Posts by Lost Neutrino

Bank built its own threat hunting agent because vendors can’t keep pace with new threats

Re: Remind me again?

Because...

a) ... it is so overhyped that everybody is running around like headless chickens full of FOMO

b) ... sometimes it can even be useful, at least for non-critical, simple things

c) ... every Dick, Tom or Harry feels they do not exist unless they post/publish/present something about it to show how "with it" they are

d) ... the organisations behind "AI" have a HUGE vested interest in keeping up the hype, and so they keep pushing the narrative on how great it is

e) ... everybody confuses "AI" with Machine Learning, Deep Learning, Natural Language Processing or Statistics - "AI" just sounds soooo much cooler

f) ... humans dream of, and like to tend towards The Easy Fix, The Magic Solution, The Silver Bullet, etc.

g) ... your "hip" and "trendy" colleagues will sneer at you if you are not seen to be using it

h) ... your boss needs to justify the expenditure sign-off and now prove how "valuable" it is (although that applies to Microsoft 365, et al, too)

i) ... you can impress the girls (correction: only a few girls) at parties by talking about something very few really understand

j) ... one feels the urge to follow the hype and the desperate need for it to be true

k) ... if the US armed forces think it's good enough for military missions, then it must be good enough for everything else (nevermind fatal errors)

l) ... Quantum Computing is way to hard to understand - it's sooo much easier to waffle about "AI", "ChatGPT", "Agents", etc

m) ... it is massively overhyped (didn't I mention this already?)

n) ... <insert your own line here>

What's really going on with Chrome's June crackdown on extensions – and why your ad blocker may or may not work

Re: This, coupled with YouTube's recent blitz

Do you remember the approximate balance on the account? You could always consider a county court claim (used to be known as the small claims court). Fees start at £35.

That should stir things up on their end a little. You never know, what with X-mas pressie time coming up, and all...

License to thrill BSL refuseniks? Sentry introduces Functional Source License

Re: Sighs are too silent for this

That's the problem with yelling out loudly - one doesn't hear anything.

But why stop there? Why limit the "bottomless pit of oblivion" to Sentry, the company named in the article? Let's throw everybody who applies a source-available license with non-compete/non-monetisation clause into the pit, too. The more, the merrier!

... until only the closed source dinosaurs like Microsoft, AWS, Oracle, Workday, OpenAI, etc. were left to roam the landscape.

Ooops, perhaps not OpenAI - they just misstepped and accidentally fell into the pit by all by themselves...

Meta to add verification to Facebook and Insta under scheme that should avoid Twitter's Musk-stakes

How very refreshing!

A sober-minded and considerate account of the current state of affairs. Thank you!

That one's on me ----->

Marketing company chases Twitter for $7,000 over 'swag gift box for Elon'

Re: Elon

"the orange clown he has been imitating."

He was imitating?!? Darn...

"The hoard includes two branded bomber jackets for $1,000, two branded T-shirts for $550, socks somehow coming to $260 ... "

That's a perfectly legitimate expense - it does get cold in space.

Research raises questions: Are instruments taken to Mars sensitive enough to find life?

Re: There is no substitute for boots on the ground

Could we stop this "pneumatic blonde" stuff, please? Essex is a nice county, too!

Re: No shit, really?

Indeed, very interesting. Just that the quote was stating the obvious.

But I think the exercise in the Atacama desert is part of NASA testing the instruments before sending them off to far-flung lands... It's just that the results were not as expected/hoped for.

No shit, really?

"If the biosignatures can't be detected in Earth samples, ..., we should not expect these instruments to be capable of detecting evidence of life from Mars' early history," she said.

Duh...

Re: Are instruments taken to Mars sensitive enough to find life?

"we come in peace, shoot to kill"

Where, Mars or Atacama desert in Chile?

Do you rely on Microsoft Bing Search APIs? Price hike incoming

Re: "everyone" is already on Google

"Sorry to flame..."

Naah, that's not a flame! That's a considered and well researched response with a slightly contrarian perspective. It is, isn't it?

And for the rest, I'm with you on that - when I have to sign up, I give the minimum of information that their mandatory form input field rules will allow. Of course, there is a price to pay - I get an unusually high number of captchas to prove I am not a bot. Especially when going through Tor. Then again, disposable emails are quite useful, too.

On a similiar note, is it just me or does anybody else get pissed at the constant barrage of registration walls, just to get to some self-promoting advertising material masquerading as an important white paper, ebook, etc?

Re: What happens when everyone moves to Google?

I stand humbled by your prescient analysis. How did I overlook Microsoft's standard operating procedure and assume they'd stick to simple things, such as a bog-standard discount?

Re: What happens when everyone moves to Google?

"everyone" is already on Google. Bing has always been a bit of an also-ran. But now, finally, Microsoft has an edge (pardon the unintended pun (ok I'm lying...)). Or so they think.

Google will catch up with the (flaky) GPT driven Bing search and M$ will mess it up again and piss off its users/customers - as usual.

And then - all back to normal. Watch out for Microsoft's "special offers": 50% off! Get your search API here!

Deutsche Bank's takeover of Postbank hasn't gone well, according to customers

The joy of outsourcing

Postbank's IT was managed in-house by the 100% owned Postbank Systems. But in 2020, Deutsche Bank as owner of PB, and in yet another one of their questionable initiatives (see DB's history), sold PB Systems to the Tata Group(*). Nothing wrong with that - staff from Tata and other Indian consulting companies had been running around the Dark Tower of Mordor (DB data and IT centre near Frankfurt) long before the sale. At the same time, various efforts to integrate or migrate PB's IT into DB's systems did not always work out quite as planned...

But whether staff at PB Systems, many of whom had been working there for many years and knew their systems in and out, were really that keen on being shunted off to a new employer? And so, out-the-door the knowledge walked.

Correction to the cited FT article: In 2010 Deutsche Bank did not have full control as it was waiting for regulatory approval to take over the then still "independent" Postbank. I believe approval came later, probably in 2012, (can't be bothered to look it up). It was a funny situation - everybody knew DB would be the new master but officially, PB was still operating and deciding autonomously, with "delicate" interactions between the two organisations, so as not to piss off the regulatory bodies.

* https://www.db.com/news/detail/20201109-deutsche-bank-announces-sale-of-postbank-systems-to-tata-consultancy-services?language_id=1

FTX is back in Japan, where users can withdraw fiat and crypto

Re: "comprehensively regulated cryptocurrency sector"

"the operators there really do their best to be even less accountable"

Yes, well... the secret is that it's not called crypto for nothing.

That depends on the size of the car. For a bigger car you may have to open both swing doors.

Core-JS chief complains open source is broken, no one will pay for it

Free and Open Source but without monetisation

FOSS is not broken. It is exactly what it is - as defined in any of the many well-known and OSI-approved Open Source licenses that every dev is free to choose.

If I publish my code under a permissive license, than that is what I agree to. I cannot, and should not, complain later when someone decides to commercialise it. I can always take that as a compliment, though :-)

But I do like the thinking behind some of the new-ish "Fair-Code" license models, e.g. the "Sustainable Use License" from n8n.io. You can do everything you want - just as you would with a permissive OSI license, including distributing the code to others. But only if you do so free of charge for non-commercial purposes. If you monetise and make money with it, for example, by selling it as a SaaS product, then we should talk about commercial licensing.

I like that - all the freedoms in the spirit of Open Source but without the nasty smells of commercial abuse (think Elasticsearch and AWS).

Google unleashes fightback against ChatGPT, a Bard by any other name

Re: More reasons to not trust the google brand

Not the search engine, only the browser.

ChatGPT (sigh) the fastest-growing web app in history (sigh) claim analysts

Re: Worrying.

I am seriously concerned about this - were any oranges harmed during the making of this poem?!?

US warns aging air-traffic control code won't be fixed until 2030

Re: It'll Be Soooo Cooool ... When We Add A.I.!

And every NOTAM will be a Non-Fungible Token, or NFT. Ah yes, Web 3.0 all over again.

Microsoft's AI habit comes to data governance tool Purview

What a great idea!

The "infallible" machine learning algos from Microsoft (a company well known for never making mistakes) judge and categorise people.

What's next? "Adaptive Protection flagged you three times - you are fired!"?

This is so creepy, just like China's surveillance and "citizen conformity" points system...

Datadog allegedly asked developer to kill open source data export tool

Re: @Lost Neutrino

And "the way to a Ferengi's heart is through his wallet" - Rule of Acquisition according to Quark

According to the code's author John Dorman, "Datadog "asked" me to kill this pull request.".

I would really, really, really love to know what mischievous and underhand threats Datadog made to achieve such leverage against an independent (i.e. not employee of DD) software developer.

Perhaps they theatened to send in the heavies? Or worse - maybe they threatened to force John to eat the same dog food as Datadog's people?

Just another cynical company abusing the Open Source space in the name of greed...

WASP malware stings Python developers

Why do you assume the poster knows anything about programming, let alone having a language of choice?

The poster's text is self-evident: just some waffle without anything of substance.

Oracle cozies up to IBM, adds Red Hat Enterprise Linux

Re: "Unbreakable" UEK

Just as a side note: btfrs is also included/supported in SUSE Linux Enterprise Server.

RHEL and Oracle are not the only kids on the enterprise infrastructure block. SLES is often forgotten in these type of conversations. Which is a shame, as it is also very good and capable.

Oracle, Microsoft barely compete for a quarter of their US Federal contracts

Re: Excellent

"... direct more money toward engineering."

You mean as in Windows 11 user interface "improvements"?

No Guardians of US Taxpayer's Money?

The UK has the National Audit Office (NAO), a permanent institution to audit government and public administration for, amongst other things, value for money in government expenditure.

Do the US have something equivalent? It seems more like a media circus, with investigations (audits) initiated ad hoc and only at the whim of political representatives - presumably when it promises some popular votes (feeling cynical today).

That is true. But it also creates a "Chicken & Egg" scenario.

Would there be more competition and cloud providers, capable of government scale, if governments had not presented a quasi-monopoly on a silver platter to a couple of major vendors?

Microsoft warns some Azure usage notifications – including abnormalities – are broken

"Microsoft has warned its partner community that real-time tracking and notifications of customers' Azure spend is broken ..."

Nothing is broken. Microsoft sends me daily emails telling me that my card has expired and could I please update my payment details, etc...

The bill is for the princely sum of... 6 cent (0.06 €) for some December Azure stuff which their customer service actually wasn't able to explain.

Maybe I should update my card details? After all, it looks like M$ needs the money right now...

A moment of silence for all the drives that died in the making of this Backblaze report

Re: 1% failure rate

Sounds like the perfect definition for "robust". I wish modern cars were still like that: open hood, whack engine with a hammer, et voilà - vrooom!

Experts warn of steep increase in Java costs under changes to Oracle license regime

Re: Right, but do all those businesses...

Most contracts written with a minimum level of competency will include a salvatorial clause. If any clause in the contract is deemed invalid, that does not invalidate the rest of the contract and the other clauses will remain in effect. This is contract basics so I am sure that Oracle will include it.

Microsoft is checking everyone's bags for unsupported Office installs

Re: "Malicious software removal tool"

Maybe this will ease your pain a little: You can disable updates under the File | Account | Update Options in Office.

I wish that would also be possible for Windows OS updates. Being able to pause updates for 35 days just doesn't cut it.

Re: I use Libre office

> "I think you missed the sarcasm."

I probably did. Sometimes I lapse into this twilight state of actually taking others seriously...

> "In my case it’s a best of breed enterprise architecture suite ..."

If your EA suite happens to be from Sparx, they do say that "Mac/Linux users can install Enterprise Architect under WINE.", just FYI.

> "... and Visio."

Visio is great! Love the programmability and SmartSheets. Plus you can have one shape link to various targets. Just try and link a Draw.io shape to a local file - that's a no-no (due to sandbox security). It's obvious that Visio is not an original Microsoft product. Same story with FoxPro - take a good product, buy the company, and then turn it into a complete pigs' breakfast...

> "... I run a ten year old version ..."

Just watch out for the Microsoft update scanning old Office apps - as per this very article... :-)

Re: ot hiding your post behind the AC handle

LOL! You meanie!

Re: "Malicious software removal tool"

> "To be honest, I can't understand why anyone would have hours of unsaved work on a computer, ..."

It happens. Never pulled an all-nighter to meet a deadline, stretched out for just a wee while to clear the fog, only to pass out for a few hours? Meanwhile, Windows was happily updating and rebooting itself... :-(

If there are unsaved files and there happens to be a crash, that's just bad luck and can happen anytime. But there is a HUGE difference when the "crash" (reboot) is initiated willy-nilly - and on purpose - by a third party, in this case Microsoft.

Re: Remarkable restraint

You got me thinking... I wonder if all the other invasive Microsoft actions (forced reboots, telemetry, unable to disable/remove MS software, unwanted advertising etc.) could be construed as illegal tampering, too?

Get it right, please. People are not complaining/hating Microsoft's software here. Some of their products (e.g. Excel, Visual Studio, etc) are very good. Only some, though...

But (speaking at least for myself) we do hate the arrogant, invasive, disrespectful and aggressive way that Microsoft handles customer relationships (e.g. forced upgrades, ignoring users, etc), marketing (forced adverts, push to 365, etc) and of course the total SNAFUs called Windows.

Anyway, do tell - what are you using that makes you think that you are so superior? And what makes you think that YOU are entitled to YOUR trolling post, let alone qualified?

P.S.: No downvote from me as you are not hiding your post behind the AC handle.

Re: I use Libre office

Since when do you have to pay for it? Isn't Libre Office Open Source software?

Re: "Malicious software removal tool"

I am totally with you on this. I had my "red mist" moments, too, especially after some arbitrary post-update reboots.

But with all the other "enhancements" it does not feel like my computer anymore. Instead, it feels more like some propietary Microsoft device which I am "allowed" to use...

I have started to do most of my stuff in a VirtualBox Ubuntu VM. Once I get rid of my few remaining Windows OS dependencies, Windows will go into the a VM and Linux will move into prime, bare metal position. On ALL my Windows devices. Gawd, that company knows how to suck...

Polish for Windows Spotlight and tabs for Notepad in latest Insiders build

Re: Tabbed notes

They would, but only after they decided to integrate VS Code (in a "premium" version) into the Microsoft 365 Enterprise subscription.

Re: Tabbed notes

OneNote is OK for taking notes (anyone found Search & Replace, yet?), including formatted text, image, tables, etc. Also, it has the nice feature of being able to write pen-based notes by hand (even does some form of "convert handwriting to text").

Notepad is a quick & dirty program for pure, unadulterated text files without formatting, for example source code, INIs, etc.

So now Notepad gets tabs! RA, RA, RA... Can't wait to replace my programmers' text editors.

Massive outage grounded US flights because someone accidentally deleted a file

Mainframes don't fly. Pigs might, but that's another story...

Publisher breaks news by using bots to write inaccurate stories

Re: Artificial Idiocy

Could you explain that again, please?

Re: Will this AI engine efficiently assist...

Are you sure? Watched CNN lately?

The Reg - please don't...

The Register: please try not to follow in CNET's footsteps, tempting as it may be for the sake of "efficiency".

IMHO, it would dilute the wit of The Register's articles and reduce their originality.

On second thought, go for it! It would offer us commenters a treasure trove of entertaining opportunity to descend on articles like a pack of wolves (apologies to wolves) and shred the AI-generated crap to pieces.

Tesla faked self-driving demo, Autopilot engineer testifies

Re: Full Self Denial

Too risky. The endless loop of the flashing lights would cause a stack overflow. Unless you mitigate by heading the car to a null pointer, of course.

"Have you tried tweeting them?"

Elluswamy will most likely have had his Twatter account suspended by "He Who Must Not Be named" for saying all these horrible and nasty things. Nevermind that it was part of a sworn deposition...

Microsoft axes 10,000, already breaking bad news to staff

Re: Microsoft always follows IBM, with a 10-20 year delay.

"Microsoft is only relevant now because their cloud has permitted them to turn into a "services company". Just like IBM did."

If only it were so. Microsoft is relevant because: a) Windows (still) dominates the desktop/laptop market, b) they own a killer-app (Excel - 3/4 of the world is run on it), c) inertia and comfort-zone thinking ("Nobody gets fired for buying IBM Microsoft"), and d) they bought up/eliminated most of the competition in the personal productivity software market (realistic alternative to Office anyone?).

The real worry is the increasing market dominance (and consequential lack of choice, service quality, etc) of Microsoft 365. The integration with the Microsoft desktop is too compelling an offer for a large number of businesses. MS Teams is crap but employees in Microsoft-dominated customer companies have to use it.

At least with Azure, they still have a strong competitor in AWS, plus the myriad of smaller and/or specialised cloud players (GCS, Linode, Hetzner, Databricks, etc, etc).

Re: Any of these in QA?

"...breatheless people telling viewers how EXCIDDED they were to be here..."

ROFL! So true!!

"I am so excited to announce this new, exciting product! It does... err, hmm, umm,,, Anyway, this is soooo exiting!"