Posts by Gene Cash

Field trip! European Space Agency sends astronauts abroad to learn about rocks

Re: Geologist on the Moon

Yeah, except for Neil Armstrong and Elliot See.

Australian government doxxed citizens who criticized illegal 'Robodebt' scheme

Re: The "weather" balloon

Nah, you can chalk the missile and flying time up to a training mission they would have done anyway. Not that much extra cost in the long run.

HeadCrab bots pinch 1,000+ Redis servers to mine coins

One born every minute

On one hand, this is obviously criminal activity.

On the other hand, anyone putting a completely unsecured server on today's internet without even so much as a firewall, also deserves a large beating, including fines.

Yes, the default is "unsecured" and that's bad, but then these weren't meant to be exposed to the internet. It's the responsibility of the people setting the server up to secure it.

Can't we get them on something like "encouraging criminal activity"?

Fortunately it's only stealing CPU time from them, but it could be worse. These could participate in a DDOS, spam relays, or something else that harms people other than the server owners.

Microsoft injects AI into Teams so no one will ever forget what the meeting decided

Re: sounds ghastly

That would be in line with their past history of not bringing ANY functionality to the Linux version.

Fossil brain undoes 350 million years of scientific understanding

"this fossil is the oldest known fossilized vertebrate brain"

They need to meet my management chain (ba dum TISSSH)

Scientists develop AI algorithms to hunt for cancer-fighting antibodies

Re: Patients?

Yup. 90% of stuff fails in the clinical trials.

No more free API access, says Twitter: You pay for that data

Re: They just did this in the wrong order

Twitter will become less useful, and die

Well that *IS* his aim, since they forced him to buy it.

System76 teases features coming in homegrown Rust-based desktop COSMIC

Re: One Window to rule them all

Thankfully, there is still XFCE...

And FVWM

Counterfeit crud crooks crossed over to e-commerce during COVID

Get Amazon

3 times I've had proof stuff was counterfeit (such as kit looking/behaving exactly as the "is my chip counterfeit?" FAQ on the mfgr's website) and they've told me "go away kid, ya bother me"

Unfortunately, I didn't think to escalate to the FTC with a complaint.

China shops around US bans to power its nuclear weapons research program

Re: “Ties to the military”

an impoverished, non-competitive China

Well that would be nice. I'd settle for a China that wasn't a complete pack of totalitarian dicks, but apparently as with Russia, that's not an option.

Renewables are cheaper than coal in all but one US location

Sloppy

Strange. There's quite a few typos (such as "renewabales") and the blue sidebar on pg24 doesn't even finish. It's cut off in mid-sentence.

I tried to find out how they square replacing a (relatively) small coal plant with a wind farm or solar panels, which usually requires a lot more land. I also tried to find out if they include the costs of demolishing the old building, building the new plant, and other related things. Things like coal stack chimneys are especially expensive to demolish and cart off. I didn't see anything.

JD Sports admits intruder accessed 10 million customers' data

has enlisted the help of "leading cyber security experts."

How 'bout doing that BEFORE you're hacked? Doesn't this imply you weren't taking due care?

Meanwhile, in Japan, pet fish run up credit card bill on Nintendo Switch

Wot? No jokes about credit card phishing?

Japan, Netherlands reportedly join US in China tech export ban

Re: Netherlands

it's probably good if western countries anticipate this and start building up their own capacity.

Wot? Plan for the FUTURE? Past next quarter? Are you completely mad?

So you want to replace workers with AI? Watch out for retraining fees, they're a killer

None of these people have seen "Eliza"

I was making a comment along the lines of "Eliza was a small language model. These are large language models." and it occurred to me that modern children have never seen Eliza.

If they had, they would have the proper skepticism, and would actually understand the situation, instead of regarding it as "AI magic"

Ah well. They'll learn. School of hard knocks and all that.

California toys with digital vehicle titles on private DMV blockchain

California... please fall into the ocean.

It's the only decent thing to do.

What is Google doing with its open source teams?

Sure, but then it was discontinued 6 months later... https://killedbygoogle.com/

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

Java

Write once, pay everywhere.

Home Depot sent my email, details of stuff I bought to Meta, customer complains

Inconsistant story

So first Home Depot "incorrectly advised that they had not shared his information with Meta." then Home Depot also referenced "consent fatigue" as a rationale for why, at the time the customer requested an e-receipt, it did not notify them of its practices

It's one or the other.

Plus they stopped, so it's resolved. So now I can rob banks, but if I promise to stop, then it's "resolved" and no longer a problem?

Where the hell is the fine?

Bloke allegedly stole, sold private info belonging to 'tens of millions' globally

Re: That's not how you do it!

Well considering their main business is now selling our personal information, I call them criminals.

Google gives in to India Android antitrust verdict, kinda

New dodge

In the next version of Android, you won't be able to install "expired" applications targeting older SDKs, even sideloading FOR YOUR OWN USE.

Hit 'em again. They haven't learned.

Apple emits emergency patch for older iPhones after snoops pounce on WebKit hole

Re: Apple products are, and always have been, perfect

Wow, Two downvotes already. I remember when sarcasm was actually appreciated here.

The world is 'clearly' not prepared for cyberwarfare

Well, if they find it and stick it in a company PC "for a look" they still need a beating. They're still willfully exposing the company to serious risk.

And if the "majority fall for it" then maybe the majority needs their email attachments privileges suspended for a month.

Edit: is it really too much to ask for people to have just a little bit of healthy suspicion? There's not much difference from getting a virus from purchase_order.exe than someone doing a $50,000 action on an email that's not actually from the CEO. Maybe they should double check first?

Live Nation CFO on Taylor Swift ticket chaos: Don't blame me, bots made me crazy

Oh yes, Congress is serious!

We can see by the name of the hearing that Congress is taking this really seriously.

Venues that are interested in actual punters in seats are turning to distributors other than Ticketmaster, like EventBrite

And who are the other players?

Cvent

Whova

Hopin

Splash

Bizzabo

Eventzilla

Ticket Tailor

Webex Events

Seriously? If I got an email selling tickets with any of these company names, they'd go straight to the spam folder. These people aren't even making an effort.

Chinese mobe-makers play a long game with homebrew chips

Re: Other players

Ugh. The number of western chips found in Russian weapon wreckage is infuriating. Intel chips are sparse, but the number of TI, Cypress, Xilinx, Altera, etc stuff is far too much.

8K? That’s cute. This display has 600 million pixels

Ugh. Why Samsung?

Because apparently everyone else has ceded the large monitor market to them.

I recently got a physically-larger monitor because my 4K monitor was unreadably small, and there was very little choice in what to buy.

Samsung: if you're going to make a 49" monitor that's 3840 pixels wide, why the hell do you only make it 1080 high? A minimum would be 1200, and preferably 1920.

India floats plan to make big tech pay for news, walks back government censorship

"attack cloud providers and poorly secured applications using"

And still no corrections link/email.

Twitter tweaks third-party app rules to ban third-party apps

Re: No surprise there then

Yup, look at "Rich Rebuilds" on YouTube for an absolute eyeful of what Tesla does to an owner that needs parts.

Microsoft is checking everyone's bags for unsupported Office installs

Re: Microsoft said has been scanned to ensure it's not infected by malware.

No kidding. They usually JDGAS and regurgitate updates regardless of if they'll break your printing or delete all your icons.

The lawyers must be worried about this one.

University of Texas latest US school to ban TikTok

"two professionals"?

Do you mean two professors?

I'm not seeing a corrections link...

Adobe: Take user data to train generative AI models? We'd never do that

Weasel words!

saying it has never used customers' creations to train generative AI models

That says they HAVEN'T, not that they won't in the future.

Also, there are other AI models, not just generative ones.

As if Elon didn't have enough problems – Twitter sued over leaky servers

Twitter's bird statue sells for $100,000 at auction

https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-64312309

"Viewers online noted that some of the used items were no bargain, as they were selling for more than retail."

"A 190cm (6ft) planter in the shape of an @ symbol finished near $15,000 (£12,160)."

You can't make this shit up.

Indian official reveals 'plan' to build a national mobile OS

Re: 1984

That was Stephen Elop and his "burning platforms" memo.

If the OS was anything like Maemo on the N810/N900, then good riddance to bad tech. "Let's port all the bad parts to Debian, and leave out the good parts, like the packaging system. Plus let's kinda sorta rewrite Hildon badly."

Wkikpedia says the package manager is dpkg, but that's only very recent. You had to reflash your device for an OS upgrade, losing all your data.

But then I was spoiled, having moved from Palm, where the OS was very well done.

Like Uber, but for China: Beijing creates state-owned meta rideshare service

Re: Hmm

We have no markets. This is communism.

So I guess DiDi is basically screwed now.

Wyoming's would-be ban on sale of electric vehicles veers off road

52nd in population - they just want attention

Wyoming is 52nd in population... even the District of Columbia (AKA "Washington DC") has more people.

("But the US only has 50 states?" Yes, Puerto Rico is 31st and DC is 50th, and they're both "territories")

They just need to sit back down and shut up.

Unix is dead. Long live Unix!

Re: About 15 years ago...

Remember when "you can't make money in open source"?

Remember the jokes about Bob Young finding a dime on the pavement and declaring it as Red Hat income?

Good times.

I was reasonable to ask to WFH in early days of COVID, says fired engineer

it still wasn't clear that covid was a risk to any but the most elderly and vulnerable

But he's in both buckets, being old and Asian, as per the article.

Time to study the classics: Vintage tech is the future of enterprise IT

"if BeOS was so cool, why did it fail?"

Because Jean-Louis Gassée wanted $300 million from Apple, and they only wanted to offer $125m.

Nuffin' to do with the tech.

For password protection, dump LastPass for open source Bitwarden

TOTP? Tied Onto The Penis?

EXPN?

Basecamp details 'obscene' $3.2 million bill that caused it to quit the cloud

Re: Cloud Vs On-Prem

Don't forget "cloud" started out as Amazon's solution to the burst of activity during Christmas, and most of that sat around the rest of the year, so they started renting it out.

Self-driving car computers may be 'as bad' for emissions as datacenters

Exactly. The computer runs off the EV's battery.

I would think the sensors (RADAR, LIDAR, ultrasonics, cameras, pan/tilt/scan mechanisms, etc) would be more power hungry than the computer.

Microsoft Defender ASR rules strip icons, app shortcuts from Taskbar, Start Menu

Re: Precautions, for your convenience

Working as designed. It's certainly reducing the attack surface. Think of all the Office macro virus they're safe from!

Job's a good 'un!

Cisco warns it won't fix critical flaw in small business routers despite known exploit

Thanks

More fodder for the "Don't buy Cisco" bookmarks folder.

Surely you can't be serious: Airbus close to landing fully automated passenger jets

Re: Automated emergency landing

Only if you've got the eye-wateringly extremely expensive full Garmin glass cockpit installed.

Not only can most people not afford it, but there's a lot of light aircraft that just can't accommodate it.

Re: An step in the path to reduce the number of pilots needed to fly commercial.

There's an awesome blog called "Fear of landing: the art of not hitting the ground too hard" https://fearoflanding.com/ where she tackles air incidents from the perspective of a pilot.

It's really good. No connection other than being a mesmerized reader.

How to track equipped cars via exploitable e-ink platemaker

No, it's not testbedding any more. As of October, these are in full public use.

Apple aims to replace Broadcom, Qualcomm wireless chips with its own

price gouging and arrogance

Good thing Apple's never done any of that, eh?

Virgin Orbit doesn't

Re: On the positive side

Sure, but SpaceX did 91 launches last year, all successful. That's more than all of China did.

First satellite to be launched from European soil leaves Cornwall tonight

Nope

It looks like it's unfortunately reached ocean-synchronous orbit. I believe the circularization burn didn't happen. SpaceNews says the telemetry during the first burn had weird speed & altitude numbers.

Tributes flow as Creative CEO Sim Wong Hoo - the mind behind Sound Blaster - passes aged 68

Yes, of course. That's like saying your Fender guitar is better than my Yamaha toy. The Amiga was designed to a far better standard to start with.

Creative didn't set out to create a standard, they set out to sell a sound card.

The fact was that they happened to hit it out of the park with an excellent product, so they actually became a standard and got the dozens of other products claiming "we're just as good as a SoundBlaster" and the "we're compatible with SoundBlaster" when THEY WERE NOT.

IIRC Ad-Lib wasn't that great.