Posts by Pascal Monett

Former UK Labour deputy leader wants to know how the NHS's contact-tracing app will ensure user privacy

So, not "world beating" then ?

"Last week, the department finally admitted that it was scrapping those initial plans because the software developed didn't work as they'd hoped. "

Wrong, the software worked exactly as it had been specced. It was the specs that did not conform to the masturbatory declarations of the idiots in charge, but that is hardly surprising when said idiots had no idea of what they were approving vs what the tech would actually do.

I'm pretty sure someone tried to explain, but two minutes into the training course and the non-techies were all glazy-eyed drooling corpses that only got revived when they were sat at a dinner table in a restaurant with a glass of wine in hand.

Maze ransomware gang threatens to publish sensitive stolen data after US aerospace biz sensibly refuses to pay

Another key consulting firm gets hacked

Look, I appreciate that they told these miscreants to get stuffed, but how's about having proper security in the first place ?

Why is it that all these consulting firms with critical data seem to find the way to install "advanced tools" to magically solve their incompetence after the fact ?

How about installing those damn "advanced tools" before you get hacked ?

And what exactly are those "advanced tools" ? A firewall ?

CSI: Xiaomi. Snappy Redmi Note 9 Pro shows every fingerprint, but at least you get bang for your buck

"can it play Call of Duty"

I fear not. CoD takes up around 200GB of disc. Unless that mobe has a 512GB sim card, it won't have the space for it.

China's internet watchdog freezes 10 too-trashy online video services before they undermine socialism

Re: Vulgar content

Absolutely agreed. Check it out here.

Truly, the very fabric of civilization is tearing apart. You can see her naked arms ! And her midriff is bare as well !

We are doomed. Doomed, I tell you.

Three words you do not want to hear regarding a 'secure browser' called SafePay... Remote. Code. Execution

And that's how Marketing gets bitten

Bitdefender Total Security 2020 is not totally secure. Ironic.

Of course, from a marketing point of view, you couldn't call it Bitdefender Best Security Effort 2020. You are either Total, or you don't even exist.

Well, at least they corrected the problem when notified, not like some others on the market, eh, IBM ?

Ex-CEO of fintech biz Wirecard arrested over missing money: Vanished €1.9bn may not have existed in the first place

Wow. €26bn lost in two years

Now that is impressive mismanagement.

I wonder how it got to that point, and why the existing board hadn't been sacked last year (or the point at which 50%, or €13bn, had been erased from stock value).

When you have stock, you have investors and, if I was an investor in that company, I would be screaming bloody murder after having half of my investment vanish in thin air.

Windows fails to reach the Finnish line as Helsinki signage pleads for help

Windows "is a service"

No it is not. It is supposed to be a tool that allows me to run the programs I need, when I need to.

But now, Borkzilla has taken control. Borkzilla decides, and you can just meekly click Accept and bend over to Borkzilla's wishes.

Yes, updates are indeed important, but the day's work is no less important and, until the day Borkzilla can guarantee that an update is not going to brick the "service", Borkzilla should wait for the user to have time to start updating. Like, for example, at 5:30 P.M., just before leaving. So stop bothering us at 10 in the morning with an impending update when we don't have the time for that shit at that time of day.

Ex-barrister reckons he has a privacy-preserving solution to Britain's smut ban plans

This looks interesting

It seems like a very good compromise, but I have no idea of the tech stuff behind it or how it could be subverted. On the face of it, it does seem good.

I guess I'll wait for UK Gov's reaction. If they don't like it, it's likely that it is because they can't use it to further the surveillance state they are desperately trying to push forth - which would mean that it is indeed a good solution.

Step on it, I've got the police on my hack: Anon swipes, leaks online 269GB of crime intel docs from cops, Feds

Re: What happened to encryption at rest?

When the NSA got hacked the malware stuff wasn't encrypted either. This is a government project, encryption is in the Nice To Have list, it's not in the budget.

What did it take for stubborn IBM to fix flaws in its Data Risk Manager security software? Someone dropping zero-days

"Why did IBM refuse to accept a free detailed vulnerability report?"

Because the guy who received the report looked at his procedure lists and didn't have anything on that situation, so he classed it in the circular shelf.

Samsung combines 5G, AI, drones and cloud in conspiracy ... to ease network maintenance costs

"a smartphone-controlled craft"

No way that could go wrong. Nobody will be able to take control of the phone with malware and have some fun, like by flying the drone into the mast.

I do hope that the communications between the phone and the drone are encrypted. They are, right ? Right ?

Oh who am I kidding, the guy who wrote that app hasn't even looked at an encryption framework, let alone implemented it.

Features vs compatibility: Google Chrome team promises more 'rigour', but what does that mean?

"This is the real news: that Microsoft and Google are collaborating"

Satan and Beelzebub are going hand in hand. I'm not quite sure I'm reassured by this turn of events.

Meanwhile, Borkzilla's latest update installs Edge as default browser even if you had Chrome before. I wonder how long it's going to take Google to tap Borkzilla on the shoulder and say "knock it off" ?

Big Tech on the hook for billions in back taxes after US Supreme Court rejects Altera stock options case hearing

"the amount of money at stake is enormous"

Officer, you can't ticket me, the cost of that ticket compared to my paltry revenue is enormous.

Inspector, you can't arrest me, the cost of losing my freedom is enormous.

Your Honor, you can't put me in jail, the cost of losing my illegal drug cartel is enormous.

. . .

Man, the ways that argument could be used is dizzying.

CERN puts two new atom-smashers on its shopping list. One to make Higgs Bosons, then a next-gen model six times more energetic than the LHC

Your understanding of our Universe is quite obviously much higher than that of the thousands of PhD-level experts in the field.

Would you mind sharing your universal theory of physics with us ? You know, the one that binds quantum physics and the Standard Model that all the experts you are better than have been looking for since Einstein revealed that little problem ?

With your vastly superior knowledge and understanding I'm sure you have already solved that on a napkin somewhere. Please share.

</sarcasm>

With intelligent life in scant supply on Earth, boffins search for technosignatures of civilizations in the galaxy

'this wavelength band' is where you would see sunlight reflected off solar panels

It seems curious to me that our best minds are desperately trying to detect our level of technology on other planets.

That wavelength is where you would see sunlight reflected off of our solar panels. What right do you have to decide that an alien civilization is using the same solar panel tech ? They might have room-temperature superconducting solar panels that don't reflect anything at all and are 100% efficient.

You won't detect that.

Folk sure like to stick electric toothbrush heads in their ears: True wireless stereo sales buck coronavirus trends

"Canalys reckons the wireless earbuds sector will deliver over 200 million units this year"

And what forecast does Canalys has as to how many will end up in landfills, polluting our water aquifers ?

Any idea on that ?

The entire wireless earbud sector is just electronic waste, especially if the batteries are not replaceable and, if I'm not mistaken, they generally aren't.

This entire market is an affront to everything that ecology stands for.

What does London's number 65 bus have to hide? OS caught on camera setting fire to '22,000 illegal file(s)!!'

Re: I'm more interested in the source

It's Hodor, but with a T

PC printer problems and enraged execs: When the answer to 'Hand over that floppy disk' is 'No'

Re: I think he was glad when I left

It is true that incompetent nincompoops are very often highly annoyed by people who actually know what they're doing. They keep the idiot from whitewashing his mistakes.

"The IT manager turned up clutching a clipboard"

The only time clutching a clipboard is acceptable in when you're a doctor in a hospital reviewing patient details, or if you're a construction site manager checking the progress on how the construction is working.

A clipboard is not part of an IT manager's work tools. The fact that he had one, and that he brought some underlings to a discussion where they had absolutely nothing to do, is the hallmark of the office weenie who's in over his head and just trying to impress.

Well he impressed all right. What incompetence.

Check out the night sky in all its X-ray glory: Everything from hot gases to supernovas and massive black holes

My new laptop background

If Fairphone can support a 5-year-old handset, the other vendors could too. Right?

Nice idea, but

I like the idea of an environmentally-friendly, well-supported phone.

Unfortunately, I just checked their website and the latest model is €450. That is way outside the budget I will allocate to a phone.

So I'll just continue with my current Galaxy A3 as long as possible, and hopefully I won't have to replace it until I retire, at which point at get myself a basic feature phone that allows you to phone and has a battery that lasts a month.

It's all I will need anyway.

Hayfever in Haymarket, or has Windows sneezed out a BSOD?

But that is no joke, my friend, it's the truth.

Facebook's $500k deepfake-detector AI contest drama: Winning team disqualified on buried consent technicality

Re: Hold DeepFake Competition, Get The Source code, Profit !

Indeed, Facebook pulled the rug from under the real winners on a technicality, but it won't be giving the code back, now will it ?

AWS scoops Intel silicon and 8TB of storage into new Snowcone edge box

So this means

. . that an 8TB disk still has more bandwidth than an average Internet connection.

I'm guessing that a 1GBps fiber line would work better, but that is far from being the general case in the USA, so fill up a snowcone and ship the box back so AWS can transfer it to your instance is what this is about.

Not a bad idea.

Scalability, reliability and availability: Three things the AWS Summit for EMEA struggled to get right

Don't sweat it, Bezos

After all, you have the comfort of remembering that we saw Bill Gates himself presenting Windows 98 to the world and got a magnificent BSOD right at the start.

There's no accounting for TITSUP*: Beancounters bemoan Sage cloudy sync software outage

Re: "What if you're a small company and can't afford [..] your own infrastructure"

You go to The Cloud (TM), obviously. But then you're not in the business of providing critical data to many other companies.

Once upon a time, businesses would look at your small company and say "Work with them for my critical data ? I don't think so."

Today, The Cloud (TM) allows your small company to cheat with its abilities to reliably provide said critical data - until The Cloud (TM) falls over (again).

Okay, I shall concede your point. Now the real question : can you charge them for the money you lost during the time the service was out ?

I have a feeling that that would focus a lot of minds in The Cloud.

"our equipment is used for COVID-19 drugs"

Well maybe you should have used your own server if it is so important.

But no, you followed the siren song of The Cloud (TM) and now you're learning that all those assurances and contract terms are worth less than the paper they were written on.

One day, people will learn that, if your data is mission-critical, you put the money on the table and hire the competence to ensure that it stays up, you don't go hiring Someone Else's Server thinking you're covered.

Because you're obviously not covered as well as you think.

Hey is trying a new take on email – but maker complains of 'outrageous' demands after Apple rejects iOS app

Re: Email already passé?

"businesses moving to Slack/Teams/Hangouts/etc"

That's fine for internal communication, I guess, but I don't think you'll find IBM sharing Teams with Apple any time soon.

Between companies, you still need regular old email.

And as for individuals, God preserve me from a day where I have to have a FaceBook account to send my daughter or my wife something. I don't see how giving my life up to that slimeball is better than email.

Google and Parallels bring Windows apps to Chromebooks, in parallel with VMware and Citrix

"evidence of [..] greater interest in working from home"

As usual, mouthpieces blabbering on current trends while completely ignoring how conditions have changed.

I've always been interested in working from home, that's not new. Since the beginning of office work, in IT or otherwise, the norm has always been you go to the office and work at a desk, with your colleagues. Over time, the Internet was born, then VPNs, and sometimes you could work for a boss who didn't break out in hives when you suggested that you could do part of your job from home.

Today however, companies have been brutally pushed into a world where everybody is working from home, and whether or not they broke out in hives, bosses have found that, yes, their company can actually function like that (for those companies that could do so, obviously).

That is a sea change in that now, bosses can no longer break out in hives when you say that you can do that from home. You did it before and it worked out fine. So now we can envision a world where you'll be at the office for meetings, for greeting certain customers or consultants, and work from home the rest of the time.

We'll all see how this works out, but nobody is going to have "works from home" in their contract. It will likely remain a possibility, apparently big companies are seriously planning it, but we will all have days at the office again.

Boffins find that over nine out of ten 'ethical' hackers are being a bit naughty when it comes to cloud services

"fake credit card numbers"

The fact that fake card numbers exist and can be used points to a lack of security on the part of banks. In Luxembourg, it is not enough to have a credit card for online transactions anymore. I have a USB-like token that, on the press of a button, gives me a 6-digit PIN code that I have to enter to validate my purchase.

If banks all over the world adopted that level of functionality, the fake card issue would disappear by itself.

Dropbox attempts to muscle into password manager market with passphrase wrangler, document vault

Here we go again

"the company would soon be able to pull in every individual’s emails, Slack messages, and another other incoming information and magically sort through it "

Great. Yet another company that wants to manage my life for me. For a small fee, of course.

Vade Retro, Satanas.

Wow, Microsoft's Windows 10 always runs Edge on startup? What could cause that? So strange, tut-tuts Microsoft

Re: bend over forwards, to bend over backwards to help

That is the kind of support you get from small companies who need to make a place for themselves on the market. They care about their customers because they don't have four continents of them.

The more customers a company gets, the more rigid the support structure, until you get to Borkzilla where the support structure has gone the same way as quality assurance : it's the beta testers - sorry, the Dev Channel - that take up that role now.

No Wiggle room: Two weeks after angry bike shop customers report mystery orders on their accounts, firm confirms payment cards delinked

There is no breach

There's just idiots with money who reuse their password.

They are now learning the hard way that that is something you do not do.

Not so nice, we investigated them twice: EU opens double whammy of inquiries into Apple's biz practices

30% is outrageous

Apps are what make a platform, and where mobes are concerned, it is what makes them more attractive than the competition.

Apple is imposing a luxury tax on developers when they are the ones who bring value to the entire Apple ecosystem. What have I just read about HTC ? It has crap apps. Doesn't make me feel like buying a phone from them.

As far as apps are concerned, Apple is just a facilitator. Yes, it provides the App Store, but don't try to make me believe that that is costing Apple $100Bn/year.

The normal fee of an intermediary is 10%. That is what Apple should have the right to ask for.

Top tip, devs – your Chrome extension doesn't have to suck: 'A few hours can result in big improvements for millions of users'

Another good reason to use Ublock Origin

And NoScript, obviously. I have no desire nor intent to load 500+MB of useless data every time I view a certain page.

Between those two extensions, my bandwidth requirements apparently drop like stones in a lake.

Microsoft disbands three-ring Windows Insider circus and replaces it with 'channels'

Agreed. Typical management-level looking busy hack. Won't actually change anything on the ground.

845GB of racy dating app records exposed to entire internet via leaky AWS buckets

"vpnMentor suspects the nine services share a common developer"

Well the alternative is that there are nine idiots who couldn't be arsed to do their job correctly.

So yeah, let's go with the one. It's enough damage as is.

Colt Technology UK nixes winding-up order threat from Italian VoIP reseller over £3.8m disputed debt

"how Colt Italy had managed to sign [..] with SGG in the first place"

Due diligence ? I'm thinking Colt UK has better launch an internal investigation into that matter. There might be some traces of a few brown envelopes lying around.

From unmovable boot screens to dead certs, neither are what you want to see in a hospital

They might well be, but what other way do we have to demonstrate trustworthiness on a stateless platform ?

Overload: A one-way ticket to a madman's situation

Re: Been There, Had That

Looking forward to reading that developer's story on Who Me ? shortly.

Infosys denies former head of diversity recruitment's accusations of racial bias and visa fraud

"Infosys has denied the allegations"

Well they would, wouldn't they ? Except for the fact that, apparently, 80% of the current workforce is Indian of Indian origin. That strikes me as a bit curious in a country that is an ocean away from India.

Until, of course, I checked out the Management page of Infosys' website. All Indians.

So yeah, they're bringing over Indians. It's pretty obvious.

Microsoft 365 and Azure outage struck Australia and New Zealand just as business rocked up for a new week

Great status page, guys

Didn't know there was an issue, and neither did you until the tweets started.

You might want to ensure that you know your actual status in the future. Could help in detecting problems before the users do.

Philippines government makes cloud-first a post-pandemic ‘new normal’ for all agencies

Clouds in embassies ?

I am curious to how that will work out. I don't think there are that many embassies that have enough space for a bit barn, and I'm certain that embassy staff do not have the qualifications to run one. So that would mean external (foreign) consultants coming in regularly to manage servers that may contain sensitive data.

Doesn't sound ideal from a security standpoint.

Someone got so fed up with GE fridge DRM – yes, fridge DRM – they made a whole website on how to bypass it

If there's a GE logo on the fridge, I don't give a flying frak who is controlling their appliance production. It is GE that is responsible and it is GE that gets the blame.

OOP there it is: You'd think JavaScript's used more by devs than Java... but it's not – JetBrains survey

Another survey, another favorite language

What a surprise. A vendor specialized in Java publishes a survey that demonstrates that Java is the most preferred language.

I've heard news about bears in the woods, want me to tell you ?

Microsoft tweaks its 'New Outlook' for Mac – but no support for Exchange on-premises yet

Outlook has always been the ugly duckling

It is insane to imagine that Borkzilla would make a mail client these days and choose not to include protocols that have been used since the dawn of email. It's not like POP3 and IMAP are nebulous, abstract things you need an engineering degree to grasp. Who signed off on this nonsense ?

And, as for the new UI to come, I wouldn't put too much stock in it. We're talking about the company that made Metro, remember ?

After IBM axed its face-recog tech, the rest of the dominoes fell like a house of cards: Amazon and now Microsoft. Checkmate

Re: FR is a limited resource

Limited by what ?

Up to now, it's been sold and installed at many places. Until these days, the only thing limiting FR was budget and how paranoid the person in charge was.

And don't forget that all these companies working on FR are just halting selling to cops in the US. None of them are limiting sales outside the US.

I'm pretty sure FR will be installed somewhere in 2020, just not under US police authority.

ConnectWise issues a slightly scary but unusually significant security advisory

"an API vulnerability"

So, ConnectWise is basically connected to all big companies' IT systems ? It did not discover a "vulnerability", it discovered an undocumented NSA backdoor, and now there's an NSA agent that is seriously pissed off.

Sony reveals PlayStation 5 will offer heretical no-optical-disk option. And yes, it has an AMD CPU-GPU combo

Disk free

Bold move. Also, feels like a bad move. To me that means that all content will be online, players will be trapped in Sony's ecosystem and won't be able to do anything outside of what Sony allows online.

It also means that, when the inevitable TITSUP happens, all Sony gamers will only be able to twiddle their thumbs in unison. Not to mention the inevitable launch fiasco where will once again see a major company's networked pushed beyond its limits when thousands of gamers will feverishly try connecting for the time, at the same time. Cue the inevitable tweet about how Sony is sorry and it couldn't have imagined all that activity.

Yup, I almost feel like I can see the future on this one.