Posts by Pascal Monett

GCHQ's cyber arm report on Huawei said to be burning hole through UK.gov desks

"your image as a country that can conduct independent policy"

Um, which country are you talking about again ? Germany ?

Because the UK has been subservient to the White House for ages now. It has the policy the USA agrees with.

Leaving Las Salesforce: Paul Smith fashions a new role at ServiceNow

"quit to join cloud platform rival ServiceNow in the same role"

In any other world, the word for that would be : traitor.

Us peons often even have clauses in our contracts that prohibit going to the competition. There have been lawsuits over that.

But the high-flyers ? They do whatever they want. No non-compete clause when you get a golden parachute.

LibreOffice community protests at promotion of paid-for editions, board says: 'LibreOffice will always be free software'

“If people are interested [..] they should have subscribed to the board-discuss mailing list,”

That is last century's Usenet mindset - if you're not on the mailing list, you don't count.

We're in the 21st Century now. People no longer subscribe to anything, they rant on Twitter.

Like it or not, they are still your users.

You should listen.

Re: Such short memories

And that is when OpenOffice started forgetting who and what it was.

Another anti-immigrant rant goes viral in America – and this time it's by a British, er, immigrant tech CEO

"I was taught to respect people of all races"

Yes, that is certainly what you were taught, but that isn't what you took away from that teaching.

Alcohol has the peculiar effect of revealing who you actually are. If you're a nice guy to be with when sober, and a misogynist asshole when drunk, then you are a misogynist asshole but, when sober, you listen to that little voice in your head telling you not to do that.

So, deep down, this guy is actually a racist, xenophobic asshole. I do hope he reflects deeply on that, because it's going to take a long time to root that out.

Captain, the computer has identified 250 alien stars that infiltrated our galaxy – actual science, not science-fiction

So now we have Nyx

Stars that have a similar chemical composition obviously come from the same local area, that much is understandable. That that many stars have the same movement characteristics is also an undeniable sign that they have something in common. Finally, we do know that our Milky Way has merged with dwarf galaxies in the past. So fine, we have a bunch of stellar immigrants nearby. Good for Science, we'll learn things.

Now, though, I have a nagging doubt : are we sure our Sun is not also an immigrant ?

I'm guessing that, with all the studying we've been doing on the source of Life in our Solar System, that fact would already have surfaced, but I can't keep from wondering.

Trump's bright idea of kicking out foreign students unless unis resume in-person classes stuns tech, science world

“They think it’s going to be good for them politically"

Universities do not think politics when they make decisions. Trump is just projecting his own way of thinking without any rational basis.

Which is perfectly normal for him.

It is time that the White House be ignored. Trump does not know how to manage, much less how to govern. Just ignore him and do The Right Thing (TM).

He can wail and rant and talk about sending in the National Guard all he wants, the truth is, he only has power because people are used to listening to the White House. Reality check : the White House is stark, raving mad. Stop listening.

High-flying Microsoft exec jumps to Magic Leap as CEO. No, we haven't got that the wrong way round

Lying right to the end

“We have been fortunate to have a number of extremely qualified candidates express interest in the position of CEO."

Really ? A number ? Well, one is a number.

I cannot believe that anyone in their right mind would want to replace Abovitz in that failing company. Magic Leap does not have good press, has no product worth mentioning, and is in desperate need of funding after having already burned through a dot-com fortune. With practically any other company, you have a product, you either have competent people or you have machines that make that product. You restructure, lay off part of the staff that no longer corresponds to your vision, and you go in a new direction.

Magic Leap has nothing. It doesn't even own its own patents any more - they are collateral and now belong to an investment company IIRC.

I doubt very much that there was a stampede at the door to be CEO. And if there were that many "extremely qualified candidates", when she popped up it would have taken a bit longer to choose.

Micro Focus COVID-19 costs: Carry the one, decimal 9 places to the right... hmm. Holy cow, it's a $1bn+ loss

Re: Complete the transformation to reduce overheads

Yup. The office rental market is going to take a severe battering, that now seems obvious.

Mind the airgap: Why nothing focuses the mind like a bit of tech antiquing

Re: turning off the wifi at home

He's at home. If he does turn it off, there will be an instant revolutionary movement from all the other family members who need that wifi for WhatsApp, Slack, FaceBook, Twitter and whatever other medical drip they use on the thing that is grafted to their hands.

Turning off the wifi at home is not an option.

Three UK: We're sending you this SMS to warn you not to pay attention to unsolicited texts

Re: Same sender and text with bit.ly link

I never follow shortened URLs. They are a security risk by definition.

Give me the full URL so I can see where it's going, or get stuffed.

ITAM Forum asks software giants to stop browbeating customers onto their clouds with threats of licence audits

"the practice was counterproductive in a vendor-customer relationship"

Actually no, it isn't. It is going to be a great incentive for companies to transit to Open Source, free alternatives, and the market for those products is going to expand dramatically.

After that, current closed-source cloud vendors will be begging for companies to return by offering dirt-cheap prices.

That's capitalism. The wheel turns. The future is Open Source. It may take a while, but Oracle & Co are on their last legs already. Dead man walking.

They just don't know it.

If there's a lesson to be learned in these torrid times, it's that civilisation is fleeting – but Windows XP is eternal

"long after Cuenca should really have said goodbye"

Well, if we imagine that XP is being used to control screens and has no possible connection to the Internet, then it should be okay, no ?

It would be no worse if I had a standalone XP machine in a corner of the office without any network connection whatsoever. Sure, it's XP, but it's invulnerable from remote attack, so, who cares ?

When a deleted primary device file only takes 20 mins out of your maintenance window, but a whole year off your lifespan

Good article, because it outlines the two types of goofs

On the one hand, you've got the technician that knows the system, makes a mistake, analyzes the situation correctly, finds the loophole and re-establishes functionality without any major hiccup. Hair-raising to be sure, heavy implications for failure, but in the end his in-depth knowledge allowed him to gracefully recover from the error.

Then, on the other hand, you've got the blithering idiot that knows just enough to make himself dangerous, has no idea of the consequences of his actions, and will be totally incapable of recovering anything.

I know who I'd prefer working with.

Good article.

Detroit cops employed facial recognition algos that only misidentifies suspects 96 per cent of the time

"I would say 96 per cent of the time it would misidentify"

And yet you continue to use it.

Would you continue to use a gun that misfired 96% of the time ?

Would you continue to use a car that didn't start 96% of the time ?

Would you continue to use a phone that couldn't make a call 96% of the time ?

What this guy is saying is that the cops poured a truckload of money into that piece of shit software, and they will use until it works and the innocent be damned.

This is what you get when you combine a monumental IT failure with a bunch of bone-headed officers of the law. A running risk for innocent people. Well done, Land of the Free ! Well done.

If you wanna make your own open-source chip, just Google it. Literally. Web giant says it'll fab them for free

I think this is a cool idea

Good on Google for stepping up and proposing something that might turn out to benefit people in the long run. This proposal has the potential to open the doors to many projects that would like to see the light of day, but are hampered because existing chips are too power-hungry or too expensive to use.

In that sense, It's difficult to judge Google. On the one hand, they're data thieves, making bank and literally printing money with private data they take from you, but on the other hand, Google Maps is useful, Google Translate is astonishingly powerful (even if not always entirely accurate), and now, this.

Congratulations, Google. You've just earned yourself a Suspension-Of-Criticism voucher valid until Monday.

Dutch national broadcaster saw ad revenue rise when it stopped tracking users. It's meant to work like that, right?

Re: You Don't Love Retargeting?

And let us not forget that those stats concern a time where people were starting to be cooped up in their homes, thus having more time for browsing.

I'll be interested to see the stats this time next year - supposing we aren't all shut-in again for the winter.

Oh, because all online media is illegitimate ?

Capita Consulting ditching more than a quarter of its workforce 45 days after consultations with consultants

"Regrettably this will result in a number of job losses"

Even more regrettably, none of them will be in management.

Euro police forces infiltrated encrypted phone biz – and now 'criminal' EncroChat users are being rounded up

"The metadata is always present anyway. But without the message it's nothing more than coincidence"

Maybe, but if the metadata demonstrates that you've been calling a criminal scumbag twenty times in the past month, then the police don't need the content to tell the judge that you know the guy. From that point, it should be easy to gather proof that you're dealing with him financially, or working for him materially, and then you go down for the count.

The Moon certainly ain't made of cheese but it may be made of more metal than previously thought, sensor shows

Re: Density

We know the average density. That value can vary from place to place, just as there are places on Earth that are slightly more/less dense than the average.

It’s happened again: AT&T sued for allegedly transferring victim's number to thieves in $1.9m cryptocoin heist

Yes, well, the day I have more than £85K in my account I'll start worrying about that detail.

Actually, no I won't. I'll just open another account in another bank. Problem solved.

It looks like the Wild West out there

If only there was a structure in place where you could put your money and be confident that it was guaranteed that you could not lose it under any circumstance.

If only there was a legal framework and charter that allowed for the creation of institutions who were responsible for the money you placed in your accounts.

If only there was a way to ensure that, even in case of robbery, your account was guaranteed and you didn't lose anything.

Instead, it's the 3rd millennium and we still have people hiding their "life savings" under the mattress. What a shame.

Oh wait . . .

I was screwed over by Cisco managers who enforced India's caste hierarchy on me in US HQ, claims engineer

"We have robust processes"

Apparently, they are not robust enough.

It seems to me that Cisco is happy to circumvent visa issues in order to get low-pay employees, and after that it doesn't give a damn what happens.

Curious, because a company who is really attentive to its revenue should ensure that all of its employees are happy to work there.

But hey, what do I know ? I'm not at the head of a multinational behemoth. With my stupid ideas of salary tied to what the employee brings to the company, I would probably bankrupt every multi-billion international corporation in a month.

Database maestro Antirez says arrivederci to Redis: Seems he wants an unstructured life writing code, not a structured one managing software

"the underground programming world"

Um, why is it that there has to be an underground to everything IT ?

There are programmers writing code for an open-source project. You can hardly get more above ground than that.

Hey, Boeing. Don't celebrate your first post-grounding 737 Max test flight too hard. You just lost another big contract

Finally some real consequences

First, Boeing is facing an uphill climb to get its 737 Max re-certified and, given the amount of deaths due to beancounter cost-cutting measures, that is perfectly normal.

Second, the FAA has lost its prestige and now international bodies are setting up their own certification procedures. The buddy contract between Boeing and the FAA has backfired so spectacularly that the costs for Boeing are going to climb much higher to get itself certified on the international scene.

Good. The rot that has settled in the top layers of US government agencies has come to light and now no one will trust the FAA on its word. I feel really sorry for the good people that I am sure work there, but their negligence and laissez-faire attitude is also responsible for the unacceptable amount of deaths that are due to the simple fact that the FAA couldn't be bothered to set up an actual test for that cursed model.

The FAA is going to spend many, many years regaining its credibility - if that ever happens.

Remember when we warned in February Apple will crack down on long-life HTTPS certs? It's happening: Chrome, Firefox ready to join in, too

Re: Is there any advantage left by using commercial certs?

I think they should. That way other cert sellers will have all the time they want to get with the program.

I'm sure Telia will be relieved.

Leaked benchmarks from developer kit for Apple's home-baked silicon appear to give Microsoft a run for its money

If the laptop is sleeping then the only background activity that needs to take place is knowing when to wake up.

Let's not start confusing modes, shall we ? Sleep is sleep. If the laptop's CPU is working, then it's not sleeping.

PA Consulting catches £5.3m to develop web gateway that handles access to UK health data – including on COVID-19

And, in next month's news

Cue the upcoming article on how 440 million records of health data was pilfered from an unsecured AWS container.

PA Consulting stresses that "Security is our number one priority" and blames a subcontractor for the mis-configuration.

And the wheel turns . . .

LibreOffice slips out another 7.0 beta: Spreadsheets close gap with Excel while macOS users treated to new icons

Ah CSV. The magic of having addresses with commas in them. I cannot count the number of hair-pulling times I have had to export data into a CSV file and send it off, only to have the recipient call me and say MY file wasn't working.

Buddy, I exported YOUR data. I you can't be arsed to not bung commas everywhere they shouldn't be, you don't get to blame ME for it.

Beijing's tightening grip on Hong Kong could put region's future as an up-and-coming tech hub in jeopardy

"we need clarity on what the laws will involve before we can decide anything"

No you do not. It doesn't matter what the laws will involve, what matters is that Beijing is hijacking your legal system. The jackboots are coming in. Now is the time to leave.

Waiting to see what the laws will be simply validates this procedure. And even if the laws seem acceptable at this time, Beijing will change them when it suits itself.

It was never a question of if. It is now. If you value your freedom, you need to go elsewhere. Because, when China decides to "reeducate" the remaining Hong Kong population, well let's just say blood will be involved.

One does not simply repurpose an entire internet constellation for sat-nav, but UK might have a go anyway

"quantum compass technology"

Dear oh dear, what politicians won't do to make it look like they're doing something about something. Quantum compass technology, really. A cubic-meter sized contraption that uses lasers to super-cool atoms in order to detect movement in a single plane. That could conceivably be useful for a car, which generally only moves in one direction at a time, but I seriously doubt that a Twingo will have either the space or the power output to sustain laser-operated super-cooling just to get from place to place.

And £95 million for a report ? Sounds like the guy who typed that up can retire right now.

A UK-specific GPS system ? I honestly think you have better things to do at this time with what is left of your money. Besides, GPS units that work with the US and EU constellations will soon be available for £99.99, no subscription required. So why are you spending money you don't have on this pipe dream ?

Google Cloud partially evaporates for hours amid power supply failure: Two US East Coast zones rattled

These "wobblies" are starting to pile up

It was IBM not long ago, now it's Google's Cloud and we can be sure that Azure is going to have its problems soon, as will AWS.

I wonder, has anyone done the math on the true uptime of these "services", and compared it to the good ol' local SAS uptime ?

Because being six hours without access to your data on Someone Else's Server is galling, especially when you bought into the fairy tale of Always On.

Apple: We're defending your privacy by nixing 16 browser APIs. Rivals: You mean defending your bottom line

Re: Internet Explorer reloaded

Well it would seem that the EU is gearing up for an antitrust probe into the Apple Play Store, so it is possible that such a thing will be part of the proceedings.

Re: other APIs that can be abused

Agreed. When I read that "Apple supports other APIs that can be abused, such as those related to orientation/acceleration, geolocation, camera access, GPU accelerated graphics, gamepad API, and file and directory upload " it feels kind of galling that there is all this hullabaloo about a Battery Meter API.

A website wants to know how much juice I have ? What for ? Sure, it's ridiculous, but then I can be tracked much more efficiently via my location, and apparently everybody is fine with that, including Apple.

Stinker, emailer, trawler, spy: How an engineer stole top US chip designs, smuggled them to China to set up a rival fab

"aggressively investigating and prosecuting these crimes"

Yup, the FBI was so aggressive it even got an email from one Chinese national in China to another. Were these guys stupid enough to use Gmail or something ?

And then they were stupid enough to come back to the US after having gotten away with it ?

Goes to show that criminals are stupid, even when they have a doctorate degree.

Someone must be bricking it: UK govt website for first-time home buyers snapped up for £40,000 after left to expire

"their list of addresses to protect"

So, UK Gov has a list of addresses that cannot be resold even when expired. They set up that list when .gov.uk came about, transferred all their .org addresses to .gov and promptly forgot everything .org.

Are there any other .org.uk addresses that are still in use by the the government that could also be snapped up like that ? Or is some busybody finally going to get the order to sort the situation out yesterday ?

That is the problem with the administrative mentality. When transferring to .gov.uk, somebody should have made it clear that the "old" .org.uk addresses needed protecting as well. Maybe somebody even did, but the order came down from On High : .gov.uk addresses are to be protected, no mention of .org.uk so, no protection for the latter.

And now this happens.

Incidentally, the fact that the guy who got it for £10 turned around to sell it for much more, that used to be called something nasty, didn't it ? And the original owner could complain about it and get it back for manifest domain name squatting or something. Yes, it had expired, but the operation was clearly not with the intention of using the domain, just selling it for (tidy) profit. Doesn't the government (as negligent previous owner) have a say about that ?

Microsoft has a cure for data nuked by fat fingers if you're not afraid of the command line

Re: no chance that the $#@&$ Registry will be replaced

Of course not. That abomination of an excuse for a systems configuration database was made to control DRM and take your PC away from you. There's not a snowball's chance in Hell for that to be removed.

And this command-line-only undelete thingy can't even work without Windows 1 0 ? What a joke. I would really like to know what part of the Windows 1 0 system is sooo indispensable to a tool that works on NTFS partitions.

Come on, Borkzilla, the NTFS on your latest OS-as-a-service (hurk!) is the same as what it was on Windows 7. Your tool could perfectly well run on 7 if you didn't put code in to forbid that.

Poetry in lockdown: hiQ to Supremes / Please leave LinkedIn scrape ruling / well enough alone

What a load of bull

"Users do not expect, or consent to, the exploitation of their personal information in perpetuity by third parties that the users and the website owner did not authorize and whose interests are not aligned with the interests of the owners of that personal information."

Indeed. That's why I closed my LinkedIn account. Getting bought by Borkzilla was the drop that overfloweth the cup.

Finally, a wafer-thin server... Only a tiny little thin one. Oh all right. Just the one...

"the staff got my password to the desktop machine I had been assigned"

The first thing I do when I get to a newly assigned machine is change my Windows password.

Because I have 25 years of experience in jackasses thinking it's funny to use my account to do stuff they wouldn't dare do on theirs.

Re: not shown on their drawings

I'm guessing the amount of stuff not shown on drawings is properly terrifying when you think about it.

"We ran out of available outlets."

That is a sure sign of insufficient planning.

I'm not an admin, but I'm pretty sure that these days, when you're planning to install/move several servers, the checklist includes enough power for each and UPS for all and you don't go through with the install/move until you have those boxes checked.

On the other hand, as always, things like that have had to happen in order for today's admins to have that complete checklist to sign off on. Because there are very few humans who are capable of thinking everything through and envisioning all possible issues. We learn to plan because we've hit a snag, or witnessed a UPS go bang.

University of California San Francisco pays ransomware gang $1.14m as BBC publishes 'dark web negotiations'

So, nothing important was encrypted

Yet the CalU paid over a million bucks to get whatever unimportant stuff back.

I may be mistaken, but a million bucks should get you a pretty good backup system. HELLO ? It's time to WAKE UP. You ARE going to be targeted, so you might want to think of spending a few hundred thousand on proper backup procedures before you have to spend a million on the good will of a fucking criminal scumbag.

Just a thought.

UKCloud latest to sign Memorandum of Understanding with UK.gov ahead of cloud mega framework

"canned statements"

I wonder if they have a template for that.

Fintech biz Wirecard folds into insolvency like two pair against a flush. Good luck accessing your chip stack

Yup. Looks like sticking it to the man can come with some risk, even in Europe.

That said, the scum is headquartered in Germany. Not a good place to be scum. They are going to feel the heat.

Let's roll the 3d6 dice on today's security drama: Ah, 15, that's LG allegedly hacked, source code stolen by Maze ransomware gang

They are not untraceable. They are, however, not in the same country as LG HQ, therefor law enforcement cannot do anything locally and international cooperation on that front is nearly non-existant.

So being a criminal on the Internet is basically without consequence, as long as you don't attack anything in the country where you reside.

Apple gives Boot Camp the boot, banishes native Windows support from Arm-compatible Macs

"may outperform native macOS builds of titles due to DirectX support"

Okay, I think it is time that Borkzilla swallows the pill and licenses its DirectX technology to all and sundry. DirectX is clearly the best tech for rendering games, and Redmond has profited from it enough now. Windows is a service, right ? So license it off to Cupertino and the world of Linux and stop vainly and uselessly trying to get everyone to Windows.

Everyone is already using Windows apparently - even the well-heeled shiny ones who take care to show to everyone that they have a Mac. Apparently, they still boot into Windows, the irony.

I won't suggest open-sourcing DirectX, I know that that will never happen, ever. So just sell the license already.

Re: Downvotes

Obvious : they cannot accept that someone else's experience go contrary to their biased opinion of what should actually happen.

Then you have the mention of the Idiot Tax, which sends some Apple fanatics into conniptions.

So, basically, it's a post that shows Apple users in a rather poor light, and there are Apple users who just simply cannot let that slide.

Wanted – DRAM or alive: US Feds bag arrest warrants for three Taiwanese accused of stealing Micron's mem secrets

That would eventually be acceptable if the spies were acting on behalf of and by order of the government of that country. That is not the case.

The nuclear option is never the first response - unless it's aliens with acid for blood.

NASA mulls going all steam-punk with a fleet of jumping robots to explore Saturn and Jupiter's mysterious moons

"so that whenever they run short of ice for propulsion"

I hope that the bouncy guys have a very good notion of how much ice they have left, and how much it will take to get them back to the lander.

Otherwise, if they run out and are a few miles away from said lander, well, they'll be stuck and that would be too bad. I like the idea of bouncing balls for Science.