Posts by Pascal Monett

RIP Ninjacat: No longer fits in Windows 11 world

"the general concept of holding the Microsoft flag and being proud of what we're doing"

Being proud of making users test your code ?

That's a novel concept.

Full-time internet surveillance comes to Cambodia this week

Okay, hypothetical question

You're the engineer charged with implementing this National Internet Gateway, and you are quite capable (and you disagree strongly with the current regime). So capable, in fact, that you are considering building in a loophole, a backdoor of some sort, that only you know about and no one will be able to find.

You're sure you know how to do it, and you're convinced that no one will find out about it.

Do you go ahead and implement that, even at the eventual risk of getting caught (the consequences of which do not bear thinking about), or do you just do the job demanded of you and then plan on leaving the country ?

Beer for the round table discussion.

Beware the big bang in the network room

"Lessons learned after event tend to be the toughest ones"

Indeed. You can't go back and sort things out anymore so, more often than not, you're looking at one of your failures. Or, if you're really, really lucky, one of your closest brushes with disaster.

IBM looked to reinvigorate its 'dated maternal workforce'

Well it's certainly not a hardware firm. Not unless auditing has really changed a lot in the past decade.

Facebook exposes 'god mode' token that could siphon data

"will take action as appropriate"

Oh, so you'll do eff all ?

As usual.

Intel chases after Bitcoin miners with dedicated chip

"Intel will start selling a chip to mine bitcoin"

What's the point ? Bitcoin is nearing end-of-life, the number of minable coins is almost depleted.

Once again, industry is reacting once the forest has burned down.

Make a chip to mine Ethereum, that thing that redefines what it is on a whim.

Fibre broadband uptake in UK lags behind OECD countries

"53 per cent in Belgium"

That figure is significant because, around 20 years ago, cable was 99% in Belgium if I'm not mistaken.

So that's almost a 50% decline in two decades.

UK regulators accept Google's Privacy Sandbox promises

"questions remain"

Um, no they don't.

You seriously think that Google, whose revenue depends on ads, is going to propose a system that cuts its revenue stream ?

Think again.

'Boombox' function sparks Tesla recall

"The company disbanded its media relations unit in 2020"

So now the company relies on court cases and government directives for its communication ?

Is Tesla that shitty ?

No help for IT contractors on IR35 tax errors

Okay

Is it time to finally declare IR35 a clusterfuck yet ?

Ransomware crew dumps stolen Optionis files online

"Optionis previously claimed to have 13,000 contractors on its books"

I wonder how many they will claim next time.

UK government's chief digital officer departs

Emailing a spreadsheet

What could possibly go wrong ?

Coming soon in On Call : my UK Gov agency got hacked by an Office attachment . . .

France says Google Analytics breaches GDPR when it sends data to US

And the penny drops.

You're not a user. You sir, are a customer.

Real-time software? How about real-time patching?

Yeah, like don't go to work for a company who sells software made by the summer intern ?

Apple tweaks AirTags to be less useful for stalkers, thieves

What the hell ?

"they transmit alert notifications to let nearby iPhone users know someone else's active AirTag is, unbeknownst to them, reporting its location"

And just who decided that that was a good idea ? Why should I care that someone put an AirTag in their luggage ? What right do I have to know that ?

Technology : it's not because you can that you should.

Singapore signs for Azure-hued sovereign cloud from Microsoft

Sovereign clouds

I rather agree with that idea.

And basically I'll agree with anything that keeps the NSA away from my data.

Since I cannot prevent or forbid anyone from putting the data they gather on me in a cloud, well a sovereign cloud is the least bad option.

Of course, that presumes that the NSA doesn't have its claws in it in the backend somehow - and that might be quite a presumption.

Especially if the cloud uses Cisco hardware.

This malware gang plants incriminating evidence on PCs, gets victims arrested

"malicious Microsoft Office attachments"

Dear me, it is sad that there are still people falling for that.

And I still blame Borkzilla for this since it decided to hide extension names by default.

Indonesia's new mega-telco to build 18,000km submarine cable to the US

240Tbit/sec

Wow. That's a lot of cat videos, to be sure.

Given that this is going to be a brand new cable, I'm guessing it will use the latest tech, signal multiplexing etc etc. We've seen articles here on transfer speeds in the lab, so what tech is actually going to go into this new batch of special fibres ?

We need a kitty icon.

CIA illegally harvested US citizens' data, senators assert

"the Agency is very keen on protecting civil liberties"

Just like the NSA, we know.

They both want to keep civil liberties closely protected.

Very closely.

UK government gifts new £250m hosting contract to its own joint venture

Brilliant !

Government creates for-profit enterprise to supply government, then decides that it can bestow contract on it without public tender.

No way anything can possibly go wrong with that.

Next you'll be telling me that there are absolutely zero MPs or parliament officials involved on either side of this deal.

Is Dido Harding lurking anywhere near ?

Microsoft adds Azure AD Join to Windows 365 Cloud PC

Oh goody

I wonder how long that will take to fall over.

Use Zoom on a Mac? You might want to check your microphone usage

"it looks like it's safest to only run Zoom while on active calls"

Wow. People have had to actually been surprised to come to this conclusion.

I must really be a cave troll. I only activate mobile data when I decide I need it. I only activate WiFi at home. I only activate BluTooth when I'm driving.

That means that I shut down mobile data when I'm done. I shut down Wifi when I'm done with it. I shut down BluTooth when I park the car.

Do these people ever turn off the lights ?

Geomagnetic storm takes out 40 of 49 brand new Starlink satellites

Yeah, sure. Because hooking satellites up in space is just that easy.

NASA's InSight probe emerges from Mars dust storm

It really is a shame the boffins couldn't work in a brush on a stick.

Not blaming them at all, I'm sure they thought of the problem.

It's just a shame they couldn't get one in.

English county council blasted for 'inept project management' in delayed SAP replacement

"The application supplier assured the southern-England council these changes could be accommodated"

Okay, point 1 : the application supplier lied. What a surprise.

Point 2 : the application supplier mismanaged the project. Everybody knows that you accept a project on a given list of points. Anything else is punted on to the v1.1 to-do list.

Well, if you know how to run a project, that is.

That's hardly the same problem. The company decided to lose money. It can be strategically justified.

The council did not actually choose to lose money.

Of course it was incompetent, but hey, it's a council, not private business.

Top Chinese Uni fears Middle Kingdom way behind on tech – and US sanctions make catching up hard

Wait, what ?

"Other areas cited where the US exceled within IT were OS kernels"

I'm sorry, am I supposed to believe that the Windows 1 0 kernel is a point of excellence ?

Apple's iOS might be slightly marginally better, but I would still not call it excellent.

Linus Torvalds is the only person I know of who could be called excellent at OS kernels. The fact that he lives in the US now is just a coincidence.

Now, China may be behind on tech today, but thanks to the rampant and very public xenophobia of the previous US resident in the Oval Office, it has recieved the impetus it needed to start getting up and standing on its own two feet.

China might be suffering now, but the tech landscape will change and the US (and Europe) is going to have to learn to fight tooth and nail with quality, not just bluster, diplomatic backhandedness and aircraft carriers.

The dragon is waking up, and that is going to shake the market like nobody can imagine today.

Microsoft offers 'open' app store to draw regulators away from Activision takeover

That's a nice list of bullet points

One I'd like to see Apple adopt.

So nice to see that the worst enemy of the richest company in the world is the next-richest company in the world (they're in that ballpark anyways).

Ah, to think that there was a day when Apple was only 5% of the market . . .

Swipe left: Snoops use dating apps to hook sources, says Australian Five Eyes boss

Yes it's done in plain sight

Trump was a fucking asshole for four years in front of every camera he could find. And he was more of an asshole when cameras weren't there.

I agree with your point, Fox News is atrocious and should be banned and every so-called political figure that can't even read the Constitution should be jailed.

But until the voting public wakes up and stops watching the playoffs, it's not gonna happen.

Citrix says benefits are safe for staff – except maybe visa holders

"their benefits aren't in immediate peril"

You've got to love that phrasing. You're not in immediate peril. We'll be arranging that later.

Instead of declaring something actually reassuring, like "your benefits are safe".

Well, apparently they are not. Time to polish up the CVs.

Microsoft says the internet is the nicest it's been since 2016. Obviously they didn't look at The Reg comments

Re: What about Twitter and it's ilk

Sorry to disagree, but the Internet has been violent ever since the plebs have had a connection.

Remeber Swatting ? That didn't happen last month.

When it was only academia that had access, sure, it was a lot more civil, but then the hoi-polloi got on the bandwagon and ever since the first XBox we've has 12-year-olds threatening everyone else's mothers.

Violence on the Internet is hardly a new thing.

"I see less tolerance of other people"

I've never seen much tolerance of other people on the Internet, to be frank.

Sure, there are some commentors in these hallowed pages who are generally an example of how everyone should behave, but they are not enough to hide the ugly selfishness of many.

Still, El Reg is the only place I go read the comments, so that's saying something.

Labour reminds UK.gov that it's supposed to be reforming the Computer Misuse Act

Yeah, but the UK and Russia have a special relationship

Mainly, everything that happens in the UK must be signalled to Putin immediately, but secretly.

So it's a bit difficult to put restrictions on data or somesuch without openly revealing this "special link".

Toshiba decides Twoshiba's the best strategy, cans plan to create Threeshiba crowd

"Management listened"

Well duh, when the investors speak, manglement had better listen.

Arm's $66bn sale to Nvidia is off: Deal collapses after world's competition regulators raise concerns

his firm will "continue to support" Arm as a "proud licensee for decades to come."

And that's all it needed to do.

I am glad of this decision.

To err is human. To really tmux things up requires an engineer

Ah, incompetence by divine right.

Those are the bastards I hate the most.

Icon, because obviously.

Re: wrong system ... D'oh!

Experience is the best teacher.

I agree.

I don't like being hounded, but if you are too stupid to respect the security distance, it's your fault if I have to brake suddenly.

I won't brake for no reason, I don't want my car damaged, but I'm not going to pay attention to you if I have no choice. You'll hash it out with the police.

To our total surprise, Apple makes adding alternative payment systems to apps 'painful, expensive, clunky'

The proper share is 5%

And it is largely enough to cover the $100 million that their Store costs them.

"this is just Apple giving everyone the finger"

Um, nope. Not me.

I don't have Apple gear, and I never will.

Voting with my wallet and all that.

Play Store class action has £15m budget for defeating Google in London court

Indeed, that is quite obvious. My consultation fees are also higher than my costs. Duh.

But I do not take 45% of my customer's revenue if the project goes well. Lawyers, in some cases (class action) take the lion's share of the rewards - and they aren't the ones who were wronged in the first place.

That is totally unacceptable.

But hey, it's the American Way !

"for-profit litigation"

That simple notion is everything that is wrong with the legal system.

You want to make millions ? Invest in buildings, or work the stock market, but leave the courts alone.

It is simply unacceptable that establishing justice should be a source of insane profit for anyone. The only person/entity who should derive any "profit" from a court case is the one who has been found Not Guilty. That person/entity is entitled to not bear any of the costs of the trial, and be reimbursed of all damages incurred.

Lawyers are paid by the hour, period.

Microsoft to block downloaded VBA macros in Office – you may be able to run 'em anyway

I'm missing something

Ever since Office 2010 I have had a message when I open Office documents not from my organization. It says that the file is open in Read-Only mode and I have to click some button to make it editable and run macros.

Is this some special hack done by the network admin ? Policy or something ?

Because, as far as I can see, the protection is already in place. Does this message have nothing to do with macros then ? I don't see how that would be logical.

Then again, this is Borkzilla after all. Logic is not it's strong point.

Do you trust your provider farther than you can throw them? Cloud priorities shifting in post-COVID world – IDC

Yes, but the trend seems to indicate that the EU and GDPR are not the only ones to demand "on-premise" data.

So US companies are going to have to split a lot more than just EU / US.

And that is a Good Thing^TM.

UK science stuck in 'holding pattern' on EU funding by Brexit, says minister

"We're in the early stages and they're some quite positive signals"

We might be able to hammer out the issues in the next decade or so, because we definitely didn't give anything any thought when we decided we wanted to leave.

But we've taken back control, and that's the most important. Right ?

Australian court finds Facebook 'divorced from reality' as it tried to define doing business down under

Who said judges knew nothing about Thar Intarwebs ?

"the purpose of cookies is to gather personal information – and doing so allowed Facebook to serve custom ads in Australia"

I'll bet the legal department at FaceBook HQ is kicking themselves over that right now.

Heh. Good on the judges. I hope a massive fine will ensue.

US House passes bill to boost chip manufacturing and R&D

Re: EU Competition?

Building a chip fab does not need to be an EU decision.

EU Countries still have the right to build their own industries.

Photon fantastic: James Webb Space Telescope spies its first starlight

I'm not worried any more

I am certain that everything is going to go very well. The boffins have been polishing this telescope for decades, there will be no (bad) surprises.

We are just going to witness the result of true dedication to one's craft.

I can't wait for the first JWST pics.

Amazon stretches working life of its servers an extra year, for AWS and its own ops

"servers have a useful life of five years"

That is interesting. I know nothing about server loads in the Cloud, but I'm guessing that they're more hammered than many on-premise company servers. Does that have a real impact on hardware life ?

I mean, sure, the disks will need replacing every now and then, but that depends on the disk, not on an arbitrarily-determined lifespan record. I've just bought a few 8TB NAS discs for my Synology. They are guaranteed for the EU-standard 2 years. They will likely have a much longer useful life, but they're spinning rust. I will use them until they fail, not until the warranty runs out.

So five years for a server, why ? CPU and architecture progress has slowed to a crawl, and I seriously doubt the newest USB protocol is a requirement for a server.

So, if you replace the disks when they fail, why throw out a motherboard if it's still working ? It's not like a CPU slows down over time, its cycles don't wear out like batteries.

So why set an arbitrary limit of five years for kit that could well do double that ?

Cisco inferno: Networking giant reveals three 10/10 rated critical router bugs

"the boxes can also be made to create DDoS attacks"

So, no National Security issues here ?

Of course not, it's Cisco, not Huawei. We're safe.

Move along, citizen, move along.