* Posts by rw.aldum

15 publicly visible posts • joined 28 Nov 2023

FCC boss urges speedy spectrum auction to fund 'Rip'n'Replace' of Chinese kit

rw.aldum

Carriers winning

It seems like the carriers win all the way to the bank

- cheap out on security practices

- lead to national security risk

- government funds replacement of gear

- government obtains funds from carriers through spectrum auction

- carrier gets gear upgraded and a slice of new spectrum

So what happens when the gear they use ends up with security issues in a few years? More funds / spectrum shenanigans? What’s the motivation to care about security…

US senators propose law to require bare minimum security standards

rw.aldum

Re: Hackers best friends

HIPAA only covers specific data (SSN), specific usecases (identification), in specific places (health care).

There were incidents where hospitals had tracking pixels on their websites, seemingly nothing “wrong” according to to HIPAA, generally speaking.

There’s also everyone and their dog storing all sorts of information they really should have no business storing (insurance companies….) - SSN should never be written down, but if it is… let’s just put **** on the client side and clear text it all the way. Same with most other information.

They should mandate PII to be treated the same as credit card numbers / PINs - maybe a bit harsh, but easier to just have two very obvious choices than this grey area everyone treats security with: I don’t care if you get hacked if you don’t store any of my information / if you have to store it, it’s encrypted.

Microsoft says tougher punishments needed for state-sponsored cybercriminals

rw.aldum

Re: This includes a company-wide adoption of secure-by-design

Personal OS and Privacy? But how will copilot record and store everything you do on all your devices for “recall to function” without all these exploits, I mean features, that have been added into the core OS over decades. We can’t possibly live with stripped down windows. How will everyone and their dog know to sign up for a 365 subscription after every windows update and be reminded to set Edge as their default browser.

No… these security “issues” are by design, for profit, data hogging features.

NFL to begin using face scanning tech across all of its stadiums

rw.aldum

Unsolicited Facial credentials

Where are they storing all the data and how do we get them to stop doing it because they are going to leak everything they store at some point. Stop storing and leaking my “credentials”.

Google paying to be default search on phones is totally against antitrust law, judge rules

rw.aldum

Google pays because

Google pays because of the power of “the default”.

Internet explorer was the default and everyone used it. Google paid the bigger companies to avoid Apple or similarly sized companies from striking a deal with Bing instead.

It’s more likely the platform understands the value and bargained for it - that’s a lot of cash Apple managed to gain and one less product they had to compete in.

I’m glad someone is finally admitting this is not great - but you can change it - permanently and it’s done (at least on iOS). Windows seems to not get the picture and keeps insisting I change back to edge / installing. O365/…

The devil you know vs the one you don’t - sure Google isn’t great, change it to duck duck go and move on. I recon we are likely to see Bing become the default in a lot more places unless the ruling will curb that at the same time - which I doubt they will,,: so hardly fixes the problem then.

I’m not really sure which side of what fence I’m on here - I’m sure the consumer will lose one way or another.

Forget security – Google's reCAPTCHA v2 is exploiting users for profit

rw.aldum

Since we’re charging wages…

We should add into the mix a few other companies due their wages…

Time spent on resetting passwords / checking up on credit reports / identity theft for companies leaking personal information due to nonexistent security.

Windows Update un-fucking.

Car makers sold people's driving habits, location data for pennies, say US senators

rw.aldum

Re: Once and for all

Ah but that requires the government to actually want to stop this. Why would they give up their data sources - they can even blame them when things go south.

Microsoft 365 remains 'degraded' as Azure outage resolved

rw.aldum

Crowdstrike keeps striking

Google begs court for relief from Epic Games' Play Store demands

rw.aldum

Re: Library porting

Except when forced to by some Epic gaming company refusing to play game with standards set by stores, wanting to push their own half baked solutions down on every device while locking in exclusives left right and centre.

When then, will epic games be treated by the same requirement? Shouldn’t “exclusive” games be banned in the same legal regulation? It’s one thing to have platform lock in - it takes dev hours to support different platforms… locking in a specific store? Not allowing all goods to be sold in a store?

Wonder if the EU wants to look at how physical stores are run and then try and evaluate how to navigate the digital landscape,,, or is it purely “I have enough money to buy the property next to you and build my own store” the only counter argument?

Fundamentally, I don’t want epic to get anything on my phone that doesn’t pass at least some lame requirements from Apple / Google. My phone is not my pc - it has a lot more direct access to things I view private and dear - it’s my life. Not just a work dev / excel / web browser machine… the same reason I won’t own a windows phone… don’t ruin this - make it better if it has to be cracked open, not worse.

US mayors urge Congress to ditch red-tape-slaying broadband expansion bill

rw.aldum

5G Satellite?

I thought we already solved this with the 5G satellite push? Or is this just part of Elon’s next paycheck being planned out

By 2030, software developers will be using AI to cut their workload 'in half'

rw.aldum

Re: Predictions

> Using an LLM to do that sort of thing is incredibly wasteful.

Excuse you, it’s incredibly useful - for driving the next hardware refresh cycle for hardware you now need to run the same tool you had yesterday, with a feature that makes it 2x more expensive and your hardware 4x more inefficient… how else will we sell people chips they don’t want? /s

PayPal is planning an ad network built off your purchase history

rw.aldum

Re: This should be illegal

I mean I know the ISPs claim they don’t sell your data but Google ad tracking on every website known to man fixed that years ago… now you don’t even question if it was Google or your

And then: Venmo… it’s a Facebook live feeds of everyone you know paying everyone they know, just there, on a timeline… with hard to disable controls for privacy… and more importantly, one of very few options to send random folks money (can the US just get EFTs already -_-)

Not surprised PayPal is doing this - I’m actually surprised it took them this long seeing they own Venmo.

Time to find a new online payment provider me thinks… once a company starts down this path, at best they will have regional exclusions (if the country can muster the willpower to object)

We're not Meta support: State AGs tell Zuck to fix rampant account takeover problem

rw.aldum

Re: Phone number recycling

Or you could just 2FA using a 2FA app…

SMS isn’t secure. And there are some companies (Uber as an example) which you can log in completely just using an SMS OTP - which has my credit card on it…

The point being, multi layer security is supposed to be implemented with thought, not just to tick a tickbox.

Tesla, Musk likely aware of Autopilot deficiencies behind Florida fatality, says judge

rw.aldum

Re: But then

> because apparently it is a term of humour in South Africa.

At most, was humour in the same way “faggot” was “humour”. If he said it to anyone apart from a friend, he’d have lost a few teeth… it was not “generally acceptable behaviour” anywhere.

I’m a South African living in the US now. I used to think Musk a sort of hero making it in the US the way he did. Now I hope I never have the misfortune to be affected by him or anything he’s touched.

I don’t think there are many South Africans left who feel honoured for the association to him.

Datacenter architect creates bonkers designs to illustrate the craft, and quirks, of building bit barns

rw.aldum

Re: Typical architect design

Maybe the US buildings just survive better because everything is 2.54x over designed