Posts by Pascal Monett

UK snubs Apple-Google coronavirus app API, insists on British control of data, promises to protect privacy

Re: Is this just just another example of the UK wanting to steer it's own course?

Don't think so. It is, however, another brilliant example of the UK doing the reverse of the EU. Last week, Germany decided for the decentralized approach, so obviously this week, the UK goes for the centralized approach.

Duh.

Now, the fact that the UK wants its own app has nothing to do with that and everything to do with ensuring that the snouts in the trough are proper British snouts, not icky, virus-infected furriners.

China strings up red tape barrier that shows businesses they're better off buying local tech

What goes around comes around

When you go around shrieking about how a Chinese company puts your comm infrastructure at risk without any proof whatsoever, and try to strong-arm everybody else to "trust" you just because, well you can hardly be surprised that China, in turn, takes your arguments at face value and sets its own comms infrastructure rules down.

Except that China doesn't have to go shrieking that Cisco is beholden to the NSA, everybody knows that - and there's proof.

Where were you in drought season? Interstellar comet 2I/Borisov dumped 230 million litres of water as it whizzed through Solar System

So it came from another system

It was created billions of years ago, and ejected from its solar system following some celestial mechanics not in its favor. It spent untold millennia in the vast emptiness of space, once again caught a glimmer of heat and light for a brief instant, and will now probably never venture into another star's heliosphere again.

Food for thought.

Spyware maker NSO can't claim immunity, Facebook lawyers insist – it's time to face the music

Re: "I can find nothing about the NSO Group having US offices"

Thank you for that information. Curiously, NSO Group's website makes no mention of office locations, contrary to just about every other commercial website I have even seen. I even googled "NSO Group locations", but that gave me either their own website (which is useless for that), or links to things that only mentioned that it is an Israeli company.

Now I understand that the lawsuit has jurisdiction. Thanks again.

Missing something here

I can find nothing about the NSO Group having US offices. So, when Facebook filed a lawsuit, it was filing against a company in a foreign country.

Despite the US Government's best (and continued) attempts, US law does not apply internationally, so how can a US court claim jurisdiction on this ?

And why does NSO Group care ? It's not like it is going to open offices in the US, so they cannot be made to pay any fine that the trial might impose on them.

Is there a special case here, or can anyone in any country file against a foreign company now ?

Because I seem to recall that, when the LHC was going to be fired up for the first time, somebody in the US filed a complaint that it might create a black hole that would swallow the Earth and the judge in charge said, among other things, that he didn't have jurisdiction over Switzerland.

So why here ?

From attacked engineers to a crypto-loving preacher with a questionable CV: Yep, it's still very much 5G silly season

"The frequency that they're using is just below the classification of a weapon"

Statements like that make me immediately think : citation, please ? What is the scientific founding of your statement ?

It's not because you can articulate correctly that I am automatically going to bow before your words. You still need to make sense, and your arguments still need to be justified.

It's like that stupid video about 9/11, showing one tower collapsing. The voice was saying that it was obvious that the debris was falling at the same speed as the tower, when the video was clearly showing that it fell faster.

If you're too stupid to realize that your eyes are telling you a different story than your ears, then you don't deserve to be part of the human race.

Sorry, but stupidity really gets me rankled.

Lords: New IR35 off-payroll tax rules 'riddled with problems, unfairnesses, unintended consequences'

Finally, an ounce of sense

"The UK economy will need the help of the UK’s flexible workforce to get back on its feet as we emerge from this crisis and that is going to take some time. Now is not the time to apply a straight-jacket"

Nice to see that somebody has a clue.

The only question left is : is it not too late ?

Wall Street analyst worries iPhone is facing '2nd recession' after 2019 annus horribilis

"the global pandemic derailed Apple and the rest of the industry"

Exactly. Everyone is impacted. Apple has more money than most, it will weather this storm without problem. The shareholders might not get dividends, but they're the only ones who care about that.

"Apple is now facing the second recession of the iPhone era. Everyone knows that fiscal Q2 results will not be good"

Boo hoo and cry me a river. There already have been hundreds of companies to bite the bullet. More than 20 million people have lost their job in the USA alone and you're "worried" that Apple will not make its usual billions ?

Wall Street is overrated.

Australia's contact-tracing app regulation avoids 'woolly' principles in comparable cyber-laws, say lawyers

So health care workers have to ask

While government busybodies dole out permissions. Congratulations, way to run a pandemic.

Health care workers should automatically have permission - once they have signed up and given proper credentials.

Government busybodies, on the other hand, have no business accessing this data and be kept out of it.

But hey, it's Australia, what can you expect ?

Chinese carmaker behind Volvo and Lotus ships first two satellites for planned IoT ‘OmniCloud’

Volvo and a theme park ?

Seems obvious that, if China has a communist political regime, it also has a vibrant capitalist society on the rise. Geely is going to run out of fingers to put in pies at the rate they're going. It's all over the place.

Which is not really something I like very much. I prefer a company that centers its attention on doing one thing well. Making cars is not trivial, the tech is constantly evolving and if you're wasting money on theme parks then you might not allocate enough for research. I don't like that idea.

And 500 satellites a year ? Have they not heard of the Kessler syndrome ? If we keep having companies dream up satellite fleets by the hundreds, stargazing difficulties will be the least of our problems.

Icon for Get Off My Field Of View

So you won't be buying clothes or household items any more then ?

Not doing business with China is not an option until you find another country that makes what you need, and there are few countries outside of China that make clothes, light bulbs and all the rest of the tat you have in your drawers and closets. Good luck finding a fly swatter that is not made in China.

There are some options, but not many. So I think you'll find that you'll continue doing business with China anyway.

FTP is crusty and mostly dead, right? AWS just started supporting it anyway

"insecure, crusty, and just not very fashionable"

I have written scripts for my customers that use FTP internally several times a day. Some of them were written six years ago, some were written last week. They are only stopped when the functionality they support is deprecated by business choices.

I'm pretty sure I'll be writing scripts with FTP routines this year and next year as well.

FTP is far from dead. It may not be fashionable, but fashion has never dictated my working tools.

Apple and Google tweak key bits of contact-tracing privacy plan

"apps using the API will check health authorities databases"

So Google is going to have to its hand up the health databases skirt. There's a lot of reassuring noises in the communication, a lot of making it seem like user privacy is paramount, but Google made a mistake in communicating that they will approve apps that correspond to their criteria of privacy.

There's a lot of wiggle room there.

But we'll see how it goes down. I didn't have a problem with the centralized approach, but at least now we know the direction apps should take.

Looking forward to reading about the API functions, and if there are any hidden ones.

We could have pwned Microsoft Teams with a GIF, claims Israeli infosec outfit

Seems like a lot of hoops

The whole process sounds rather simple to set up, but it's not exactly simple to execute - unless Teams automatically loads an image when sent a link.

Given that this is Microsoft we're talking about, that seems more than likely. Still, you have to be able to send the person a link. That means that you have to have the Teams user name or something like that. How easy is that to get if you're not in the company Teams list ?

Full disclosure : I don't use Teams, as you might have guessed.

Trello! It is me... you locked the door? User warns of single sign-on risk after barring self from own account

Re: that data got removed when he quit

Where is it indicated that it was removed ? there is absolutely nothing in the article about that.

Sophos XG firewalls hacked, hotfix ready. Texts wreck Apple iThings. Yup, business as usual in infosec world

"This leaked information could be received by a miscreant nearby"

That miscreant would look really conspicuous standing outside my house with a laptop. there's not another building within 20 meters, I'm at the ass-end of a village and there's nowhere to go, so he couldn't really pretend he was just looking for his way on Google Maps because there is no way Google Maps could have brought him to the side of my house.

As usual, yes, I'm sure that electromagnetic radiation can tell you a lot and you're not the first to say so, but the spy industry relies on stealth, and standing in the middle of a field with a laptop next to a house is not exactly stealthy.

Much more interesting if you're in an office environment, but then most calculations in an office are not done on a graphics card.

I'll file this in useless but technically interesting.

Wake up, Neo: Microsoft mulls using your brain waves or body heat to mine crypto-currency while viewing ads

Sure, hook me up !

I can't wait for the treadmill that will accompany this "innovation". Can I have the deluxe version with the food drip, please ?

The person who succeeds in getting my brainwaves for ad viewing is not born yet, I can guarantee that.

Where the hell Huawei? It should be a bit easier to tell now the AppGallery has its first proper navigation app

"Huawei has earmarked over $1bn to bolster its own app platform"

And so it continues. Through the blind stupidity of the greatest orange moron on the planet, Chinese companies are forced to build themselves up and create their own ecosystem, instead of inserting themselves into the Western ecosystem.

I am not an economist, but even I can see that it would be much better for Western economies to have Chinese companies continue to be subservient and not become deciders, but that is what is happening.

The Dragon is waking up. Now is the time. In the coming years, people will come to see that Trump has handed China the excuse it needed to become a dominant economic power. Little by little, it will be China deciding standards, it will be China setting examples and innovating. Think different ? They're Chinese, they do that by definition.

Then US (and Western) companies will by crying over their lost market influence, about how it's not fair and they should be given subsidies to survive.

Yep, well, too late for that. The beginning of the Fall of Western Influence has happened, and thy name is Trump.

Elevating cost-cutting to a whole new level with million-dollar bar bills

Never saw a car crash into a computer

But one day I did see a Fenwick crash an entire rack of servers.

I was parking at a customer site when I saw a Fenwick barreling down the loading dock with a rack of servers on its enormous tongs. I remember thinking "this guy is going a bit fast with that", then I saw two guys running behind the Fenwick, shouting. I stopped the car and got out when I heard an enormous crash. When I turned around, the Fenwick was stopped, the rack was lying on the ground, and there were three guys arguing.

Turns out the two guys who were shouting made the driver think there was someone in front he couldn't see, so he slammed the brakes, which had the inevitable result.

The rack was fine, if a bit scratched here and there, and it turns out that only a few hard disks had bought the farm. The kit was new, so I guess insurance paid for the disk replacements. They had one hell of a time getting the rack back up again, though. I don't know what happened after that.

I'll never forget the almost cartoon-like quality of those two guys running behind that Fenwick.

Canada's .ca overlord rolls out free privacy-protecting DNS-over-HTTPS service for folks in Great White North

"Cops, Feds, and ISPs have been vocal opponents of the technology"

Well of course they have. They are the people who want to spy on us, or monetize our behavior. Ensuring our protection is depriving them of their means to keep their addiction going.

Cortana, why are you still here? Microsoft makes the long-suffering assistant chattier for more countries with new Windows 10 build

"Cortana is destined for the Microsoft 365 world"

Good, that means I'll never have to deal with that shit.

Geoboffins reckon extreme rainfall might help some volcanoes pop off

Yeah, that's a lesson we have still failed to learn. Just like California, we accept the risk and reap the benefits of living there - right up to the moment it become Hell on Earth, but then everything goes back to normal and we go right back.

It's like we can't help ourselves.

"We are only just beginning to understand these interactions"

We grasshoppers still have a lot to learn. The Romans, however, already knew not to build in flood areas.

So, while we have a lot to learn, it would be good to remember what we've already learned.

Work from home surge may work in Wi-Fi 6's favour, reckons analyst house

"the lockdown may encourage more workplaces to embrace remote working"

It might, but I wouldn't count on it. The larger companies should have the IT chops to allow people to work from home, but will they have to will to do it is the question. I'm thinking not, because having the employees on-site is generally better from all points of view, not to mention security. Having all those people working remotely must be giving the heebee-jeebees to IT admins everywhere.

Then, of course, you have all the companies that simply can't work from home : plumbers, construction workers, supermarket employees (and stores/restaurants/bars in general), medical companies, etc. Basically, if your job is to deal with the public, you're not working from home.

Finally, you have all the consultants in various capacities. They can't work remotely because the clients want to see them there. Sure, right now I have customers allowing me to work remotely, but that's because they don't have the choice - there's work to be done and it can't wait. When the confinement is over, I've already been told in no uncertain terms that I will lose my access. Security first.

So no, I don't see that there is going to be a change in the way we work, globally speaking. Yes, some companies will realize that they can reduce their office space requirements by having people work from home but, little by little, the manager paranoia is going to creep in and the question of are they actually working is going to haunt them. And that will be the end of the experiment.

Brit IT infrastructure giant Computacenter hits pause on shareholder dividends after furloughing 10% of staff

"companies registered in tax haven countries will no longer be eligible for aid"

Well you can't have it both ways, not contributing to the country you're working in and getting aids at the same time.

It's only logical.

Capita to place bit less sauce in outsourcing execs' share awards packets

Ah, I _thought_ there was something wrong there. Thanks for the update.

So he'll only be getting 550K then.

Still not weeping.

He was supposed to get 5,900,000 shares ?

Do they hand them out like M&Ms ?

I had to check, so I searched for Capita share price. If I got the right one, Capita PLC is at 31.49 right now at the London Stock Exchange.

That means that this guy was going to trouser no less than 185,791,000. Now he's "only" getting 55,737,300.

Don't ask me to weep for him.

I've seen things you people wouldn't believe. Light-powered nanocardboard robots dancing in the Martian sky searching for alien life

Re: How do you talk to them?

And with a third of a milligram as payload, there's not going to be much more than the transmitter - if they even get that in there.

Microsoft 365 invites users to 'Ask Me Anything' – as long as it doesn't require a clued-up exec to deliver clear answers

"SharePoint is the back end of Teams"

Well that explains a lot.

You mind explaining why an SQL server wasn't good enough ?

Except for the fact that SQL doesn't belong to Microsoft, of course. Oh, you forgot the existence of MSSQL ? What a shame.

Looks like NIH is well and alive at Microsoft. Either that or Microsoft is desperate in finding things for Sharepoint to do.

We're all stuck indoors, virtual reality tech should be hot. So why is Magic Leap chopping half its workforce?

"the startup has consistently over-promised and under-delivered"

It's when the lies became obvious (the fake videos) that my confidence deflated. Not that I had had much confidence to start with.

I have always been wary of virtual reality. I already see no interest in motion blur - when I move my mouse fast enough there's already enough blur, thank you.

That said, I am willing to admit that Augmented Reality might be an interesting idea, just like Apple was not wrong when it first tried to interest people in tablets. The Newton failed because the hardware was just not up to the job. Microsoft failed after that, and only when Apple finally made the iPad did Microsoft finally pull off the Surface (and that, only in the 3rd iteration).

In other words, I can imagine that Augmented Reality will be a thing, but that will only happen when the glasses have a battery charge that can support a full day's work - and that won't happen until our modern "smart" phones can last more than 12 hours without desperately needing a top-up.

Because if technology cannot give us a 200 gram slab of communication that can last more than 12 hours without a recharge, then how can Magic Leap be expected to deliver a product that can not only deliver a highly graphically-intensive product (something that phones do not promise), but also package it into something that hipsters can wear in the streets ?

It ain't possible. I'm sorry for all the certainly intelligent people that have spent a good portion of their life on this, but it just ain't feasible.

That said, Abovitz still deserves to hang. A liar is a liar.

After intense scrutiny, Zoom tightens up security with version 5. New features include not, er, spilling video calls to network snoops

I'm sorry, you are obviously operating under the obsolete idea that security services exist to ensure that government activity is secure.

That is last-millennium thinking.

These days, security services are there to ensure the government that the people they govern are happy and complacent and won't come with pitchforks to put their heads on a spike. To ensure that, their job is to listen to everybody, scrape all social networks and record every tweet to ensure that pubic ire is directed to the acceptable scapegoats (immigrants, foreigners, the French, arabes, asians, etc).

Therefor, the GCHQ is perfectly happy with the Chinese being able to listen in to UK gov meetings, since they will get the information anyway through Huawei 5G routers that have yet to be installed.

Ah, the miracles of technology have no bounds.

Stripe is absolutely logging your mouse movements on websites' payment pages – for your own good, says CEO

Prevent fraud ?

Wow. Okay, let me just, for a second, imagine that this argument is actually honest. So present, in a no less than five pages, an explanation of how recording my mouse movements on any of your web pages can lead you to define my activity as fraudulent.

Next, outline what it is you do with that data when you have defined that my activity is not fraudulent, and oppose it to what you do when you define that it is.

Then, in no less than two pages, explain what gives you the right to implement these measures when you are not requesting my permission to record this data.

Finally, explain how you expect to escape GDPR fines when it is proven that you are doing all of that without consent, without warning, and in total violation of privacy rules.

Oh, and for bonus points, explain why it is that Amazon does not need to use that technology even though it is making billions more in transactions than you are.

News sure to ex-Zeit: Next.js company reborn as Vercel

I hope they didn't pay for that "new" logo

A twelve-year-old would have had more imagination.

And, pray tell, how exactly do you "simplify" a black triangle ? I can't imagine how much time was wasted agonizing over which font to choose, what size the letters should be, and what color they should be in. Then, of course, there's the obligatory writing up the "excitement" that the new logo generates. What a waste.

At least there wasn't too much whalesong, so it could have been worse.

Zuck loves free speech so much Facebook will censor 'anti-state' content in Vietnam after telcos 'crippled' access

So that's how you make The Zuck comply

"Facebook has [..] agreed to remove any content considered “anti-state” after telcos in the nation reportedly cut off access to the social network's systems"

And there you go, now you know how to ensure that The Zuck does what you tell him to. No more Congressional hearings where he pretends to give a fuck, just shut off his platform until he does as he's told.

It's nice to see that there are some people that have balls in this world. Shame that none (or very few) of them are in democratic countries.

Facebook is a company. It will parrot whatever people want to hear to polish its image, and it will do whatever it takes to polish its revenue.

Facebook takes $5.7bn stake in Jio – India's largest mobile telco

So Facebook is entering the telecoms area

Great. Now Facebook is going to learn the ins and outs of international communications, to better keep tabs on us.

That slimy ad-slinging mold is starting to grow. Might be time to apply a tanker of bleach before it's too late.

UK's Cleveland Police: We want to fling our HR wares into the cloud. Oh, and IT can move back in

"pretty much where they were"

I'm expecting companies to notice that this outsourcing thing has less advantages than the siren song claims. We are seeing the beginnings of a return to in-house IT and I can only hope that this is going to continue.

Google productises its own not-a-VPN secure remote access tool

Great, Google has found another way to slurp our data

I don't care what Google promises, I am not touching their products with a bargepole if I can avoid it.

Are you fixing that switch? Or setting it up as a Minecraft server?

OK, so can run a game server on a switch

I have just one question : why the hell does a switch have that much computing power ?

Seems like a waste to me for something that is supposed to just route packets. Obviously, so much functionality has been added that what was once a simple packet router has become a full-fledged PC in its own right.

Sounds like overkill to me.

Academics: We hate to ask, but could governments kindly refrain from building giant data-slurping, contact-tracing coronavirus monsters?

Re: permissions

Which app are you talking about ?

The European one is at the design stage and already being torpedoed by conflicting views, so you certainly didn't download that, it doesn't exist yet.

The UK app is a pipe dream and will only be available in 2025, after using up £250 million and failing to actually manage BlueTooth to record contacts.

So, are you talking about the Singapour one and, if so, why should we care since we're not going to use that one ?

Lockdown endgame? There won't be one until the West figures out its approach to contact-tracing apps

Re: No use

Location data is not supposed to be harvested, in which case it is not Big Brother - except if you're in the UK which has, curiously, decided it wanted that.

If you can only tell who you've met and not where you met them, then you're doing tracing properly.

If that data gets permanently erased once the crises is over, it is not Big Brother but a serious medical initiative that is justified in these times.

Google pre-pandemic: User-Agent strings are so 1990s. Time for a total makeover. Google mid-pandemic: Ah, we'll reschedule to 2021

"Version numbers, platform details, model information, etc. [..] with every request"

And they were doing that when we were all on 56K dial-up.

Bastards.

Hana-hana-hana: No it's not your dad trying to start a motorboat... It's Northern Gas, renewing its SAP software

"a contract worth £5,985,385.60 over five years"

That is the projected cost. Given that it's SAP, there will be an orbital drift and the final cost will differ by an amount no less than equal to the initial cost, plus interest.

Sod's Law ? It's going to have a field day with this one.

20 years deep into a '2-year' mission: How ESA keeps Cluster flying

"It's a very strong design,"

It most definitely is. Time and time again we see our spacecraft outlive their mission plan due not only to well-designed craft, but mostly to the intelligence, ingenuity and dogged determination of the people who are in charge of operating them. This is a testament to the dedication humans are capable of in attaining the goal and going beyond. It is a marvelous asset for our future, and always make for very interesting reading.

Well done boffins, again !

Contact-tracing or contact sport? Defections and accusations emerge among European COVID-chasing app efforts

And here we go again

Somebody told Unhygienix that his fish is not fresh again, and now the whole village is in an uproar.

Such is life in the village of the indomitable.

UK government to take equity in struggling startups with £250m 'Future fund'

Re: 8%!?

Agreed. Loans for the housing market are at around 2%. I don't see anyone applying for this, banks can already offer a better deal.

Who knows the secret of the black magic box? Boffins seek the secrets of AI learning by mapping digital neurons

"see which groups of neurons are activated"

One thing I don't get here : these "neurons" are a programming object, right ? In that case, why did nobody think of including an activity log for each neuron ?

What is keeping that from happening ?

If they included that, there would be no need to guess, the log would be clear. Analyzing the log would be a tedious affair, to be sure, but it would be clear.

This hurts a ton-80: British darts champ knocked out of home tourney by lousy internet connection

A home tournament ?

Interesting idea, but how do you guarantee that every participant has the same conditions ?

I'm guessing not everyone has the same size living room (or whatever room of their choice), and it is obviously imperative that contestants all have the same distance from the board otherwise there is no tournament, it's just people streaming themselves playing darts.

Now of course, this is darts, so we're not talking about a board 25 meters away, but still, how can anyone guarantee that all contestants are playing in the same conditions ?

As nice as Pai: FCC chairman comes out in favour of Ligado Networks' 5G proposal, despite criticism from airlines and military

"Consequently, every satellite-based location technology [..] uses the L-Band"

So it's a done deal. And with the cretins in all the right places, there will be no opposition. Ask Trump to stop it ? Are there still people who do not understand that Trump will never stop money, especially buddy money, and even more so if he can get a cut ?

So it'll happen. Ligado Networks poisonous 5G technology is going to be implemented, and then what ? People will complain that their GPS doesn't work. People never care about much, but when they are personally inconvenienced, that changes and the dial can get cranked up rather high.

Ligado Networks is going to find itself under fire from the popular opinion, and there's no one to bribe there. GPS is not new tech, it is firmly entrenched. People have been using it for years and know how it works and, more importantly, that it works. To have a 5G antenna and suddenly no more GPS is a coincidence people are going to notice, and people will get mad about it.

You're not going to convince a red-blooded American consumer that his GPS needs to replaced when he bloody well knows that it is not his GPS that has a problem.

I'm beginning to think that Ligado Networks has not thought this whole thing through.

Open letter to Internet Engineering Task Force: Back off Cisco, not all members want to 'play to your tune'

"A chair who won't call for adoption of a draft because they don't want it"

Looks like obstruction is the modern basis of American corporate culture. By simply not doing one's job, the whole process stops and it appears there is nothing anyone can do about it. In a company the person can get fired, but in structures like the IETF there is apparently no one with that kind of authority.

I wonder how our society is going to learn to deal with that ?

Data science alliance in talks with UK Cabinet Office to help ease economic impact of COVID-19 pandemic

Wait a minute

"demonstrated the need for governments and their advisers to seek real world insights into mobility, behaviour and human contact networks"

Nope. It has demonstrated the need to know who met who, that's all. You don't need to know where they were when they met.

Including location data into the equation just means you're using this to spy on people.