Posts by Pascal Monett

Revealed: The semi-secret list of techs Beijing really really wishes it didn't have to import

Western factories ?

Which ones ?

They've all been "outsourced".

Re: "talking about moving to open source software"

Yeah, well that's not new.

Germany is always talking about it, but is mainly using that as an excuse to have Borkzilla lower its license fees.

I don't recall reading about any case where it was done seriously enough to actually allow the project to succeed.

"wishing it had an alternative to Microsoft Windows"

I seem to recall that it does : it's called Kylin. There are apparently already several forks of it.

Kylin is reportedly compatible with "10,000 hardware and software products" and the Android ecosystem.

As far as the chokepoints are concerned, this is the ideal time for China's engineers to rise to the occasion and develop the code to do the job in Linux, which will practically guarantee that their code is what is used in the future where Windows is finally relegated to the games box it deserves to be.

Sure, it'll take some time, but they have the manpower and engineering nous to get it done. A word from Xi Pooh and it's as good as done.

When management went nuclear on an innocent software engineer

"but I would not report the damage back to my head office"

And that is definitely how you get Manglement appreciation - you screwed up, but I won't tell. Thank you ! Thank you !

Recovery from disaster results in ample time to finish the work properly. Well done.

Let's play everyone's favorite game: REvil? Or Not REvil?

"it's most likely a case of using REvil-linked scare tactics to extort payment"

Hmm. What about REvil is starting to feel the summer coming and just wants to lay back and take it easy for a bit with a margherita or two ?

Or maybe REvil is trying a new tactic to find out just how many cowards are going to fork over the moolah ?

Sure, it could be someone else piggybacking on REvil's reputation, but not necessarily.

Twitter founder Dorsey beats hasty retweet from the board

This "takeover" is starting to look like a trainwreck

And Mr Billionnaire apparently can't make enough billions fungible.

I think that should incite into a rethink of a person's personal fortune. You have $100 billion in company assets ? They're not yours until you've sold them and actually converted them into cold, hard cash.

Of course, that would make for a lot less glamorous news titles . . .

World’s smallest remote-controlled robots are smaller than a flea

"The heat is applied remotely through a laser"

So, does that mean that, for this to work, you have to be bathed in laser beams ?

Do sniper scopes apply ?

Ransomware encrypts files, demands three good deeds to restore data

If this was truly a good will operation . .

. . they would just send an email saying "You have been the recipient of a GoodWill message. Do three good things and document them on social media, then send this message to ten other companies. Thank you for your cooperation".

That way, the companies that truly have some good will will be honored for showing it, whilst the other will continue business as usual.

China offering ten nations help to run their cyber-defenses and networks

There are two ways of taking over a country

One is by military force, but that has the bad habit of being poorly viewed on the international scene, and creating resistance on the local scene.

The other is by subverting the country's economy by "helping" with infrastructure, like many of China's "donations" to Africa. Once Beijing has its claws into a strategic part of your infrastructure, you'll find that Beijing's "suggestions" are accompanied by rather obvious implications.

This is the difference between Western politicians and Eastern politicians. In China, they play Go, in the West, they play checkers. Only one of those has long-term implications built in.

UK government having hard time complying with its own IR35 tax rules

"Difficulties meeting the IR35 rules [..] in central government reflect poor implementation"

Given the amount of trouble that these rules are causing at all levels, I would say that that is the wrong conclusion.

To me, that amount of difficulty clearly indicates that the rules are poorly drafted and inherently contradictory, which does not make for easy implementation.

When you've made a square peg to go into a round hole, it's easy to blame the people who can't put it in.

As Microsoft's $70b takeover of Activision nears, workers step up their organizing

"We [..] believe in the right of all employees to decide whether or not to [..] vote for a union"

Right up to the moment some of them decide to actually do that, at which point it's no-holes-barred intimidation and harassment tactics until they abandon that idea.

And I love the argument of "19 employees should not be able to decide". That is a typical strawman argument. You pretend that you want all employees to decide, but that is just an excuse to bash those who do.

And, as far as the USA is concerned, you can replace Activision with any major corporation, they all behave the same on unions because unions will force them to spend more money on their employees and the Board doesn't want to do that (eh Amazon ?).

Now contrast with Luxembourg. In the 1990's I was working my first job as a junior consultant programmer in Lotus Notes. The company was called Computerland Europe, and, at the time, it was going forward in leaps and bounds. New employees were coming in practically every month. It didn't take long for us to reach 50 employees and, when that happened, we were all called to a meeting by top management. In that meeting, we were told that, having attained and exceeded the magic number of 50 employees, Luxembourg law mandated that a union be formed. Our CEO thus told us that we were to form our union right there, and management left the room.

We looked at each other in total surprise and, for some, a little bit of shock. Nobody had been expecting that. So we went about to create our union, electing members (I was one) and following the charter that management had transmitted to us.

And what did this union actually do ? Basically, we made sure that security measures (fire) were known and respected, and being available if any employees had a complaint. I wasn't there long enough for that to happen, the company was still on a meteoric rise. That's not generally the kind of period where employees are unhappy because everything is always changing for the better.

Besides, in Luxembourg before 9/11, if you were unhappy at your company, you could just find a new one, simple as that and almost everybody did it.

So I'm quite happy to work in Luxembourg, because my rights as an employee are enshrined in law and no company can escape that. Of course, there are always the few who try, but they end up against the ITM - l'Inspection du Travail et des Mines and, having done some work there, I can vouch for the fact that they don't pussy-foot around with employee rights. If you have the proof, that company will pay.

Clearview AI wants its facial-recognition tech in banks, schools, etc

Re: Interesting argument

Fines are just the cost of doing business, and that's because the size of the fine does not increase exponentially with repeats.

I would favor a system where, the first time you are fined for a given problem, you get the standard amount to pay. If you are fined again for the same thing (for a relative value of same), the fine is automatically doubled, and so on and so forth.

With that system, the cost of doing business would soon become prohibitive, and slimy gits like Clearview's boss would just have to bow before authority.

Quad nations pledge deeper collaboration on infosec, data-sharing, and more

"the United State in charge of software security standards"

Typical. The USA gets to tell everybody else how to do their job, then sits back and watches the minions scurry.

Why am I not surprised ?

AI-designed COVID-19 drug nominated for preclinical trial

ROTM anyone ?

So it has started. Machines are now designing drugs to be used on humans.

Indian stock markets given ten day deadline to file infosec report, secure board signoff

Re: Shirley...?

There is a world of difference between securing a network and documenting it, and another world of difference between documenting it and writing a government-mandated report.

I take it you haven't written any government reports. I have written a few (unfortunately), and it is not something I enjoy doing in the slightest.

And if it doesn't happen in 10 days ?

What if the companies simply don't respond in the allotted time span ?

Is there any hint of a fine anywhere ?

On the other hand, they could respond with a basic report and mention "See Appendix . . ." for all precisions, the appendices being sent 30 days later.

This whole attitude smacks of useless pressure from administrative busybodies who grant themselves a lot more importance than they have.

Businesses don't want to be hacked. Most of them do want to be secure, and a fair proportion of them actually put money on the table for that. The thought behind this new rule may be commendable, but granting a 90-day delay (given that businesses are already on a 60-day delay for something else) wouldn't kill the donkey.

About half of popular websites tested found vulnerable to account pre-hijacking

The problem is convenience

Sure, it is very convenient to Sign in With FaceBook/Google/Microsoft.

On the other hand, security experts have been constantly repeating for years that you should not use the same passwords for all sites you sign up for.

How does that compute ? It doesn't. Where does that get us ? To this sort of problem.

I never sign up with any 3rd-party identifier. I manage my own passwords and I don't sign up to social platforms (well, Google signed me up for Hangouts when I got my Gmail account, but I'll be damned if I use it).

I'm glad they found solutions to correct the issue, but I still won't use those kinds of services.

Good luck hijacking my 24-character passwords.

Florida's content-moderation law kept on ice, likely unconstitutional, court says

Technically, everyone.

And everyone sees noon at his own door.

That is why these sort of discussions very often result in screaming matches. Everyone believes they are right, but not everyone can listen to someone else's arguments.

That said, not everyone is capable of presenting a reasoned argument either.

AWS puts latest homebrew Graviton3 Arm processor in production

Take that, you x86 dinosaurs

We can take that. The Graviton3 is not the comet to end all x86s.

Don't worry, we'll still be around for a loooong time.

Beijing reverses ban on tech companies listing offshore

Xi Pooh has a big problem

His country needs capitalism to progress, because communism has amply demonstrated its dismal failure, but Xi hates money and the power that goes with it because he wants to be the only one with power.

So he enacts decisions destined to beat down any head that rises out of the ranks, which will keep his country's progress hobbled to a rate that he thinks he can manage.

Nvidia brings liquid cooling to A100 PCIe GPU cards for ‘greener’ datacenters

NVidia has experience with liquid cooling

I have an RTX 3080 and, although you might say that it is air-cooled, there is still a bunch of liquid in there to get the heat from the GPU to the fans.

I wonder how that will work for the datacenter. For the moment, the A100 doesn't seem to be liquid cooled, but it sure is outrageously expensive.

How to find NPM dependencies vulnerable to account hijacking

"an opportunity to preempt this threat"

Here's another one : don't download anything to your production server before validating it on your test server.

Because you have a test server, right ?

RIGHT ?

Beware the fury of a database developer torn from tables and SQL

Re: I've heard all kinds of stories like this

On a much tamer note, I know of a database consultant whe had a thing for the name Alice, and tried to shoehorn that name in somewhere every new job he had. That is why there are a number of servers in the world that are probably still named Alice to this day.

South Korean and US presidents gang up on North Korea's cyber-offensives

"confrontational"

I'll bet he is. He doesn't want to roll over and let the northern lunatic take over the south.

I'd be pretty confrontational too, if I had a dangerous megalomaniac for a neighbor.

US fears China may have ten exascale systems by 2025

"declined to make public any [..] figures that would demonstrate their true performance level"

And why would China make figures public ?

Much better to keep everybody guessing.

Microsoft patches the patch that broke Windows authentication

"patches to fix patches seem to be becoming a little too common"

Okay, I'll be the first to admit that networking is not always easy, especially when you're a vendor with an uncountable number of variations to handle.

Still, I stand by the idea that having a Quality Control team to test and wean out the at least some of the problems would go a long way to make these out-of-band patches rarer than they are.

Microsoft Bing censors politically sensitive Chinese terms

You still can't have your cake and eat it

"an internet platform cannot facilitate free speech for one demographic of its users while applying extensive political censorship against another demographic of its users"

Well, it seems that Borkzilla (et al) must make a choice : either it is for free speech, or it is for raking in the dough in oppressive dictatorships.

It's going to be interesting to see how this goes.

Failed gambler? How about an algorithm that predicts the future

Re: Half full or empty

I reject that argument entirely. As far as I'm concerned, if you're asking the question, the cup needs to be refilled.

US recovers a record $15m from the 3ve ad-fraud crew

Great news

"A little more than half of the illicit proceeds, $15,111,453.84, has since been transferred from Swiss bank accounts to the US government"

So Uncle Sam gets a windfall, but the companies who paid for the non-existent ad views get what ? The satisfaction that that particular crew isn't scamming them any more ?

Cisco warns of up to $720m sales loss: Blames China lockdown, Russia pullout

"meaning a drop of $131 million to $720 million"

I would really like to be able to drop my revenue to 5.5 times its current level.

That's a sacrifice I'm willing to make.

Bing! Microsoft tests search box in the middle of Windows 11 desktop

"while Microsoft plays with the concept"

Microsoft : playing with every single concept it can think of apart from making its OS streamlined, out of the way, functional and fast.

American Airlines decides to cruise into Azure's cloud

Wait a minute

"speed up bag tracking, enable preemptive rerouting based on weather conditions"

Isn't that stuff they're already doing now ? With computers ? What exactly is the improvement AA is expecting after having spect weeks, if not months, handing their current system over to the single-point-of-failure platform that is Azure ?

And when Azure is down, will that mean that pre-emptive routing will not work, or will AA keep the existing system as an emergency backup (yeah, as if that would happen) ?

Landmark case recognizes Bored Ape NFT as an asset

BAYC

Oh, those images I can find in an instant on Google Images ?

And some people paid money for that ?

The depth of human stupidity knows no bounds - especially when they're full of money.

Hot glare of the spotlight doesn’t slow BlackByte ransomware gang

"living-off-the-land binaries"

Now that's new to me. What on Earth is that ? Notepad ?

Google Russia goes broke after bank account snatched

Re: woke-global-climate-change-bullcrap

You can beat that drum as often as you like, the climate is still changing.

Microsoft-backed robovans to deliver grub in London

What's the bandwidth on these things ?

A terabyte of data every minute is a rather tall order to transmit via WiFi, even with 5G. Also, 60TB of data is one heck of stack of hard disks to put in the trunk (or boot), and driving for one hour is not all that uncommon. What is the data retention policy ?

So how is the car linked to the Azure server, and what is being sent/received ?

Also, when the learning phase is over, what kit is going to be left in the cars ?

Voyager 1 space probe producing ‘anomalous telemetry data’

"Voyager 1 is now 45 years old"

Dear me, and they're thinking of doing a software update with 160b/s of bandwidth ?

Yikes.

Some people are really hardcore.

Your snoozing iOS 15 iPhone may actually be sleeping with one antenna open

"wireless chips can no longer be trusted to be turned off after shutdown"

So it is true, the mafia types are right to put smartphones in lead boxes when they meet.

Apple scraps 3-day return to office amid COVID-19 cases

"not everyone is yet ready to return to the corporate altar"

No kidding.

The one good thing about COVID is that it has amply demonstrated that going to the office is not a requirement to being productive.

Oh sure, for the insecure managers who like counting heads, yes, having all your minions on hand must be very satisfying indeed, but unfortunately, your minions have worked off-site for almost two years and productivity has not gone down.

You're going to have to live with that fact now.

China's vice premier Liu He advocates technology and government cooperation

"Liu He advocates technology and government cooperation"

Of course, when he says "cooperation", he means "do as I say and you can continue functioning".

Microsoft warns partners to revoke unused authorizations that drive your software

You don't want that.

Think about it for a minute : why are you authorizing remote access to a 3rd party in the first place ? Most likely, it is because they have the special proficiency you are lacking in your own workforce. That means they'll be coming in with near-admin level privilege. You want to be able to track that, and you don't want to give admin access to someone who clearly will never need it.

Create a specific user for that specific access, and log the interactions. That way, if something fishy happens, you either have proof of origin, or proof that you need to look somewhere else.

China’s COVID lockdowns bite e-commerce players

Beijing continues to crack down on complaints

And it will have to continue even more, because when people are not happy, they complain.

I would say : instead of cracking down on complaints, listen to them and mend your ways, but this is Beijing. Beijing does not mend its ways.

Monero-mining botnet targets Windows, Linux web servers

Re: Linux as a target? But is this really the case?

You might be right, but you should avoid thinking that Linux is impervious to infection. Privilege escalation exists, even in Linux world, and malware is capable of taking over a Linux box.

As usual, proceeding with caution is always a good thing.

Surf the web from your parked Renault: Vivaldi comes to OpenR

"seven times smoother"

Must have been a really bumpy ride before.

Google keeps legacy G Suite alive and free for personal use

Office 365 Family is $100/year ?

Dear God, to think that LibreOffice is free.

Infosys skips government meeting – and collecting government taxes

"the only way out of the churn"

. . is to pay a decent wage, not treat your employees like shit and give them at least the impression that they are useful.

Giving them scraps and piling pressure on them is just how you push them away.

China reveals its top five sources of online fraud

That is the problem with total oversight

Once you start forbidding some form of online expression, you start a game of whack-a-mole with all the derivatives.

Well Xi Ping, I'm happy that you give plenty of work for your endless pool of administrative busybodies to continue making the lives of Chinese citizens worse.

Way to go.

By the way, you will not suppress dissatisfaction by governmental decree. It will grow and, some day, it will come to bite you in the ass. If you were intelligent, you would let the people vent and listen to what they are venting about. It would give you pointers on what you need to improve.

You cannot dictate how people feel, and there's more of them than there is of you.

Telcos fear Big Tech will bleed them until they can’t afford network builds

"181.1 petabytes in 2020"

And, during lockdown, that exploded into what ? 300 petabytes ?

Infusion of $3.5bn not enough to revive Terra's 'stablecoin'

Agreed. A "waterproof" watch is just a watch that can withstand being in the rain or under a fawcet for a short moment. You dry it off and it'll continue ticking.

Divers do not use of-the-shelf watches. They use professional gear that can actually withstand the pressure of 5+ bars under water.

The sad state of Linux desktop diversity: 21 environments, just 2 designs

Brilliant and exhaustive work of research

The author here has devoted a lot of time and work to produce this piece. I applaud the effort. I also appreciate the fact that the author has opened my eyes to the fact that, yes, basically almost everybody is implementing the Windows UI.

From a technical point of view, the Windows UI is a Good Thing^TM. I remember reading about how Gates & Co really racked their brains over menu management, the homoginization of function keys and ease of use. Once upon a time, if you had access to Help, it could be via a function key, a combination of CTRL-<something>, or whatever else. Now, you just press F1, job done. That is good - except that now help is online, so if your connection is down, you're up shit creek without a paddle, and that is bad. Oh well.

But, concerning the efforts of volunteer developers, I'm sorry but nobody is forcing them to invest themselves. It's their choice, and I'm sure that they are dead set on improving some aspect or another of the user experience. The real issue is that (probably) none of them, or at least not many of them, have a lot of experience in alternative UIs, they just dive in with their idea and go for it.

It's their choice, there's nothing you can do about that. Yes, after reading this article I agree it's largely a waste of time, but it's their time to waste.