Posts by Strong as Taishan Mountains

TikTok isn't protected by Section 230 in 10-year-old’s ‘blackout challenge’ death

Yeah, this will be tiptoed around whenever it bumps up against Meta or X.

Intel enlists Morgan Stanley to defend against activist investors

seems the company has been really poorly managed for a while now.

HMD Skyline: The repairable Android that lets you go dumb in a smart way

Re: 3 years of updates ?

Windows bends over backwards to keep ancient programs still compatible, which includes introducing problems and vulnerabilities in the process.

To my understanding much of the update duration has to do with agreements with firmware providers. Google can't do much if qualcomm or otherwise decline to continue providing patches (unless google negotiates that with Qualcomm or other)

Lots of blobs, lots of things needing continual work etc. (I say this as the owner of a pinephone, you don't realize the benefit of having a large corp dedicating resources to a project until you don't, that said I love FOSS projects, just for a phone I have reliability requirements which are absurd for a FOSS device)

Administrators have update lessons to learn from the CrowdStrike outage

Re: They will learn

Sad so say but true.

Likely in 5 years this kind of thing will happen again and everyone will scratch their head and go "Hey wait a second, I remember that Kurtz guy from somewhere before.

After all, he did it at McAfee before, did it again this July. What stops him from firing his way into a repeat performance again? (Guy loves to brag about how easy he finds it to fire people, presumably those engineers in strong currency states and now the gigantic Indian centre Kurtz has built)

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

Re: easy to set up ongoing review of data

Yes all of those local data centers, just like another company did in Texas with Oracle. Ring a bell?

Still didn't make any difference, because at the end of the day the question isn't whether it is too hard to set up monitoring and compliance (which, by the way, many Federal agencies tend to make the monitored party pay for if they have their way), but irrational protectionism.

I fully believe that states should have sovereignty over their data, but it seems this really isn't the question here.

Re: the schizophrenic paranoid nation they are

did you read the article?

Kaspersky asked to set up a framework to ensure data integrity/security... if this had anything to do with security the data brokerages would have instead been the target (Chinaman can buy the location data for any mil personnel easy breezy)

it'd be really easy to set up ongoing review of data pushed and sent. really not that complicated here, this keeps crowdstrike and other garbage indian outsourcing fronts in business, that is all.

On one Prime Day, Amazon warehouse workers endured '45% injury rate'

Re: How?

Amazon has next to no automation. Receivers must receive and lift every single item into the cart, which is then loaded onto shelves 30' high at least.

So if something slips and drops, you must catch it. The cart used for receiving has to be at least 500 lbs, generally 550 or so. Pushing that around I knew people who got hurt. (Hard part is stopping it)

Bezos owes Thomas a yacht, he already has an RV.

Re: How?

Have you been in an Amazon centre induction class? They swallow workers up, new class every few days to keep the machine churning.

There are plenty of figures one with a curious mind can find, that Amazon in internal documents is cognisant that it will consume all the workers available at its current rate.

Call, text logs for 110M AT&T customers stolen from compromised cloud storage

Re: The low cost of staying relatively safe

I think this was a bit different than CC records being leaked ..

Malware that is 'not ransomware' wormed its way through Fujitsu Japan's systems

Re: "difficult to detect"?

the malware used the cunning ruse of changing the name of the .exe file.

those clever bastards! How can we keep up with such erudite foes!

Cancer patient forced to make terrible decision after Qilin attack on London hospitals

Unfortunately a feature, not a bug of corporate management now

It seems 90% of Western corporations have decided "risk management" is better than "prevention". (Risk management meaning a massaged copy of the risk assessment is handed in after decision makers threaten their IT dept into not giving a frank risk assessment)

So seems it'll go the way of everything else, stuff some money into a ransomware insurance plan to pay the toll when it happens. Worst case? Some idiot consumer dies and your company rebuilds. Nothing changes until the decision makers are held personally responsible for putting industrial controllers/medical databases on non-secured networks.

Really, one of these days someone is going to find an exposed port on an IC which happens to be connected to something terrifying.

The horse will be far out of the barn, lessons will be learned, maybe then something will change.

CISA director: US is 'not afraid' to shout about Big Tech's security failings

bad systems=bad outcomes.

the same factors that enabled all of this (iron triangle between vendors/procurement decisioners) will continue to ensure that the same old garbage continues to happen.

want to see it change? deny Microsoft a gigantic contract for the trash security, or some other gigantic vendor. you need to really hit the share prices.

US lawmakers wave red flags over Chinese drone dominance

Re: Alternatively.

most or all of the drones in that conflict are, ironically enough, DJI. No one really competes with them.

The drone ban is sponsored by Skydio, so everyone can buy their crappy expensive drones at a gigantic markup. Probably just parts kits bought from the same factories making for DJI anyway.

This is the result of building your economy based on a strong dollar for vacation use in furrin places with weak currencies.

Humanity's satellite habit could end up choking Earth's ozone layer

Re: The race is on

Some people seem to have skipped the whole "clean up after yourself" part of kindergarten, and then created a political ideology to justify it.

We're brilliant at the technical side, the political "don't leave a valley full of toxic waste barrels" side is much less competent.

Re: The race is on

lead poisoning and asbestos induced disease are a part of muh freedom!

mah way of life!

California upgrade company aims militarized 'Tactical' Cybertruck at police forces

you know this is gonna be a thing in wealthy Arab states soon, lookin' at you dubai

Frontier Communications: 750k people's data stolen in April attack on systems

Re: You Know, it Would Be Nice

Suspect it's so they can ravage prole's credit scores should a bill be late.

Defiant Microsoft pushes ahead with controversial Recall – tho as an opt-in

For now

Anyone want to bet in 4 months someone finds they've quietly re enabled it as part of an update?

As another poaster noted, follow the money. Microsoft has gigantic defense contracts, and they also may make more from selling data than any individual Windows license gets them.

But, following the handbook of Western Corps today the answer is to double down. After all, f$ck the customer, your money comes from the government.

Microsoft Research chief scientist has no issue with Windows Recall

They'll probably randomly activate it with every update too.

"Users have the option to opt out by following this registry edit path, see link"

Cisco's emergency caller can send first responders to the wrong location

Re: 911 is a joke

...what was it again?

I'll just send an email.

Energy buffs give small modular reactors a gigantic reality check

Technically we could reuse spent fuel, (MOX) build incredibly safe and effective reactors, store waste securely and safely.

Politically? No. (Technically we could be colonizing the stars, its the political garbage what makes everything a nightmare mess)

Why the obsession with tiny reactors everywhere? You're just increasing the sets of risk and upside/downside on novel reactor ideas with new fuel formats. Just asking for problems, costly problems.

Meanwhile no one is bothering to follow through on latest generation reactors with passive safety features. Strange that.

The politics around nuclear energy are a disaster. (Take Lake Anna for example, a nuclear cooling lagoon where the locals stopped construction of another reactor because after all, they're entitled to cooling lagoon-front property and a third reactor may endanger that)

(Specifically the Economic simplified reactor by GEH)

US senator claims UnitedHealth's CEO, board appointed 'unqualified' CISO

Somewhat surprising that anyone in government a) has read anything about system security b) is interested at all in holding some feet to the fire over this.

Bravo! May my cynicism be proven wrong again!

Samsung workers treated for exposure to radiation in South Korea

Re: "swollen fingers and red spots"

Based on the little I know about such things, if they've had that much exposure there's a high chance of overall radiation exposure sickness, I think. If the tissues have gotten blasted that bad there'll be serious oxidation/nasty production all through the bloodstream from that.

Some do survive though, I think there was a Russian tech who took a proton beam to the skull, massive dose but he lived

Cybersec chiefs team up with insurers to say 'no' to ransomware bullies

The phenomena doesn't stop until insurers are banned from paying.

AI Catholic 'priest' defrocked after recommending Gatorade baptism

Thanks! They allege to have "trained it" with a whole wealth of articles from their website, which if they're not being totally dishonest about it would constitute quite a bit of training? or no?

The latest was that they "worked on it" for 6 months... So maybe they got something out of the box and then had staff slave away at training it just a little bit..

The hilarious part is that they're doubling down.

They claim only 10K but I find that a little suspicious. I've seen basic dev services advertised for this much, but I don't know if that would include training etc.

Anyone around here with any experience with LLMs to speak to what this really cost?

Huawei's hidden hand in optics research contest shocks scholars

Does anyone helping to drum this stuff up ever y'know, touch grass or look at the real world?

If the Chinese were that determined to undermine 'muh freedumbs' they could do no better than to sponsor the Congressional majority which busies itself passing censorship laws and banning tech companies they don't own..

But you be you Westoids, keep telling us how scary the Yellow-Red Menace is as you help yourself to the public largesse over and over...

Where there's a will, there's Huawei to develop one's own chipmaking kit

Western states used to have industrial policy.

But it's ok, now we have lolbertarians and Thatcherite finances! The Chinese have to build a whole factory to get a few billion in GDP, we only have to sell off our water supply company and then sink it in debt to get the same.

Silly Chinese, working and building things.

Solar eclipse darkened skies, dampened internet traffic

Bit, not byte.

Gosh, do the Reg writers have anything at all to do with IT anymore?

Since it went full 'Murica it seems to be shovelware from the MBA floor now.

US legislators propose American Privacy Rights Act - and it looks quite good

Re: Doomed

Problem is, 99 percent of the empire here is all too happy to throw any privilege out the window in the name of 'defense'.

Why? Because unless you're one of the serf-class or homeless, you probably make a lot of money from 'defense'. The amount of economic activity tied in in the US to it is mind boggling. (All the money drains to NoVA)

So USians don't actually want privacy, if it would interfere with their 200k a year DoD contracting gig.

Re: Doomed!

one suspects that is why this was proposed, so that restrictive regimes proposed by privacy conscious states could be controlled and preempted from somewhere where the big guys already have lobbyists ready to go.

no serious reform will happen until a whole lot of congress becomes seriously inconvenienced by the current setup.

Cloud vendor lock-in is shocking, but there's a get out of jail card

Lots of stupid came with ZIRP, still gotta wait a few years for all that to settle out.

What happened to agility and new business models? Cloud benefits have all gone to IT

Re: "The migration of IT workloads to the cloud is benefiting tech departments"

lmao reg seems to be written by an MBA these days

US House of Reps tells staff: No Microsoft Copilot for you!

I work in state gov. The highest levels (Directors etc) are now spamming everyone with book-length AI written emails. Literally makes everyone cringe when they come in.

This is basically the use-case for most of this stuff for idiot normies, to write terrible and cringe inducing emails. (the last one was a long list of all the employees who had died this year-"Jim passed in October, he liked cheesesteaks:)

US critical infrastructure cyberattack reporting rules inch closer to reality

None of these rules will be deployed except with enough carveouts to basically render them toothless.

Nothing changes, because change would affect the interests of various shareholders.

Boeing top brass stand down amid safety turbulence

Nooooo, the cornerstone of Neoliberalism is that you never ever hold someone accountable (if they're a corpo figure).

Not a snowballs chance in hell anyone actually gets charged.

Boeing will have to pay increased insurance premiums (and likely get those as a tax writeoff! Goody), run a PR campaign about "how important safety is" and then proceed with business as usual.

Maybe they'll throw a few of their temp agencies under the bus, but no results from this all.

Re: Whether they will look outside the company

If the death-spiral continues at this rate, states outside the Imperial orbit are more likely to buy Comac once they get their feet under them. I would love to know what kind of losses have been imposed thus far from grounded fleets... And I doubt Boeing is paying those airlines back for all that lost revenue

Woz calls out US lawmakers for TikTok ban: 'I don’t like the hypocrisy'

Let's say they ban the annoying ADHD app.... China then just buys all the data it wants from data brokers...

Like no one pushing this understands how any of this works.. If you're afraid of China owning the TikTok, you might also be worried about all the Congressmen and other things reliant on Chinese money, but ain't nobody talking about that.

Make Congress divest from their Chinese stocks, and then maybe we can talk about banning the Zoomer crack.

Attacks on UK fiber networks mount: Operators beg govt to step in

Re: A missed opportunity?

Putin was, (we assess) seen personally climbing out of a manhole with a length of cut fibre in one hand, and a kitten in the other.

He can't keep getting away with this!

US and Europe try to tame surveillance capitalism

Where is the money?

Surely the ad-buys cannot alone fuel such an industry.

I suspect the main consumer of the gigantic piles of data from all this would be various parts of government. Governments have the endless cash to waste knowing my toothpaste research, Colgate maybe not so much.

Fidelity customers' financial info feared stolen in suspected ransomware attack

Re: Blames Infosys, hah!!!

Same here. I just wish I saw an end in sight.. It seems like insurers are willing to bankroll so much stupid behaviour. No consequences for any of this short-sighted stupidity.

German defense chat overheard by Russian eavesdroppers on Cisco's WebEx

Re: Huh?

Yes, the "misinformation" confirmed as authentic by the German government... Yes that one... Apparently misinformation means "anything inconvenient should the unwashed masses learn of it".

Also, how is referring to the German military with Nazi terms such a slur? They're the ones sending Panzers to burn on the Don steppe... again.

Wyze admits 13,000 users could have viewed strangers' camera feeds

Yes, let us plaster every corner of any space with cameras. We must dispel forever the shadows of an unwatched or unknown world!

What, well I didn't mean I'd be watched. No, no that is creepy, the dystopian surveillance state is for other people.

Space nukes: The unbelievably bad idea that's exactly that ... unbelievable

Re: Whatever is behind the Russian space nuke scare :o

So the PLA is building washing machines to fuel the Russian war effort!

US says China's Volt Typhoon is readying destructive cyberattacks

Oh no! If only we had multiple gigantic Omni-powerful well funded agencies to secure our electronic communications!

Oh wait... We do.

What's that? They spend their time snooping at WHAT? Well I'm no spy why would they... Oh... Blast.

Feds dismantle Russian GRU botnet built on 1,000-plus home, small biz routers

No fiddling around spying on our citizens! That's our job!

Users now keep cellphones for 40+ months and it's hurting the secondhand market

Regular security updates are a big deal to me,

And it's about 90-100 per year for most androids, 120-150 per year of Developer work for Apple devices.

I've a a Nokia XR which is fine HW wise, but security drops off this Fall. (Reason why phones go on sale, the legion of software developers have or are moving on soon)