patiently for a suitable opportunity?

My first response would be "well derr, nobody's going to fall for this!" - but then the realisation hits that beside actual IT professionals, there'll be countless middle and upper management types who have admin access (at least to their computers if not to the domain), who appear to be genetically pre-dispositioned to clicking on obviously malicious links.

FYI: Data from deleted GitHub repos may not actually be deleted

Re: "this is expected and documented behavior inherent to how fork networks work"

Send an e-mail, then delete it - will that prevent the recipient from seeing it?

This is known, documented and intended behaviour; complaining about it because you're too lazy/impatient isn't the way to go.

Kaspersky says Uncle Sam snubbed proposal to open up its code for third-party review

Re: Umm, why does he need US Government approval ?

"So unless Kaspersky are going to embed US Gov in the code change and update lifecyle the offer's worth nothing."

Huawei already did this in the UK, granting UK GovCo (along with representatives of other nations) full access to their development code - and yet still the politicians snubbed them. When you're dealing with politics, logic goes right out the window.

Kia Niro electric vehicle defies physics with record-breaking 114 million miles on the clock

Nothing spectacular.

You say you've had the car for roughly fifteen months... The Earth travels 93 million miles per year on its orbit, so the app is likely just telling you how far your car has really travelled (in absolute rather than relative terms).

How did a CrowdStrike file crash millions of Windows computers? We take a closer look at the code

Up to and including XP, you'd be offered "Start Windows with last known good configuration" in the event of a boot sequence failure. In *nix land, Grub keeps copies of old kernels and boot scripts and allows you to similarly revert to something which actually works.

Newer versions of Windows though, following Microsoft's decree of "users are too stupid to manage things," simply steamroll through, no matter what, at full speed towards the introduced brick wall.

Given the number of snapshots being taken left, right and centre, surely it shouldn't be that difficult to implement a failsafe boot process? Or is this going to be their major selling point for "Recall?"