Posts by Pascal Monett 18239 publicly visible posts • joined 10 Apr 2007
That is exactly what led me to creating logs of what my code was doing. Too many times I have wrote a script and got told it wasn't working any more but nothing had changed. I wasted years of my life racking my brain to find out what wasn't working any more, until I logged what the input was and what the result was, and found out that it is way easier to come to the user with a printout showing what was going on and wait for the penny to drop.
I'm working with academia right now.
I've been waiting 3 weeks now for them to pull the finger out and test the code that is waiting patiently to be useful.
To all my emails asking about progress they come back answering they don't have time. Yeah, you don't have time to click a fucking button, sure.
Now they're on holiday.
This project is 3 days contractual, and it will have taken 3 months real time.
That is academia.
I understand and partially subscribe to your point of view.
As a freelancer, I have to have a signature that includes my registration identification, but it is just three lines of text with my name, the name I am registered under and my registration number.
There is no 1.5MB image, nor is there any legal warning notice.
And just what is the "predetermined lifespan" of a mobile phone ? Six months ?
The only valid predetermined lifespan is the amount of time the hardware is supposed to be usable. For me, that is anywhere from 10 to 15 years - supposing your battery can be replaced.
It is obvious that the makers believe that a phone's lifespan is the time until the person buys a new one, ie 2 years on average I'll guess. Which also means that the phone makers completely ignore the resell market. How nice.
Well guess what : I have my Galaxy A3 since 2017 and I'm not changing any time soon.
Phone support needs to update their update strategy.
I have a cluebat to help.
And if that is not enough, I propose a law that states that as long as there is one item still connecting to the network, the maker of that item is required to provide updates.
We're not talking cars, we're talking everything electronic. You made it, you support it until the day nobody uses it any more. Don't come whining about cost - you sold it, you support it.
It may no longer be a binary choice, but if your input is 'woman' and the tool indicates a 90%+ chance of the result being male, then your tool is crap.
"we were not sure if it is worth our time and efforts to make a change in existing biased reality "
It seems obvious that the time and effort to correct this monumental cock-up is going to be well beyond your ability. It also seems to me that equating gender with email is beyond stupid.
At least you were intelligent enough to abandon the project.
A true sysadmin will always have in the front of his/her mind the fact that remote means vulnerable.
It's great to be able to administer your servers from home, but any sysadmin worth the name knows that doing so is creating vulnerability.
Managing your servers from the local network is not like managing your servers from the Internet. The threat profile is not the same.
I do hope this couch potato system includes considerations for security, because otherwise the fallout is going to be horrific.
. . has not been reading El Reg.
Honestly, telling me about the £3bn overspend is useless. UK Government has pissed away so many billions on so many different failures that one specific figure isn't enough to tell which failure we're talking about.
What is not surprising is firefighters reminding government that hey, that comms system you're going to shut down ? We still need it, and we'll be needing it until you pull your finger out and get the next one working.
The entire history of SOHO is a demonstration of what the human race can accomplish when the best minds are determined to solve a problem.
The goof about Gyro A that almost scrapped the mission in the first place ? I would blame the UI for that. The status of all gyros should always have been visible to the operations team. Apparently, they only had the reading without knowing the status. An easy mistake to make when things are going pear-shaped.
Everything else is just the brilliance of engineers. There's a reason they are somewhat apart in the world, and this whole saga is proof of why : they get results when everyone else thinks it's the end of the line.
That is why Humanity needs to get into space. It brings out the best in us.
We'll find a way to fuck that up, but still, we need to go to space.
Great idea guys : not obeying orders from HQ because you're in China. Great example to set for the rest. Great way to demonstrate that you're reliable.
It is common sense that a subsidiary is linked to its parent company. It is the parent company that has authority, period.
Not respecting that rule means that no company can create subsidiaries anywhere. That means no more multinationals and . . hey, wait a minute, that might not be such a bad thing after all.
Okay, just kidding.
In any case, these clowns have completely destroyed their credibility on the international stage. I wonder what the fallout will be.
Or you can take a few seconds to check what you're doing before clicking the Send button.
Putting yourself in the proper frame of mind before starting also helps, meaning paying bloody attention to what you're doing.
Yes, mistakes happen. I have forgotten to attach a file to a mail I send several times, but I only send it to one person. When you're sending out a mass mail, you don't approach the question like a regular mail.
For me, a mass mail is a ticking time bomb. I execute the job with the same amount of care and attention than I imagine a bomb removal specialist would. You need to be extra careful, because any mistake you make will be sent to multiple (sometimes hundreds of) people, and any mistake means you'll have to do the whole process again.
So I pay extra attention in order to not have to start over.
Security. It's a thing you need to take into account. People are learning that the way they usually do : the hard way.
In this particular case, it's not the universities that are at fault. It's one of their suppliers that was clueless. The only mistake the unis made was using that supplier.
I'm guessing they won't learn anything from that either.
What idiot thought that include 10 minutes of countdown in a YouTube video would be worthwhile. It's already a stupid idea for a livestream, but nobody is going to watch 10 minutes of a countdown. So I skipped over all the talky parts until I got to the so-called "cabin reveal". I didn't find that it revealed all that much about the cabin. On the other hand, I found hilarious the fact that the pilots are in full gear with masks and an oxygen supply, whereas the passengers . . not so much.
I'm sure the passengers will be soo reassured by that.
That seems to be what the epitaph of our civilization should be.
"We require developers of skills that collect personal information to provide a privacy policy "
No you don't, you just say you do. There are 47K+ "skills" that prove that a privacy policy is not a requirement.
But the VPN business is almost worse. Practically all of them promise they don't keep logs, but then we regularly get articles about discovering that many of them do.
Besides, using a VPN does not protect your privacy - it only allows you to access stuff that is country-restricted.
And let's not even mention the people who use VPNs or TOR to access their Facebook account. Bloody morons.
I do use Brave, especially on my phone. The amount of data and time it saves is just gob-smacking. With Brave, surfing on 4G is practically as fast as my fiber line at home. All the other mobile phone browsers can take a hike. But I do not participate in the Rewards scheme. I don't trust ad brokers, they're all lying thieves who will not even blink when pushing malware-riddled stuff.
The article is about phones. Phones and cars are not at all the same subject. An EV is something you use to get to work, leave it to charge for the day, then go back home and leave it to charge for the night. A phone is something that is on all the time, that you likely need to have available all the time, and might need recharging during the day, following your usage.
Nobody driving an EV is planning a road trip - the infrastructure is not there. Phones are basically on one long road trip. When was the last time you turned yours off ?
The needs are not the same is what I'm saying. Comparing the two simply because they both have batteries is a mistake.
"the most accurate algorithms fail to authenticate a person about 0.3 per cent of the time"
Well it's a shame that those algorithms are apparently not in use in what is implemented these days in public areas. I wonder what the cops in the USA think of that kind of declaration.
I've been reading for months about systems currently in use having a false positive ratio of about 80%. Where the hell does 0.3% come from now ?
Trying to use the Right To Be Forgotten to erase the more unpalatable things one is responsible for.
I think it is nice to see that RTBF is not for crooks or incompetent idiots to cover up their actions, even if their actions were not intentional.
I'm sorry, if you are responsible for the finances of any organization, even a charity, and you let million go to waste, I don't see that you have the right to cover that up.
I have a Synology, and it refuses anything that is not from the local network.
Media is disabled, internet access is disabled, FTP is disabled. The only way to access it is by being on the same local network.
That, plus the fact that the router doesn't accept outside queries either, and I think I have a good foundation for being secure.
Which, obviously, does not mean I do not pay attention to the firewall on the router, or on the machines I work with.
I just can't understand people who configure their machines to accept Internet requests without wondering how to ensure that only the "right" people will access their data. Twenty years ago, you could be forgiven for not knowing that some miscreant is just begging for a chance to get at your data. Today, not so much.
I have one question : where does 90% of the risk come from ?
All of this edge computing hoopla sounds great, I admit, but there are dozens of companies offering CPU time and every week there seems to be a breach that took advantage of IoT or something else.
I'd like to see a risk analysis when CEOs trot out a new product. We never see that.
From where I sit, Intel is starting to have a history of botching its fabrication process.
It failed on 14nm, now I read it failed on 10nm.
I'm sorry, but how long is Intel going to be able to continue to fail before falling flat on its face ?
Intel is a CPU maker, for Pete's sake. If it can't make its own CPUs, then what can it do ?
That's interesting, but if the Boss is calling you, you have his number and can check that it is the right one. Plus, your boss may a have croaky voice, but I don't think software is yet up to the stage where it can convincingly impersonate someone you know.
Of course, I'm situating the whole thing as boss-calls-financial-person-as-usual kind of scenario. I don't see how this could really work. If the company is small, the finance guy is going to know the boss very well and it won't pass mustard. If the company is big, the finance guy being called will wonder why the hell he's the one called, go to his manager and it shouldn't pass mustard either.
And yet some numbskull did fall for this.
There's always a better idiot.
The last step in transforming our powerful PCs and laptops into dumb terminals.
Welcome to the 1970s.
Next, there will be a flash of genius when somebody realizes that distributed computing would make things faster, and we'll go back to the 90s of computing.
Honestly, this industry needs to stop being defined by the kids that relearn everything every 20 years.
Blocking Javascript is a powerful damper on a lot of tracking options. For cookies, you have other options.
It is not that difficult to deprive Google of information on your activity. On the other hand, blocking Javascript does have important consequences on your surfing experience.
It's an important choice, not to be made lightly.
With NoScript, you can temporarily allow Google, choice which reverts to Forbidden as soon as you've closed the window. When I absolutely have to allow Google, I open a new browser window to allow it, do my research, and then close the window.
That limits the damage.
Those were the days that taught an entire industry about the usefulness of clear plastic guards on on/off switches, manager's butt or no.
What is surprising is that there still is kit today that is sold without any guard on the on/off button.
We're not done reading this kind of story, I'll wager.
Science is the governing rule here. Science does not content itself with "it's God what did it". Science wants to know.
If we were supposed to ignore how our Universe was made and how it works, God would not have given us intelligence. As a Christian, I believe it is our duty to study the Universe that God gave us in order to truly comprehend His power.
I believe in a God that can count beyond ten thousand.
Well there's your problem : he had the possibility to connect an external drive. Add to that the fact that he probably had access to a lot more documents than he should have (c'mon, you know it has to be true), and it's blindingly obvious that he could export the data.
He's obviously guilty of having done that, but if he could not connect an external drive to his computer in the first place, then that would have been a serious barrier to overcome.
I find it interesting that they had logs of his activity, but no alerts on the logs. They had to go digging to find that out. Why wasn't there an alert when something classified is loaded onto an external drive ?
I have worked for banks and insurance companies that have more effective lock-downs than these clowns.
Bzzzzrt ! FAIL.
It doesn't matter that results were removed after certification. That does not excuse Amazon from having certified apps that broke the rules.
If you tout a platform that only accepts rule-respecting apps, it is on you to make sure that 100% of the apps you accept respect the rules.
Pretending that you have a clean-up crew that acts after the fact is like saying that you will catch jewel thieves once they've already plundered the jewelry. You promised that the jewelry was protected.
You lied.
Well duh. I would also strongly disagree with a cop arresting me for drug trafficking. That doesn't necessarily mean the cop is wrong (in my case, yes, he would be, but bear with me).
I really have a hard time with companies being caught red-handed and then publishing bullshit like they "disagree" with the charges.
So. Fucking. What.
You go to court, you dispute the charges there, and you bear the result.
In this case, the court case is pretty much already sewn up. The data was available. It's your bloody fault.
The only question left is : is this going to be a case of Too Big To Fail ?
Because we all know that, when real money is involved, the government will swoop in with bailout money, even if the cause is criminal incompetence.
I have disabled the camera on my laptop.
I am tired of seeing people waiting to be able to say something. There is a benefit in face-to-face communication, that I do not dispute, but when remote, honestly, I see no interest in watching four people silently stare, bored out their skulls, while the fifth takes the floor.
Remote viewing is useful for one-on-one conversations. For meetings, just make it a conference call.
Saves on bandwidth as well.
Well of course it is. There have never been so many ways to get data on people, not to mention the data people themselves willingly post in social media.
Surveillance organizations are positively creaming themselves daily on all the stuff they can gather without any oversight whatsoever. And if a judge starts getting uppity, they just promise to not do it any more, continue doing it, and flag it under National Security where no judge can go.
It's a great time for surveillance. Not so much for Democracy. And I would really like to know just how many crimes all this "surveillance" has prevented.
Because that's how they're presenting it, right ? They need surveillance to find terrorists before a bomb blows. So how many terrorists have they stopped ? I think we should be told.
Then again, that just means that I'm expecting them to actually tell the truth, which is a patently ridiculous notion.
So let's all just carry on with our lives, and wait for better times.
Right now, with a President that publicly talks against testing and did nothing to stop the spread, the USA is not exactly in a much better situation than China was.
And you would do well to remember that the Chinese government did react when it was notified, stopped the gagging order of the whistleblower and notified the world of the issue.
Do you think Trump would have done that ? Given his attitude since January, I think he would have let the virus run rampant and, as per usual, only mumbled a few words about it when the WHO and the rest of world was screaming at him to react. Just like he did not ground the 737-Max until Europe and a few other countries tied his hands by not waiting for his fat ass to move on that subject.
So cool it on the blaming China thing.
Good on Apple for this initiative that will undoubtedly improve the security of their products.
The FBI must be seething. On the other hand, the FBI can very well enroll in this program, either openly or covertly, and it probably will.
I wonder how Apple is going to manage that ?
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