Posts by Paul Hovnanian

Ransomware gangs skip the CEO, head straight for the 40-something IT manager

Re: So, change company titles

"But Will 'e."

There's a chance he might.

So, change company titles

IT manager: "I'm sorry. But decisions at that level can only be made by our groundskeeper."

Re: one person company

Take it up at the next board meeting.

Americans give all-day school phone bans a ringing endorsement

Re: The downside

"many schools here in UK have the kids place their phones in lockers"

Many schools have the kids place _a_ phone in a locker. The throw-away that they bought cheap off eBay for just such a purpose.

Micro cell sites. Similar to the repeater devices, but also like a Stingray IMSI catcher with a white list of allowed contacts. Emergency numbers snd parents phones, OK. But no Telegraph or FacePlant.

The downside

Kids will just leave campus when they need a phone fix. We already have high schools where they show up for first period attendance (the one that messages parents if it's missed) and start jumping in cars or the public transit busses for who knows where at around 10:00 AM.

The concept of truancy appears to have been forgotten. And it's not all Ferris Bueller's Day Off. Nothing good happens at the off campus hangouts.

‘Humans will be a rounding error on the internet’ says Cloudflare exec

Re: The protocol we don't talk about

Well, I was thinking of a more "trusted" protocol. But yes. If the _Web_ is taken over by machines, traffic might be driven to other, less scrapable protocols. With, security and privacy (and blackjack and hookers). And untracable packet routing (Tor, or a child of that).

Think of an actual bomb-proof protocol stack which is what was (incorrectly) claimed for ARPANet. One that routes around damage an can effectively blacklist 'bots. And not dependent on a few choke points like Google and Clownflare. We assumed that plain old trusted TCP/IP would be good enough in the past. But now that we have seen the exploits, we can go back to the drawing board.

Beware of industry standards working groups co-opting the efforts to sell their own product (MSN, I'm looking at you). I anticipate that the new protocols will spring forth from Minnesota municipal water departments.

Attacker phished way into US defense supplier's Microsoft 365 account

Re: No surprise here

I run into this sort of thing from time to time. Generally, I just "blow off" such requests to share data with a statement to the effect that, "If you were authorized, you'd already be familiar with the steps nessesary to gain access. Goodby."

Sysadmin summoned to explain italics – to a user with at least two degrees

Re: Stupidity plus arrogance

He who knows not and knows not that he knows not is a fool. Shun him.

He who knows not and knows that he knows not is a child. Teach him.

- Old Arabian proverb

DEF CON bans Meta-style 'pervert glasses'

The true pervert ...

... will always find a way. I have a pen camera (novelty gift), so better watch what might might be peaking out of a pocket protector. There are also shirt button cameras* that date back to pre-solid state recording days. The control head and power supply being carried in a large pocket or fanny pack.

*Which actually produce more stable video, not being attached to a head bobbling around.

Web app turns your old phone into a new smart display

Why not ...

... just port an X11 server to it? Not everything is "web". But many things (web browsers included) are Xlib.

Astronomers spot exomoon candidate that's almost as massive as Jupiter

Re: Nice sizes!

I suspect that orbits like those of moon moons (and so on) are relatively unstable, given the likelihood of capture by the parent planet itself.

Software bloat? This elevator needs an 8 GB Core i5

Re: Oops

The least they could have done is to use the distro which featured the cute penguin pic during boot.

Frame: A new X11 server – implemented directly in assembly

LLMs work best ...

... as a part of a tool chain that involves human developers. They can tirelessly examine milions of lines of code to find poor programming practices and logic errors. But in the end, they stii have to hand their output back to the developer/analyst to ensure that the code does what they wanted. Not what they asked for. In an iterative design cycle.

All that aside, I'm really thrilled with these new efforts to maintain X11. Even just as hobbies. While the mega-project of Wayland continues to stumble along, not quite there yet. It speaks to the diference between bottom-up development just for the sake of the intellectual challenge vs the top-down corporate mandates. Which in this case appears to be getting rid of the networkable display. And getting one user linked to one piece of glass, one processor and one application license fee.

EU and UK officially blame Russian spies for cyberattack on Poland's power grid

Re: What does Russia say about all this?

no longer a word for "journalism" in Russian.

Yes there is. Same one as for "fell out of window".

Red Hat offers RHEL support 'forever' for those who need to lock into legacy tech

Re: Life membership

Discipline.

What RHEL specific parts is the ATE using that would make picking up the app and dropping it on another distro difficult? I spent my formative years working with manufacturing systems, PLCs, etc that invariably had some platform-specific hook shoe-horned into them. By vendors who were getting a kick-back from a tool or library vendor. Or supposedly "independant" consultants in much the same position.

Avoid such dependencies at all costs. Even if it makes the initial development more expensive. It is the poor man that pays the most.

Re: Life membership

"but customers who don't want to upgrade keep throwing more and more and more money at us to keep supporting them"

So I guess "lifetime suport" is based on the lifetime of RedHat's customers. Sort of like the Bataan death march.

HTTP gets a QUERY method so complex searches can stop pretending to be POST

Intermediaries

This is how you get ads inserted into your search results. CDN caching? No thanks, if all I get are links to sales on "idempotent".

Microsoft to switch off OWA Light after nearly two decades

Welcome ...

... to M365. Resistance is futile. You will be assimilated.

Apprentice developer defied orders – then got a job supporting her weird code

Nope

Can't think of any. But I have been called back to fix code I'd written which was subsequently tangled up by subsequent developers. I'll take partial responsibility for the mess. Based on the possibility that I didn't document the reasoning behind my design choices in comments or elsewhere.

The worst example was a PC based ARINC 429 analyzer for which I designed the ISA card and wrote the app. The app (for DOS) included a tiny interrupt service routine to fetch 4 octets, push them onto a buffer and then return. The code for the ISR was kept purposely very short, due to it being non-reentrant and needing to complete before the next hardware interrupt came along. After leaving the group, a real live CS expert was assigned to "clean up" my application. Which involved him relocating a lot of extra functionality inside the ISR. Evidently, this guy was trained on real operating systems, where device drivers were managed by actual kernels. Not going to happen on DOS.

I had to move all the added functions back out into the main program loop.

NASA says it will isolate volunteers from the outside world for a year

Idiocracy

"Will WWE star Cody Rhodes be running for president,"

... was a comedy. Not prophecy.

Hackers shoveled snow for company, were rewarded with network admin access

Re: Interesting

This, exactly.

They are inspecting luggage for possible weapons. You can ASK to assist opening it. But reaching for it is what they would expect from someone about to be discovered carrying something nasty.

Re: Interesting

Anecdote: In my good old days working at Boeing, we had a challenge policy in place. See someone without a visible badge and ask.

A bunch of us were going out to lunch just as an armed security guard was walking in. Being a typical Seattle rainy day, he was wearing a raincoat. With the badge underneath. As we all reached the front door at the same time, I stopped and asked, "Hey. Where's your badge?" He just grinned and opened his coat. My lunch companions were looking at me like I almost got everyone shot*.

*Typical hoplophobes. I grew up around people open carrying. Particularly for a uniformed guard, it's almost expected.

How the AI bubble could pop and take down the global economy, according to the BIS

Re: Too big to fail... but, What if?

"The banks that were brought under public ownership because they were too big to fail."

Which ones were those? I remember Washington Mutual. When it failed, its ownership transfered within weeks to JP Morgan Chase. That public ownership was just a part of transfering accounts to the new (private) bank.

Micron locks in historically high memory prices for five years

Just in time ...

... for China's having developed EUV technology and entering into the memory market.

Alas, poor Micron. I knew him, Horatio.

Boffin claims Microsoft's supposed quantum leap does not compute due to 'basic Python errors'

Re: Quantum computers revealed to be Schroedinger's Cat.

The CS folks call those "side effects". And look down upon them in their search for the ideal.

Oddly enough, "performing I/O" is considered to be a side effect. So I guess any program for which you are able to obtain a result is right out.

On a related note: Generating heat would also be a side effect. So I guess software is hopeless.

Germany went off the rails as wireless outage saw all trains cancelled

I suspect that falling back on an older system is an issue of experience and training (sorry about that). In theory, operators should be aware of the backup systems. In practice, they no longer have the familiarity with them. Same problem exists with the FAA. The fallback of paper flight strips is still there. But the only way to ensure proficiency is to occasionally unplug the automation and practice with it.

Please. Not while I'm in the air.

Microsoft accidentally kills epic Outlook email threads

So let's. ...

... just revert Outlook to mutt.

How dare you stop data loss – that's not your job!

It messes up ...

... management's performance metrics. Each group is allocated headcount and budget to complete the next quarter's forecasted workload based on historical performance figures. Spend time on an out-of-scope task and that detracts from your allocated resources. Improve the efficiency of an operation and that messes up future predictions of staff and budget. As this tends to be most of a managers job description, they are hesitant to make changes that would make their performance look erratic. Better to factor in continued overhead to fix screw-ups than to make them go away. After a few quarters, you'll just get your budget cut.

And then there's the meta metric to consider. Gradual group performance improvements will be rewarded. But a one-time process fix will make your curve flatten out in the future. Not so good for continued bonuses.

Waymo hits the brakes after robotaxis keep missing the signs for freeway construction zones

Re: Guess you haven't read articles / seen pictures

Even as a human sometimes it can be a bit difficult to figure out where the construction workers are trying to direct traffic to.

Or why.

Not humans for certain.

We had a recent incident here where construction diverted traffic near an Amazon warehouse. Truck traffic commenced to squeeze through a neighborhood that was in no way navigable by large trucks. In some cases resulting in hours to back the trucks out. And damage to cars parked on street. All under the guidance of meat-sack drivers.

But it's not all on the drivers. Department of Transportation construction engineers need to properly plan and sign detour routes. Particularly near such a facility.

Firefox 152 understands 'Sssh!'

Re: Incomplete

How about STFU?

If your sex life is dead, you can blame Steve Jobs

Re: Ahem

Reminds me of the tale of the geek who finds a talking frog.

Frog says, "Kiss me and I'll turn into a beautiful princess."

Geek stuffs frog into his pocket and continues on.

Frog repeats the offer. "So why don't you kiss me?"

Geek replies, "I don't have time for relationships. But a talking frog is cool."

Palantir wins £9M contract to run UK firearms licensing: CIA-backed biz to hold gun, bomb, and poison records

If Palantir is involved, I suspect it will be a lot more than a simple SQL database. Palantir is big in link analysis and pattern recognition. So, who owns what kind of hardware. Who do they know and associate with. What do those known associates own. What sorts of links to other organizations does everyone have.

In other words: Law enforcement intelligences wet dream.

Don’t repeat 5G mistakes with 6G, plead mobile operators

Why?

The carriers can't even sell their 5G service, creating a feeding frenzy by the MVNOs.

Jammin' on UK defence secretary's jet as Russia blamed for GPS interference

Ivan The Terrible: "Miss me yet?"

California passes bill declaring death-by-algorithm to 3D-printed ghost guns

Re: Very Unconstitutional, but it won't stop them from trying

None of these civil rights violations mean anything to these states. New York has been down this path numerous times. Courts slap them down. They re-write their law and put a new version on the books. Rinse and repeat.

I don't see any movement towards giving them a firm dope slap. Telling them "We said No. We meant it." And then following through with real penalties.

Meanwhile, they can create de facto bans and keep them in place permanently.

Deterrance

Additionally, anyone caught trying to “knowingly disable, deactivate, uninstall, or otherwise circumvent any firearm blocking technology” could face misdemeanor charges.

Those interested in circumventing such technology are in all likelihood attempting to use it to obtain firearms for illicit purposes. None of these being good. The potential charges for these purposes go well beyond misdemeanors. So, if they are willing to take such risks, a little technology tampering isn't going to mean much.

Angry devs vow to flee GitHub Copilot as metered billing takes hold

$6 ... Really?

One GitHub Copilot developer requested a single change to their project and burned more than $6, they wrote.

What do you think making "just one change" costs in meatspace? A pull request, your time to putter around with the code, maybe a peer review. And if you are a fully ISO- compliant shop, some testing. And documentation. The actual code part is cheap.

The problem seems to be: This is actually an accountable item now. The Boss will see it. And perhaps ask quesions. Can't use the "compiling" excuse any more.

Ohio hits pause on datacenter tax breaks draining its coffers

Re: Bit Barn Palooza

Probably means it hasn't been switched on yet.

I've seen some photos of operational data centers. Not a lot of human activity going on.

Perhaps the odd tech swapping out a bad power supply now and then. Nothing like the children tending to looms in textile mills.

ChatGPT blindly trusts browser content, turning the page into a payload

Re: Data is not code

The problem with LLMs is more fundamental: there is no distinction between data and commands,

Then it really isn't "intelligent". I learned to read by reading books. That doesn't mean that when I picked up the novel Doctor Zhivago, I went out and began a Communist revolution.

Data is not code

Lesson learned the hard way, over and over again. By people who had to expend a lot of effort sanitizing SQL queries (Bobby Tables, I'm looking at you). And then the next generation forgot.

Troops’ phones gave away location data to foreign adversaries

Re: It's not the TelCo's

Definitely remove the battery. I have confirmed that the baseband processor (radio) in my cheap flip phone remains connected to towers even when turned off.

By dialing its number and hearing it ring. Even though it won't complete calls.

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth directed the department's chief information officer to "relax the mandatory frequency for cybersecurity training," in a September 30 memo, one of 11 that Hegseth referenced during the now infamous speech at Quantico on the same day.

Not the same Pete Hegseth that included Jeffery Goldberg (and others apparently) in chat sessions about military ops? Please, say it ain't so!

Microsoft tests the 15-character limit of Windows Server admins' patience

So ...

... does Samba nmbd suffer from this same limitation?

Deus ex machina: Half of US Christians trust AI's spiritual advice

Old joke

Computer scientists, having just put the finishing touches on their groundbreaking new AI machine, decide to test it with a deeply philosophical question.

"Is there a God?"

The machine replies, "There is now."

Feds unwittingly leak pilots' pre-crash conversation

Re: to help the public understand the circumstances of an accident ???

Nor can I. Usually the transcribed audio with time stamps is of more value. And much less personal.

Marketing demanded IT add website feature that was already working

Re: "... opportunity to show how unaware senior people were of their own pet projects"

Simon and the PFY no doubt would have gone for a bonus for doing nothing at all.

No doubt the website manager recieved a bonus (and promotion) for submitting the request.

Microsoft says cu l8r to text message security

+ google authenticator

And there's the rub, to quote the bard. Everyone is willing to sign you up for their service. And while perhaps not a closed solution, most are tricky enough that, other than IT literate folks, would be best used by the masses out of the box.

UK Typhoon jets fitted with bargain-bin drone busters for Middle East sorties

Re: I have a better idea

I hear Grenada have WMDs

As does the Duchy of Grand Fenwick.