Posts by may_i

/e/ OS 3.0: Slightly less clunky, slightly more private

I would love to run this...but

The Samsung Galaxy S22 isn't supported and probably will never be.

Samsung's own private data slurpage is even worse than Google's.

AI's the end of the Shell as we know it and I feel fine … but insecure

Re: "any thought to security or bad actors"

I object!

Good developers want to deliver something stable, secure, maintainable and flexible. Sales teams sign contracts with delivery dates. These delivery dates are rarely discussed with the people who will be doing the work to see if they are reasonable. Management is told to make sure the delivery dates are met. Developers are pressured through agile working to produce a minimum viable product as fast as possible. The MVP gets shipped to the customer.

Don't blame the developers, it's not their fault.

Eurocops arrest suspected Archetyp admin, shut down mega dark web drug shop

And the game of whack a mole continues

It won't take long for an alternative dark web market to pop up and take its place.

Spy school dropout: GCHQ intern jailed for swiping classified data

Seems the wrong way around

Surely it should be 7.5 years for the kiddie porn, plus life on the sex offenders register and a concurrent 1.5 years for stupidly copying secret files?

Old but gold: Paper tape and punched cards still getting the job done – just about

I know the pain of damaged punched tape

Many years ago, I was repairing a machine that a company used to bend steel pipes. The machine was essential to their business so they had the control computer put in a van and driven down to us. The first problem was that the core memory which normally held the program had stopped remembering things, so they had started loading the program every morning by reading the punched tape via the reader on the teletype that sat on top of the box with the computer. The combination of age and greasy hands handling the tape had caused significant deterioration and finally they could no longer read the tape. It was the only copy of the program that they had.

Fixing the core memory was easy - a transistor had died.

Fixing the tape took me the whole day with an optical reader and a box of adhesive tape patches. Finally, we could read the tape without getting checksum errors, so I cut three copies and could finally send the machine, the fresh tapes and a very happy van driver on their way. At the time, this machine had probably already been obsolete for 20 years.

Europe's cloud datacenter ambition 'completely crazy' says SAP CEO

Your government, or you, won't have that opportunity if the Cloud Act request is delivered as a National Security Letter.

The data will simply be taken without anyone other than the recipient of the NSL knowing about it. You will never know about it happening.

US infrastructure could crumble under cyberattack, ex-NSA advisor warns

Who?

Speaking at the what?

Slow news day eh?

Your ransomware nightmare just came true – now what?

Re: Stop paying. Stop making excuses for piss-poor IT.

In the end though, if you are the managing director or CEO of a company, the buck ultimately stops with you.

The reason why you get paid the salary that position demands is because you are responsible, not only for making decisions, but also ensuring that your minions implement your decisions.

If you claim, after the fact, that you were unaware of your orders not being carried out, you and you alone, are responsible for the consequences of your mismanagement. There's no honest way to slip out of this responsibility.

Re: Stop paying. Stop making excuses for piss-poor IT.

Thanks for calling me simple-minded, a good ad-hominem is always a good way to further the discussion.

If you outlaw crypto currencies, it will not magically make them vanish. The horse has left the field a long time ago on that one.

Even in your perfect world where banning something makes it vanish, there are other ways to demand and make payments.

While the ransom payments continue to be made, the ransomware will continue.

So tell me, given that you can't revise history by legislating against a technology, and given that there are other ways than cryptocurrency to exchange money, what is your suggestion for dealing with the problem?

Re: How many people are allowed to die?

Computers don't treat patients, doctors and nurses do that. All hospitals should have appropriate procedures in place so that they can function in the event of a breakdown in their IT systems.

Imagining that an IT failure could lead to people dying for lack of treatment is unfounded.

Likewise, the provision of water and electricity is about delivering a critical service to society. The companies or government departments responsible for delivering such services have a duty to ensure that the services can still be provided in the event of an IT issue or other operational emergency. Not delivering on that duty should be associated with legal consequences for those who neglect it.

My stance is not remarkable. What is remarkable is the lies and excuses that get rolled out to justify inaction and failure to properly discharge responsibilities.

The scourge of ransomware is not going away while ransoms continue to be paid. If you're suggesting that the status quo should be maintained because of some hand waving, that is itself remarkable.

Stop paying. Stop making excuses for piss-poor IT.

The only way to stop ransomware is to stop paying the ransom. It should be illegal to pay these scum a single milliSatoshi.

Excuses like "service had to be restored, fast." are just that; excuses. If your backup and recovery plans and your security systems are so poor that you can't recover from a ransomware attack, then the fault lies completely with you. If the company that you run is large enough to be considered "essential infrastructure" - like Colonial and Change Healthcare, then not having the technical ability, backups and expertise needed to recover from ransomware should be considered a failure of due diligence and the company involved should be fined appropriately.

Running a cowboy operation that makes lots of profit because you neglect to spend money ensuring that your systems are well defended and recoverable is mismanagement. At large scales, this mismanagement should be a criminal offence.

The rot won't stop as long as the income is there.

Japan's latest Moon landing written off as a failure after ispace probe goes dark

Re: Only the one lazer?

I know that Americans have a tendency to spell things with a Z when an S is required, but you really cannot murder the word laser in the same way.

Laser is an acronym for light amplification by stimulated emission of radiation and therefore spelling the word with a Z just makes you look stupid.

Furthermore, "importanter" is NOT a word. If you meant "more important" then write that.

AWS forms EU-based cloud unit as customers fret about Trump 2.0

No.

The access under the Cloud Act would be requested from Microsoft under the terms of a National Security Letter. Microsoft can't even talk about that letter, so there would be zero chance to "deny access".

Ukraine strikes Russian bomber-maker with hack attack

Translation

thinking about sharing information with our computer emergency response team

=

keeping the zero days to ourselves for a bit

Ransomware scum leak patient data after disrupting chemo treatments at Kettering

The solution to this is ages old...

Look to Vlad the Impaler for the correct way to deal with ransomware scum.

'Close to impossible' for Europe to escape clutches of US hyperscalers

They are not considered European because the US Cloud Act means that Uncle Sam has silent access rights to all the data stored in them.

Not a realistic option

"selecting a sovereign cloud option from a US vendor" is not a realistic option. Your data is still subject to being silently slurped by the US authorities - US Cloud Act. Your infrastructure on that "sovereign cloud" is still run by a US company and can be turned off at will.

People need to stop making excuses and get moving!

Boffins found self-improving AI sometimes cheated

Not convinced about safety.

While the article starts with a reassuring

> While that may sound like the setup for a dystopian sci-fi scenario, it's far from it.

It ends with a chilling

> closer to AI that not only learns but evolves in an open-ended, self-accelerating trajectory

Self-accelerating sounds like exponential to me. Something self modifying that would also need more and more energy and computing power, which would probably be more than capable of breaking out of its sandbox.

What could possibly go wrong?

Some signs of AI model collapse begin to reveal themselves

Re: Recent Google AI confusion

Using volumetric measurements for non-liquids is dumb.

My equivalent mass for a cup of flour is 140g. Just goes to show how much difference packing density and the inherent water content of the flour can make. Consequently, if I find a bread recipe that I want to try but the author has used volumetric measurements for the ingredients, I skip the recipe.

The vast majority of cooking is done with very general ballpark measurements. The difference for your recipe between an onion which weighs 100g vs one which weighs 120g is irrelevant. If you really believe that the final peeled and chopped weight for an onion is so critical, you're clearly overthinking things.

Re: Recent Google AI confusion

Converting a 'cup' - a volumetric measurement, into 'grammes' - a measurement of mass, is a fool's errand - for anything that isn't a liquid.

A perfect example of this is the many conversions of one cup of flour into grammes. It's a wide spread. The fact that a UK cup is larger than a US cup doesn't help either.

If you're baking bread, it matters. For other things, eyeballing it is fine, or keep a cup measure handy if you're that uncertain.

ConnectWise customers get mysterious warning about 'sophisticated' nation-state hack

Ironic

It's ironic how many of these "all your eggs in one basket" solutions get owned. Time and time again.

The fact that they shut the "hardened security" gate after the horse was well away over the field is a great advert! So normally, you don't run with "hardened security"?

OK.

This is what happens when the people in the C-suite decide "we'll just pay someone else for security".

We're now truly in the era of ransomware as pure extortion without the encryption

Re: Kill the cryto, stop the scam

All the same attributes are shared by fiat currencies today, in particular good old fashioned cash. If all cryptocurrencies were to vanish tomorrow, all that's needed is some local operatives and a secure drop for getting hold of a suitcase or two of unmarked cash.

If there are holes in your defences, they will be found and people will try to make money off it one way or another.

Empire of office workers strikes back against RTO mandates

Re: If bosses really wanted people to come in to the office

About a decade ago, the company I work for built themselves a huge swanky office. Then they sold the office to a property management company and signed a 30 year lease.

The company has been shrinking over the years as its market shrinks, so they now only occupy 30% of the building, having leased out parts to other companies. Still, they are stuck in the 30 year lease and the senior manglement, desperate to avoid looking like idiots for tying themselves up in a lease they can't get out of, are ramping up the pressure for everyone to start working at the office again. If it wasn't for the fact that I'm 60, they would have already received my resignation. None of the people I work with are in the head office - they all work in another city some 450km south. Even so, I'm expected to go to the head office at least three days per week under threat of disciplinary action if I don't.

I'll stop now, before I get really annoyed.

CISA mutes own website, shifts routine cyber alerts to Musk’s X, RSS, email

Re: Big up RSS

Try QuiteRSS. Cross platform, fast, good user interface. See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/QuiteRSS

I've been using it for many years and keep many different news sites (including this one) in my feed list. Much better than having to visit all the different sites.

"Going forward"

The first sentence of the article is just as clear without the horrible "going forward" or the better, but equally superfluous "in future".

OpenAI wants to build a subscription for something like an AI OS, with SDKs and APIs and 'surfaces'

The global panopticon edges ever closer

Thank goodness there is no current way to extract all of the memories in my brain and upload it to Altman and Ellison's dystopian future of constant surveillance.

I won't see this, but I fear for my childrens' future.

FreeBSD fans rally round zVault upstart

Great news!

I'm eagerly anticipating the first stable release of zVault.

As someone who has used FreeNAS (as it was) since release 8, I have a couple of nicely stable jails that I have no interest in migrating to Docker containers and see no benefit in migrating away from the ultra stable and reliable FreeBSD system which has served me so well over the years and three hardware platforms. My Proxmox cluster only uses my NAS for backup and image storage, so I'm very happy sticking with NFS mounts from the NAS for that. I'm more than happy to follow the old adage of "if it ain't broke, don't fix it"!

Now that iXsystems have moved to their SCALE version, the company's forums are overrun with Linux users who seem unable to read documentation or FAQs before asking questions, lowering the signal to noise ratio significantly.

Microsoft updates the Windows 11 Start Menu

Re: Take my hat off to MS

Absolutely this!

The last thing I'd do is connect my phone to Micros~1's data collection platform to let them hoover up the names and phone numbers of people I associate with.

Culture comes first in cybersecurity. That puts cybersecurity on the front line in the culture wars

Re: Cloud Act?

Is there a bot running somewhere which automatically downvotes people's comments?

Maybe the downvoter would like to add to the conversation with a reasoned justification?

No?

I guessed as much.

Cloud Act?

The US Cloud Act already strips away any pretence of how much Brad respects EU and UK laws, even if he genuinely wants to.

The phrase "Microsoft Cloud for Sovereignty" is just gaslighting. It was always a poor excuse to attempt to retain EU customers and make some vague promises about GDPR compliance. Now there's a moronic orange dictator running the USA, these empty promises should be viewed as what they are. While the Cloud Act promises judicial review of access to data held by US companies abroad, the backdoor of National Security Letters utterly nullifies such safeguards.

For far too long, the EU and the UK have relied on the benevolence of the US administration to avoid investing in the technology needed to properly control their own data and computing infrastructure. This has to change now and it has to change very quickly.

NASA probes propulsion problem in Psyche's thrusters

Conversion hell

If El Reg is going to offer conversion to metric for those who have stopped using archaic units, at least try to get them right!

> approximately 148 million miles (238 km)

> from 240 million miles (386 kilometers)

Hopeless!

Microsoft gets twitchy over talk of Europe's tech independence

Stop lying Brad

"We respect European values, comply with European laws, and actively defend Europe's cybersecurity."

No, you don't. The US Cloud Act is what makes your empty words an obvious lie. Any European company that stores their data on your cloud services is effectively donating it all to the US government.

These empty words sound just the same as what any company spews when they get owned by a ransomware group or state actor. "We take our customer's privacy very seriously". Yeah, sure you do.

The EU should have started reducing dependency on US cloud infrastructure a long time ago.

FBI steps in amid rash of politically charged swattings

SWAT teams probably kill more people than they save

Sending large numbers of heavily armed police, who will be super pumped up on adrenaline, in response to an emergency call is an excessive and dangerous idea. Mistakes will, and often are, made that result in completely innocent people being killed, injured or utterly terrified.

It's a response which is often totally out of proportion.

OpenAI pulls plug on ChatGPT smarmbot that praised user for ditching psychiatric meds

Now we know

Where Trump has been getting his ideas from. A sycophantic yes man would appear to be right up his street.

Nationwide power outages knock Spain, Portugal offline

This will happen again

Due to decades of underinvestment since most EU countries privatised their grid and generation capabilities, the grid in Europe, Scandinavia and the UK has become increasingly fragile. Cascading failures are almost guaranteed and this problem is not a "freak, one off event caused by weather".

As soon as politicians started selling off national infrastructure to make short term profit and get rid of the responsibility for maintaining critical infrastructure, this was inevitable. People in the industry have been warning of these risks for at least the last two decades and have been roundly ignored by the politicians as infrastructure is no longer their problem.

The next one will probably take out a much larger area and take much longer to get the grid up again.

Assassin's Creed maker faces GDPR complaint for forcing single-player gamers online

Just say no

If a game that is single player requires me to be online to play it, I simply don't buy it.

At least I'm not rewarding the studios for this type of behaviour.

European biz calls for Euro tech for local people

It's already too late!

> Just a swipe of the pen in the White House could force US tech giants to disclose all manner of data, some of which might have privacy or commercial implications.

The US Cloud Act (enacted in 2018) already means that the data you store in a US supplier's cloud (even if physically located in the EU) is fair game for US authorities.

Far too many EU organisations have been quietly ignoring this fact since the law was enacted while claiming that their use of US cloud infrastructure is compatible with the GDPR. It isn't.

Hacking US crosswalks to talk like Zuck is as easy as 1234

Great hack!

It's just a shame we don't have any crossing buttons that talk to you where I live.

Krebs throws himself on the grenade, resigns from SentinelOne after Trump revokes clearances

Bravo

Nice to see a brave and honest man stand up to a bully.

It will doubtlessly be a long and expensive fight - I hope there are plenty of people willing to put their hand in their wallet and help finance Chris's legal fund.

Europe's cloud customers eyeing exit from US hyperscalers

Just do it!

We need to get away from services provided by US companies as quickly as possible. When faced with a capricious and hostile US government, EU countries being blackmailed by the US by turning off access to US cloud services is no longer a theoretical risk.

The company that I work for in Sweden would instantly be unable to do business if Microsoft turned off access to EntraID for example and that's far from a unique position.

We need to take this risk very seriously and start doing something about it NOW, before the risk turns into a reality. The fact that EU companies use Office 364.25 with total disregard for the fact that all their data is available to the US government is something which has been conveniently ignored for far too long. The migration away from US services should have started when the US Cloud Act was passed.

Microsoft admits it's not you, Classic Outlook can be a real CPU, power hog sometimes

Nothing new here

All locally installed versions of Outlook have had the properties of consuming memory as if it was unlimited, randomly locking up or crashing and generally being unreliable. So has it always been.

Trump thinks we can make iPhones in the US just like China. Yeah, right

Re: Shut that door?

> China depends on US food to feed it's population

Data to prove that assertion?

UK officials insist 'murder prediction tool' algorithms purely abstract

Word salad

What the hell are "racialized communities"?

Google's got a hot cloud infosec startup, a new unified platform — and its eye on Microsoft's $20B+ security biz

Asking Google to look after your enterprise security

sounds like employing the fox to guard the chickens in your coop.

Trump tariffs to make prices great – a gain

Re: High wages can be lowered

Even the poorest US citizen wouldn't be able to live on what people in Bangladesh (for example) are paid to sew clothes. It's not about somehow getting people to accept those wages, it is economically impossible to lower manufacturing labour costs in the US to those levels. Illegal even.

I get the impression that the orange moron's only negotiating tactic is "Threaten the worst, then offer them a bad deal which is less bad than the worst".

Sorry Donald, but that's not the way things work in the real world. This isn't about doing some dishonest property deal, your actions threaten people all over the planet. Some may try to humble themselves for the sake of a short term gain, but I doubt many countries will. You are single-handedly alienating the world against you. I pity the Americans who will have to suffer for your incompetence and arrogance.

EU may target US tech giants in tariff response

Inlcude services? Yes please!

Any response to the orange moron's decision to tank the global economy should be tailored to hit the largest companies in the US the hardest. This should start with Microsoft, Apple and Google.

The sooner the EU stops depending on US companies to provide essential infrastructure, the sooner we can assert our independence from the USA.

AI datacenters want to go nuclear. Too bad they needed it yesterday

"an atomic plant typically takes at least five years to construct"

Sure. More like 20 years if you include planning permission, NIMBYs, public inquiries, etc, etc, etc.

Photoshop FOSS alternative GIMP wakes up from 7-year coma with version 3.0

The program's full name is GNU Image Manipulation Program.

What else do you suggest we call it you woke snowflake?

Belgian cops raid Huawei in Euro bribery probe

Can't eat own dog food

The EU parliament needs to get its act together. I work for a large company in the EU and we follow all the laws regarding non-retribution, transparency and creating a culture where bribery is not acceptable. You even have access to an anonymous, independent whistleblower line if you suspect that your boss's boss is taking bribes. Non tolerance of corruption is mandated in EU directives and legislation.

Why can't the parliament eat their own dog food?

If the EU wants to have the respect of its citizens, then they need to be whiter than white. This kind of corruption only leads to justifiable contempt.

Bubble trouble in hydraulics blamed for NASA and SpaceX Crew-10 scrub

Some consideration for your readers outside the USA?

A translation of "1903 EDT" to something meaningful - like 00:03 UTC would be appreciated!