Posts by CA Dave

Microsoft announces product it doesn't want anyone to buy

Viva la France?

This is likely another reason why France is giving Micro$lop the middle finger and switching to Linux for all government systems.

District denies enrollment to child based on license plate reader data

Last name of parent is all you need to know.

They're really denying her daughter because of the last name of the parent and child. In a city metro that's supposed to be deep blue, and suffered at the hands of a decrepit, old pedophile, there's still a stigma of "We only needed inconsequential proof THIS LATINA doesn't live in district.", and lack of appeal and refusal of the district to give comment says it all. It's worse than a contract with a shady AI company, and using a license plate transfer

Google patches Chrome zero-day as in-the-wild exploits surface

Incredibly stupid take, as it has nothing to do with AI. Zero-day exploits have been happening for many years prior to AI.

Developer jailed for taking down employer's network with kill switch malware

I would have gotten away with it...

If it weren't for my meddling lack of subterfuge!

No more Blocktoberfest? German court throws book at ad blockers

In the early 2000s...

People used to panic whenever a bunch of pop-ups and then pop-unders would suddenly show up. It would be indicative of a virus that had abused your computer's rendering of a page via exploit already released (it really wasn't called "in the wild" over 20 years ago) and infecting you, or via a virus that easily bypassed your antivirus at the time, before browser processes started getting sandboxed

Of course in an office setting we used to make fun of people who would inevitably get fired because illicit porn from dodgy sites was usually the cause of such a breach.

Nowadays, the damned website operators themselves are now the offenders of such ghastly placements of ads all over the damn place, where tapping the X half the time STILL launches the offending link. They use gimmicks that subvert the toggling off of pop-ups that even Google and Edge have in the browser by using a full-screen layer forcing you to tap an X/Close anyway to read content.

Web beacons. "Invisible pixels". "Essential" cookies that are required.

So who really is breaking MY computer's/phone's access to browse the Internet in a sane manner? Now we're expected to accept a flurry of ads that look like a virus from 2000 has infiltrated your device?

Microsoft pushes Pull print, so you don't have to dash to the printer to grab the 'Fire everyone' memo

Why do we still need hardcopy printing?

It's mid-2025 and we're still needing a requirement for actual trees being killed for paper in regular office settings that aren't external customer-facing for shipping purposes? What on Earth for? Why waste man hours to code an unnecessary feature and burn more production time going back and forth to a printer, when finished reports can be PDF'd or otherwise "printed" to file which then gets sent securely to the required parties via email?

It's not 1990 anymore, and this isn't Hackers using 3.5" FDs and reams of beltfed paper going through a dot matrix (or spinning head) printer.

Some users report their Firefox browser is scoffing CPU power

Good ol Firefox.

AI aside, in the past, Firefox had a lot of memory leak issues. Now it's eating CPU in desperation for absolutely no reason. Google on Android has tab groups also, but it didn't bother needing to use AI for them, as you have to do it manually and name them manually. It does a nice job of putting the inactive tabs aside that haven't been used in a while as well.

P.S.: Anti-Google shills can buzz off in replies or spiteful downvoting. I'm no shill for Google, but the antis are sad.

Your CV is not fit for the 21st century – time to get it up to scratch

Re: Master and the slaves

Oh AI is so going to screw us over. Not in the Skynet sense, but in the way everything is going to be too reliant on AI being a major part of the workplace. Top tech such as Google have already implemented a sudden hiring freeze because of AI.

Re: Master and the slaves

Absolutely could not have been stated better. Well done.

Trend Micro offers weak workaround for already-exploited critical vuln in management console

Re: "restricted to authorized and trusted administrators only"

It's not so much the front door that's the problem. It's keeping the sliding door in the back unlocked because "who's gonna jump a fence and risk my poorly trained guard dogs that roll over for Beggin Strips and Puppucinos?"

Court upholds Epic win in Google Play Store antitrust battle

Re: The security aspect.

Lol 5 thumbs down. Clueless Epic shills who don't understand backdoor issues found.

The security aspect.

The biggest security problem that I see, and have seen from the beginning, is that 3rd party app stores on Play Store that the rest of us use, will be shitty with malware prevention SoP to prevent what will undoubtedly be a plethora of bad actors looking to infect devices. As it is, bad actors manage to dupe the Play Store security system in various ways such as hidden unfinished code that doesn't activate until after an app "update" that activates the payload to grab your banking/crypto/Google credentials via keylogging, etc.

There's no promise whatsoever that every yahoo that makes an app store will bother to scan and screen uploaded apps, since they'll expect Google to do it because "It's [their] Play Store! They're supposed to vet the apps with Google Play Protect!".

The entire thing about Android being Open is that if YOU want to sideload an app from outside the Play Store, you're more than welcome to do so, but it's YOUR ass that's responsible for verifying it's a legit app that's malware-free (not even trusting APK mirror by default for example, despite their claims all apps are scanned). Google Play Protect isn't intended to scan sideloads. You can submit sure, but Google isn't at fault if a sideloaded app spreads a payload.

I'm not saying explicitly that Epic will allow such a thing with their crappy 3rd party store, but it's a glaring back door ability that could be easily forced open because people want to "stick it to Google". Epic is only concerned mostly with not having to pay Google any money for their apps billing customers cheaper. It's all about not giving them that listing percentage, after all. I've never seen a mention of Epic even bothering to comment that security will be paramount first and foremost.

China's IPv6 adoption takes a decent leap forward, especially on fixed networks

Re: Atlassian

Doctor Lanning: That is the correct question.

Re: “Let’s create a world where every interaction with governments is assisted by digital agents”

Sorry, but customer support and service will be the absolute last facet of life to reach anywhere close to Star Trek TOS levels of helpful. The AI that Amazon, Frontier (Verizon), uses is a joke. We've gone from a human reading a script someone thought was good, to a voice menu script someone thought was good, to a poorly installed AI script that a human thought was good.

That's why I'll never get into telephone banking CS service ever again, because the likelihood that an exasperated customer at wits end finally reached me will be yelling at me because the robo screwed with them.

How to find forgotten Wi-Fi passwords and SSIDs in Windows and Android

Absolute muppet detected. All those network passwords on your phone can be easily deleted in no less than 3 ways, from individual, to full nuclear. Feel free to reset Wi-Fi and Bluetooth connections on a daily basis if you're that panicky. Sheesh.

FBI: Watch out for these signs Scattered Spider is spinning its web around your org

The issue with resorting to using an ELI5 tactic is because it's absolutely necessary, because there are still hundreds of businesses and organizations of most sizes that are rather inept at security. This follows on the heels of a British trucking company that literally just went belly up after 158 years earlier this month, because even their backups were lost because they weren't stored properly off-site. The ransomware gang wanted £5 million which simply wasn't possible, so everyone is out of a job.

Intel cutting cutting-edge node funds would mean no more Moore's Law

C'mon Intel

Press F to pay respects.

A billion dollars' worth of Nvidia chips fell off a truck and found their way to China, report says

Re: 50 percent surcharge. Bargain!

Indeed. Curious if there was a convenient laundry done of special funding for a 6-foot pallet of chips being offloaded and "misplaced" prior to final transfer logistics.

DNS security is important but DNSSEC may be a failed experiment

Re: Certificates? IP address?

"HTTPS is used because all the "modern" browser automatically add 'https' in front of the url unless you specify http by hand."

Incorrect. Google Chrome browser gives the option to not only use "only HTTPS" to connect to a website, but also puts up a warning page of the URL you enter points to a website that does NOT use HTTPS, and asks if you want to go "Back to Safety" when that option is turned on. The Enhanced Security options enforce an even higher level of security by sending the URL to Google to ensure it's legit and not a phishing attempt or a malware website. This Enhanced Security is turned on by default (and locked into the On position) for Pixel users who turn on the Advanced Protection Program setting. I suggest you not comment anymore, "Coward".

Google AI Overviews are killing the web, Pew study shows (again)

Pépe le "Pew" Research center

Ah yes, the same Pew that said that a majority of people expected Hillary Clinton to win over Donald "drain the swamp" Trump, 63% to 34% in their survey.

They contributed big time to people staying home and unleashing Act I of his hell.

Their surveys don't mean squat and they should have folded out of embarrassment in immediately after that election.

Mike Lynch estate owes HPE $943M over Autonomy fallout

So what is it with the UK court system?

HP has had a multitude of issues in the past going back 20 years to "budget" laptops that took an hour to boot even after you uninstalled the bloat and axed useless services, to battery recalls from fire, to just bad decision-making overall. HP loses in the US but wins in the UK.

Johnny Depp inexplicably loses his case badly in the UK because they refused written evidence that was considered "hearsay" (how is a medical record and text messages hearsay or unreliable?), but a jury finds him the overwhelming victor* in the US because evidence was properly allowed.

Why is the UK system so whack?

*Heard was given a tiny judgement of $2 million but it was overshadowed by the $10+ million awarded to Depp.

If you cannot write properly so that it makes sense, don't comment at all.

Re: Mike Lynch

Figures a coward would write that.

As companies race to add AI, terms of service changes are going to freak a lot of people out

Funny thing about that anecdote, is that it's lwhat happened before the events of Picard S1, except sub in internal bureaucracy failure regarding the Romulan supernova rescue, causing him to quit the Federation and have a breakdown to where he runs off back to his vineyard.

Trump tariffs turn techies topsy-turvy as US braces for PC tax

Re: Idiotic tariff nonsense

But the covfefe that was made up will never be forgotten.

Perplexity rips another page from the Google playbook with its own browser, Comet

$200 a month...!

For "unlimited labs", "early access", and advanced support for "professionals".

What "professional" sucker is flushing away that kind of money for a browser AI?

You can get a Google One 2 TB sub starting at $99 a year and get access to their Gemini Pro product.

AI scores a huge own goal if you play up and play the game

Re: "ample disproof † at least some of these assertions."

You're missing the point regarding who is actually the employer. The "employer" in this case is the 76 million strongly-insane that "hired" Trump to be President.

You absolutely cannot be sane to hire an insane Trump as POTUS or Commander-in-Chief, especially for a second go-around after he was "fired" 4 years prior.

Ousted US copyright chief argues Trump did not have power to remove her

Re: Wouldn’t it be useful to be able to X that “other” box

Nobody signs the ballot. Nobody sees the result of how any one person by name voted because it gets put in a box. Now if there was a login requirement to vote, then we don't have democracy anymore anyway and it's a moot point and this country would be RIP because you'd have Nazi Germany here.

Right, nevermind the fact the has he's violated the Constitution via DOGE, fired federal workers illegally because of DOGE, illegally accessed all of our personal financial, SSN, tax, and medical data, illegally deported Abrego Garcia then miraculously brought him back under false charges, illegally gamed the stock market in April by enacting then withdrawing severe tariffs that crashed the market so that his corrupt swamp could make bank...

I don't need to go on. Any one of those instances would have gotten a Democratic President impeached and convicted instantly.

Re: And suddenly...

Alas, poor Yorick, he knew nothing well.

Gone in 40 days: US drops ban on export of chip design tools to China

Always weak

Except against Americans who don't swear fealty to him. He chickens out, commits numerous Constitutional violations, but it's his political opponents that are the "Communists". Right.

Meanwhile he can't stand up to China.

Folks aren’t buying the PCs that US vendors stockpiled to dodge tariffs

Chromebooks?

Windows 11 updates have been notoriously buggy lately, and them being forced onto your laptop unless you disable the service(s) is contributing to people having this disdain. Who wants sus Recall and MS AI on top of it?

Are Chromebooks increasing in sales as a result? You don't need MS Office when you can use Docs or Sheets just fine for non-intensive needs. It's still a laptop that works just fine to get you on the Internet and still perform other web-based tasks for financial, research, and apparently a beta Linux mode for other power users.

Don't shoot me, I'm only the system administrator!

Re: Land of the Free - to be shot

So basically you're saying the average grunt cop is really just a Stormtrooper.

Germany asks if US hyperscalers hold keys to AI kingdom

"Writing on the wall"

What did they honestly expect? When the three companies in question were the first (along with Apple to an extent I'm sure) to even generate a customer support bot model - already the ire of everyone needing help, that was ultimately a precursor to AI right? Wasn't that the famed "writing on the wall"?

Just because you're caught flat-footed with the inability to see that AI was going to be more than just a fad for several more years, doesn't mean you get to cry foul that you didn't get a chance at a cookie later after most of everything has been established.

AI has ultimately been around for a few years now in one way or another, with Bixby, Google Assistant, Siri, and the like on our smartphones, as we "Star Trek" our way into the future by talking to them and issuing commands with them.

Lest we not forget, that by virtue of allowing those three mega companies to act as point to do your shopping, shipping, bidding, uploading, storage, and more, you've already lost the game because you took too long to realize the future.

Or you just took the lazy convenient way out by using their services. Peace.

This is a rather interesting take, and it does seem rather interesting that you don't hear from the EU countries actually encourage, foster, or develop the means to generate a necessity and desire for "grassroots" EU tech, particularly now when it comes to AI.

You hear about US and China going at it, and Japan and the UK to a lessor degree, but where's the hype itself from the EU, as opposed to yet more complaints? The EU is indeed really good at complaining over something that's already after-the-fact, when they realize they don't like how it seemingly poofed like magic to them.

Where indeed is the initiative especially from Germany? They can design and manufacture great automobiles, but stagnate over other tech?

WD escapes half a billion in patent damages as judge trims award to $1

Just like the NFL case

For those wondering why something like this can happen, look to the NFL Sunday Ticket damages that went from treble for monopolist ($1.2 billion), to absolute zero because the jury wasn't given a valid basis of which to determine damages per the judge because the "expert" was wildly guestimating. The NFL was still found liable by the judge.

Iran cyberattacks against US biz more likely following air strikes

Because, dear Canadian, the MAGA muppets in charge of the House and Senate, as well as those millions of voters supporting them, think the Dictator-in-Chief is doing the greatest, bestest job in the history of Presidents. They won't impeach him despite NUMEROUS violations of the Constitution, including what ICE is doing illegally. It's always a Republican president now starting all this war bulls---.

It kinda makes me wish that he had beaten Biden so that the military wouldn't be ordered to terrorize its own families. There would be no Project 2025 dismantling our way of life. Trump is a psychotic piece of s---. I'm so damn sick of "defend Israel at all cost" because they do just fine attacking people all by themselves.

Guard your own networks!

Because the government defunded the teams guarding its own systems!

Uncle Sam seeks time in tower dump data grab case after judge calls it 'unconstitutional'

If you have the device(s)...

...of the particular suspect(s) in question, isn't that the definitive way that investigations are done? Such as seeing where a particular phone number last pinged when authorities attempt to trace a call? Doing these fishing expeditions is even worse of a Constitutional violation than what Trump has already done.

It's maddening that the scum who was elected president while being overwhelmingly convicted of crimes himself is allowed to "chase after criminals" and accuse them of being actors of a foreign state. He's been abusing the Constitution while putting his tiny thumb on the scales of justice. The level of collateral damage that he demands with these dumps would even be viewed as unacceptable in a military operation. You can't have a 99% rate of collateral damage, otherwise you end up becoming Putin's Russia.

Judge cites big OPM records leaks from 2015 in DOGE slapdown

Re: We need to borrow from the Nuremberg playbook

DOGE has committed more Constitutional and privacy violations in the name of Musk, and by extension Donald "January 6th wasn't an Insurrection but let me send the Guard to California" Trump, the Coward-In-Chief.

Make no mistake, without Elon Musk, none of that crap actually happens, because Trump isn't actually smart enough himself.

Schneier tries to rip the rose-colored AI glasses from the eyes of Congress

DOGE has screwed us all, and by extension Elon Musk whom is now playing at being at odds with El Jefe Naranja.

The agencies - with notable difference in ICE acting like a de facto guerilla outfit - are in shambles with workers being dispatched. DOGE is the hammer with AI being the nails in the coffin of a country that is no longer great. Not even 6 months have passed into a term that will all but kill off The Great Experiment. Cyber warfare would only be the beginning of our enemies attack. Don't forget that nefarious enemies already temporarily crippled the flow of oil in the Southeast with the Colonial Pipeline being shut down from a ransomware attack. Congress has a short memory though.

Like a famous sci-fi engineer once said, the more they overthink the plumbing, the easier it is to stop up the drain.

Fake IT support calls hit 20 orgs, end in stolen Salesforce data and extortion, Google warns

Unreal

I'm betting these end users, whether lowest on the totem pole or not, are highly trained in everything except how not to leave the back door open.

Extremely pathetic scripted comment from Salesforce claiming systems weren't hacked. Uh, no. You failed at the most basic anti-hacking fundamental that is the foundation of corporate security:

Don't download and open anything from anyone claiming to be IT! The IT department already manages your program updates!

How are people still this naïve in 2025?

Admin brought his drill to work, destroyed disks and crashed a datacenter

Hold my beer

I'll take care of this myself!

US community bank says thieves drained customer data through third party hole

No surprises, but...

I expect the SEC under Chump may drop the rule because it's not a "big beautiful rule".

Re: Third parties

The argument is always "It'll cost us more, and force us to pass it along to our customers.", and it's likely not going to change, because greed demands to look for a cheaper option. Also, there's always a 3rd party "desperate" enough to want the business, with promises of much lower costs, and worked by people who truly don't give a damn because "It's not my money being affected.".

Cybercrime is 'orders of magnitude' larger than state-backed ops, says ex-White House advisor

As mentioned before..

This is all a convoluted scheme to have large amounts of fraud either being claimed by Republicans in 2026, or committed by actors loyal to their cause. Russia doesn't need to invade our networks, because those loyal to Dictator Trump will already be hacking systems to prevent the one means we have to remove him from the White House.

The underintelligent will scream and cry foul just as they're brainwashed to believe, and we'll get that much closer to a... civil issue nationwide.

Re: Censorship Ageny CISA

What should be Unconstitutional is the existence of Republicans loyal to Trump.

Re: simplez

So you want to criminalize the victim.

Spoken like a true Republican.

Roe v. Wade erased.

Attempt to erase the 14th Amendment.

DOGE committing unconstitutional acts by erasing federal jobs.

Death of CISA and make it illegal to make ransomware payments.

Good grief you're all pathetic!

I'm no longer surprised though. Just pissed.

Signal shuts the blinds on Microsoft Recall with the power of DRM

Only make "Investors" happy?

I daresay with all the extent that DOGE has taken to acquire every piece of private data imaginable, and Trump's demanding of even food stamps info, that it's more likely to make TRUMPUBLICANS happy in the fiefdom. M$ has long been about scraping data far more than Google has, but yet the Feds only want to break up Google to force divestiture, and not break up M$ to do the same.

People have largely forgotten about Recall because it's likely only a matter of time before you CAN'T disable it.

Clippy lives on. He just remakes himself every decade.

America’s consumer watchdog drops leash on proposed data broker crackdown

It's not a surprise at all.

This is what Trump lives for, by virtue-signalling that it's all a "waste of money". Everything is a waste of money to Trump unless it makes money for Trump. The manipulation of the stock market as an Insider Trading POTUS was all the proof we needed.

Musk himself is like a malware worm burrowing through your home PC. Malware that reports to a dingy C&C office room set up for DOGE to grab any data it can get its hands on, be it financial, social media, or shopping habits.

Facebook is going through a wave of forcing people to send a video selfie to Schmuckerberg, by banning their accounts.

TSA using facial recognition that "they swear it's only to verify the person who bought the ticket is who they say they are", while gaslighting that you can always "opt out".

Even Orwell would be amazed.

We're only missing the Telescreens.

...or are we?