Posts by Pascal Monett

Y2K? How about Y2.02K as Lloyds suffers its second TITSUP* of the year

Re: Lloyds

If TSB still does, they still can.

TikTok boom: US Army bans squaddies from using trendy app on govt-issued phones

They do have time off from being shot at, you know. They need some distractions, lest they go absolutely barking mad all the time.

Stack Overflow makes peace with ousted moderator, wants to start New Year with 2020 vision on codes of conduct

"she can apply to regain her moderator status"

I wouldn't do that if I were her. She was not being paid, she was volunteering her time and effort and they shat on her.

They can go fudge themselves.

And we now go live to Apple v Corellium, where the iTitan is still lobbing copyright fireballs at the virtual iPhone upstart

"Apple is trying to extinguish the iOS bug-hunting and jailbreaking communities"

Well duh. Apple has been locking down every new jailbreak technique with every new release of its iOS since forever.

And it won't stop, because when you buy Apple you go the Apple Way or the highway.

To be fair, Apple is far from the only company that doesn't want anyone to tinker with their code.

This page is currency unavailable... Travelex scrubs UK homepage, kills services, knackers other sites amid 'software virus' infection

"Travelex had public-facing Windows remote-desktop servers with no NLA enabled"

Not acceptable. This is a professional company dealing in international currencies and with direct links to banks, there is no excuse for not having a properly secured environment.

The CEO should be dumped without a parachute. The next one can go about firing the head of IT. Being hacked is one thing, but not doing one's due diligence on security when dealing in this kind of market means that heads should roll.

SanDisk's iXpand Wireless Charger is the unholy lovechild of a Qi mat and a flash drive

The problem with wireless charging

In a word, it is inefficient.

We are already burning way too much coal to power all our gizmos, gizmos which we are buying more of every year. Why have a regular toaster when you can have a "smart" one ? Why have a regular anything when you can have it use compute cycles all day long just so that you can, once a day or less, command it from you bloody smartphone ?

So yeah, use even more energy, and recharge your gizmos with the most inefficient technology that some brilliant idiot thought up.

We're going to burn our way back to Stone Age.

We live so fast I can't even finish this sent...

Twinning toilets

At first, upon reading that sentence, I thought "what the hell is that ?". When finished with the article (nice rant btw, great start to the New Year there), I searched for it, and found that it is yet another way to get valuable aid to poor countries. No way you can complain about it in this era of enforced political correctness.

However, there are already several high-profile aid organisms working in poor countries and funneling masses of money and effort to help out, so why is there a need of yet another organism which is much more obscure and whose reliability is not well established ? I am always wary of non-profits I've never heard about ; you have no idea what they're actually doing with the money nor how efficient they are in bringing the aid they say they bring. I'd want to see other photos of twinned toilets to control that they're not sending the same picture to every company that forks over the money.

2 more degrees and it's lights out: Mercedes-Benz Grand Prix's toasty mobile bit barn

Yeah, but they still have cooling.

Re: I'll never really understand...

I have a hard time understanding that as well, but I no nothing about either the conditions he was living in, who is he like and what made him make that decision.

Unless he was just lazy, I'm guessing it was a difficult decision to make. He knew what he was turning down after all.

It's always DNS, especially when you're on holiday with nothing but a phone on GPRS

That's no way to manage after-hours support. The manager should have a list of names with on-call dates beside it, and woes be to the guy who gets called and doesn't answer because he slid the pager to someone else.

Greetings from the future where it's all pole-dancing robots and Pokemon passports

Smashing start of the year !

Thanks for that, Dabbsy, and Best Wishes to you and every commentard on El Reg.

Keep biting !

Beware the three-finger-salute, or 'How I Got The Keys To The Kingdom'

Um, nope, back then it didn't. It didn't even use the mouse.

Back when I worked as an accountant I got intimately acquainted with the numeric keypad. When you have to enter an average of 6 financial numbers a minute during the day, you get used to it pretty quick.

You tell me that Golden Boys had issues with the numpad ? Maybe they should cut their white powder usage a bit.

"The Boss handed over his key to the server room"

As well it should be. You're the Boss, you send peons to the server room. Because it doesn't matter how knowledgeable you think you are, you have no idea how things are set up, how to check what state they are in ad how to ensure that you are acting on the proper server when you fiddle around on keyboards.

Because if you did know all that, you wouldn't be the Boss, you'd be a peon.

So rely on the people you pay to do the job.

I caught Disco Elysium fever. No, not the Saturday Night kind. I was really quite poorly

I'm sorry

You're telling me that there are hours and hours of dialogue, and what I say makes almost no difference ? What's the point then ?

Thanks for the heads-up. This is one game I'll be avoiding.

That reminds me that I have Baldur's Gate Enhanced Edition I and II on Steam. Might be time to go and relive those proper RPGs.

El Reg presents: Your one-step guide on where not to store electronic mail

Re: users would learn

Nope. No guarantee. It's like backups. You can explain their importance to a user, you can regularly send a reminder, you can go around and make a point of asking them eye-to-eye, it's only the day that the hard disk crashes and all those precious files are gone that the wailing will start, the gnashing of teeth and the beseeching of all gods old and new, all to no avail.

At that point, and that point only, the user has a chance of learning the lesson. And even then, there's no guarantee that he will actually start doing regular backups.

But at least there's a chance.

How do you ascertain user acceptability if you keep killing off the users?

Totally agree. Brussel sprouts are an abomination and should be consigned to feeding pigs.

Londoner who tried to blackmail Apple with 300m+ iCloud account resets was reusing stale old creds

How does this work ?

Okay, I get that he didn't kill anyone, but he attempted blackmail on a grand scale. He threatened (baselessly as it turns out) tens of thousands of possible victims to extort money.

Again, he didn't kill anyone, but that level of threat, to me, means he should have gone to prison for six months, not just have an electronic curfew.

The sentence seems a bit light, in other words. I guess the judge found him to not be that much of a threat after all. Either that or he's setting the guy up for a major sentence next time around.

A sprinkling of Star Wars and a dash of Jedi equals a slightly underbaked Rise Of Skywalker

The prequels kinda dampened my enthusiasm for Star Wars, not to mention the damage Lucas did himself (Han shot first, you bastard). I have to admit though that Rogue One was, to me, once again a Star Wars film worthy of the original trilogy.

So, by my count, Star Wars is 4 films and a smattering of blah. I would like to see a film giving us a Darth Vader that is actually frightening, as he was (so briefly) shown in Rogue One. I think showing him tracking down and exterminating the Jedi that escaped Order 66 would have a lot of potential entertainment-wise, and could maybe be tied in to the original trilogy by explaining how Yoda exiled himself on Dagobah. Something like barely escaping Vader to throw himself against another Sith and then making the decision to lie low in the Sith's power shroud to remain alive and elude Vader's hunt.

Something like that.

But I'm not counting on it.

European Space Agency launches planet-hunting Cheops while Rocket Lab starts on a third launchpad

"using green hydrogen peroxide oxidiser and kerosene"

Um, since when has kerosene became green ? Okay, it's probably just the way the sentence was written, but "using kerosene and [a] green hydrogen peroxide oxidiser" would probably have been a better choice.

In other news, I note that, for the first time in Internet history, we're actually going to have to pay attention to what a Troll says. That's a first !

LibreOffice 6.4 nearly done as open-source office software project prepares for 10th anniversary

Re: I'm not so sure that options are the answer to why Office is so popular

Of course not. Office is popular because Microsoft gave it away to schools to wean entire generations on its software. That is why businesses are using it today, because everyone is supposed to know how to use Word and Excel.

But if you just look at the differences between the two products, Office is years ahead of LibreOffice in graphics and that's why LibreOffice is not gaining any traction in the business environment.

Oh, and there's the fact that, for some reason, people think it's a great idea to put their sensitive data on someone else's server, and Microsoft is all over that in Office.

"Has LibreOffice succeeded?"

Well, it's still alive, so I guess that is a positive. But as a comparison to MS Office, sorry. It's no wonder MS Office has the upper hand in the business world, the options for charts are ten times what LibreOffice has. As far as charts in particular and graphics in general are concerned, LibreOffice is at the Office 95 level. In Excel, you can adjust almost everything in a chart. In LibreOffice, you can change chart type and hide or show the legend and that's just about it.

Given how management is so attached to their pretty graphics, Office is the winner hands down.

At home, on the other hand, I use LibreOffice because it does everything I need to do and works well. I just don't need to make charts.

BOFH: 'Twas the night before Christmas, and the ransomware struck

The Director didn't have a chance

As it should be with a grade-A certified BOFH of Simon's level.

Well done ! And not even for personal gain ! What an altruist !

Say GDP-aaaR: UK's Information Commissioner pours £275k fine into London pharmacy's teaspoon

Re: exposed to rain, doesn't mean they aren't readable

I think that that would depend on how long they've been exposed.

I'm pretty sure they don't use waterproof ink on those things.

UK's Virgin Media celebrates the end of 2019 with a good, old fashioned TITSUP*

Re: don't go with just one supplier

What's the point of having two suppliers if they both use the same fibre ?

Because if you want to have two fibre lines from two different suppliers and you don't want them coming from the same direction, you're asking one supplier to lay a special cable just for you. A billionaire could undoubtedly get that level of service, I'm not sure a mere millionaire could, but I'm sure you can't.

Oh this 2019 timeline. Finish this sentence: Austrian politico accused of spending €3,000 a month on ...

These are interesting times

I'm sure politicians are no more corrupt than they've always been, but it is quite interesting to see that getting caught nowadays gets you crucified in the Court of Public Opinion, and thanks to the Internet, it has consequences.

I don't know how we're going to adapt, but things are changing in the way politics has become public.

Hold my Bose, we can do premium: Sennheiser chucks pricey wireless cans at travellers

Re: at least you won't hear people screaming

Um, if I'm not mistaken noise cancellation allows you to clearly hear people screaming.

If you want actual silence, what you need is more akin to industrial earmuffs - they cancel everything, to a point.

Edit : After checking the web site, I found that the app has a setting called Transparent Hearing. If that is activated, you can hear people talking to you. That means that, if it is not activated, you can't hear them. So your point stands, in the right conditions. Of course, if you're wearing these on a plane, I don't see why you would activate it.

You are right, but that in itself is not a reason to write off a product. MicroUSB works.

The reason I'm not interested in these headphones is because it is once again something that needs my phone to work, because of its price and because I just don't need that kind of functionality.

I'm not a road warrior, just a keyboard warrior, and I cannot bring a pair of headphones like that on client site. It would send a very wrong message.

Another free web course to gain machine-learning skills (thanks, Finland), NIST probes 'racist' face-recog – and more

"the Epoch Media Group"

Is there any link between these assholes and the Ethos group of assholes who are taking over .org for their own profit ?

Just wondering. The smell is similar.

Fuming French monopoly watchdog is so incensed by Google's 'random' web ad rules, it's fining the US giant, er, <1% annual profit

"Google said it will appeal the ruling against it"

Of course it will. Because it says that Gibmedia was using deceptive practices.

Now, if we had been presented with a spat between Gibmedia saying it had been booted unjustly, and Google stating deceptive practices, and the perspective of a lawsuit, then fine, we'll see what happens. But the judges have sorted it out, and they have decided that Google was unfair, thus justifying Gibmedia.

France is not the USA, you're going to have to find a different reason and just chanting "They were cheating" is not going to cut it.

Of course, this being Google, I predict that this affair is going to go on until Gibmedia shuts down for lack of funds.

It's cool for Brit snoops to break the law, says secretive spy court. Just hold on while we pull off some legal jujitsu to let MI5 off the hook...

arguments to stop prosecution of a law-breaking British spy would be based on the “public interest”

But they always are.

You just have to know which "public" they're talking about.

Brother, can you spare a dime: Flickr owner sends mass-email begging for subscriptions

"they don't keep your priceless photos safe"

Because you do ?

There's only one thing that keeps your photos safe : a physical copy on optical medium stored in a place without much sunlight and a temperate environment.

If you count on someone else to keep your pictures safe, you're setting yourself up for a big disappointment. Especially if you're not paying that someone.

Five years in the clink for super-crook who scammed Google, Facebook out of $120m with fake tech invoices

I'm tired of seeing that confusion as well. Oh well, what do you expect given the sorry state of the US education system ?

UK cops lost nearly twice as much of their own tech kit this year, says thinktank

"West Midlands police has over 6,500 sworn constables"

Could we maybe have a comparison that takes into account the amount of constables ?

Because if there's a section that loses 1000 pieces of kit but has 10,000 constables, then I'd think it's doing better than another section that only lost 100 pieces of kit but only has 250 constables.

Whaddya think ? Could you re-evaluate that ?

'Supporting Internet Explorer is hell': Web developers identify top needs – new survey

"If you allow web applications to be more like native apps"

Then you can be sure that the mayhem we are currently witnessing will expand tenfold, then tenfold again.

Look, I understand that this is interesting and important from a business point of view, but please, pretty please, DO NOT EXTEND THIS TO THE WEB IN GENERAL.

Because that will just be the end of the web as we know it. For reals.

Also, make sure you never program any SCADA interfaces with that, because God knows Russian hackers would just love to hijack that.

Uber forks out $4.4m to settle claims of rampant sexual harassment and retaliation in the Travis Kalanick era

Nobody died.

Yes, and FaceBook has agreed to improve its handling of its user's privacy.

Many times.

ACLU sues America's border cops: Tell us everything about these secret search teams targeting travelers

"and believes the government needs to be accountable"

Well there's your problem, my friend. You don't live in the country you think you live in. You still believe in "The Land of the Free, and the Home of the Brave".

Unfortunately, the brave have been ousted by the paranoid, and those who remain are under constant surveillance.

You want the government to be accountable when it's Trump at the top and his cronies everywhere that counts ?

I wish you luck with that.

Cheque out my mad metal frisbee skillz... oops. Lights out!

The kind of boss I like to work with

You admit your mistake and, instead of chewing you out for fifteen minutes he rides in with the cavalry and coordinates everything so things can be set straight again. If, after all is said and done, I get my chewing out in his office I will meekly accept it because it was my fault. And I will sincerely regret having made the mistake because I will realize that he put himself on the line instead of offering me up as a sacrifice.

In such an environment, if I got a call to help as happened here, I would drop everything else and rush to respond - not because of the client or the problem or even the colleague, but because I would know the boss is counting on me and I would not want to disappoint him.

IBM to Google: Istio, Knative, TensorFlow should be under 'open governance'

What was that ?

At the very beginning of the article we start by reading "IBM believes that strategic open source projects should be managed by a vendor-neutral foundation".

That's all very nice, but given how every single big company out there treats the market like a shark treats its prey, I have trouble believing in a "a vendor-neutral foundation". Every vendor is going to be vying for an advantage, pushing his own agenda and trying to get his way.

I doubt that they'll all be sitting around the table, nicely listening to other vendor's ideas and giving their assent to good ideas even if goes contrary to their agenda. That's not the world we're living in when Fortune 500 companies sit at the table.

Email blackmail brouhaha tears UKIP apart as High Court refuses computer seizure attempt

Seems like justice has actually been served

This bunch of muppets have really overdone themselves in demonstrating what happens when you group together a gaggle of selfish, egotistical, racist bastards who haven't got a clue.

The amount of bindfolded backstabbing going on leaves one breathless. And they want people to give them the responsibility of government ?

No, of course not. They want the perks of government, the responsibility they'll leave to some expendable underlings.

JavaScript survey: Devs love a bit of React, but Angular and Cordova declining. And you're not alone... a chunk of pros also feel JS is 'overly complex'

Must be the cost of having a vibrant ecosystem.

IT consultant who deleted every account on UK company Jet2's domain cops 5 months in jail

How can you recover if you no longer have any access to the network ?

A real question for the networking companies.

British bloke accused of extorting victims for 'Dark Overlord' hacker crew finally gets his free trip* to America

One down, many to go

Couldn't happen to a nicer guy, apparently.

Seems like it's actually getting harder to be a scumbag on the Internet. Good.

Das Reboot: Uni forces 38,000 students, staff to queue, show their papers for password reset following 'cyber attack'

That is taking security seriously

It is a hassle, to be sure, but it is secure and that's what security is about . being sure everything is OK.

But wow, almost 40K people impacted, the amount of gnashing of teeth must be impressive.

Huawei's P40 and P40 Pro handsets will not ship with Google Mobile Services, Richard Yu confirms

Re: don't see why we have no European Alternative to Google

One possible reason is that, to put that in place, you'd have to match Google's investment in data centers to a certain extent, and that means billions of euros that need to spent without any immediate return.

A second possible reason is that Google already has its fingers in 99% of all web sites, what with its implication in JavaScript and frameworks and all the genuinely useful APIs and function libraries that Google offers up for the price of your soul free. You'd not only have to replicate all that from scratch, but you'd also have to persuade all those web sites to switch to your code. Herculean doesn't begin to describe that problem.

Post Office faces potential criminal probe over Fujitsu IT system's accounting failures

Wow, looks like Oracle and ICANN could find some board material here.

Not telling the truth to a judge in a trial ? What moron thought he could get away with that ?

Samsung says sorry as union-busting chairman and VP head off for 18 months in the chokey

Not really. Apparently Google thinks exactly the same way.

It's just that public opinion is starting to realize it actually has an impact.

Log us out: Private equity snaffles Lastpass owner LogMeIn

Time to add an "import from LastPass" option

All password managers that don't have that option today would do well to add it pronto.

LastPass is going to have to do a recount of it's user base come June next year. It might well get a nasty surprise.

Amazon slams media for not saying nice things about AWS, denies it strip-mines open-source code for huge profits

"The journalist largely ignores the many positive comments he got from partners"

Well duh, they're your partners. They're not going to trash you, they need you. The journalist may have had an agenda, but if the truth hurts it's not his fault.

Besides, what's the problem ? It's not like your customers are suddenly going to disappear if you admit to "strip-mining" open source code. Many people have been warning about using someone else's server and that hasn't stopped them from using yours, so your use of open source is certainly not going to stop them either.