Posts by Pascal Monett

Gartner awakens from trance, tells huddled villagers: 5G revenue will almost double to $4.2bn next year!

"Gartner has performed its ritual reading of market omens"

I think Gartner needs to change sacrificial animal. Maybe switch from chicken to duck ?

TalkTalk's voice-over is writing speeds that its text can't match: Ad pulled from broadcast

"We immediately took action to correct it once we became aware" . .

. . that someone had noticed our intentional falsehood and reported it.

There, FTFY.

Devs invited to bake 'Run on Google Cloud' button into git repos... By Google, of course

"easy deployment of containers to a managed service"

Yay, an even more efficient method to post private identifying data on a unsecure, internet-accessible server.

Just what the world needs nowadays.

Shhh! Microsoft, Intel, Google and more sign up to the Confidential Computing Consortium

Well one thing is for sure

Like it or not, Microsoft practically has to be part of such an initiative - if only to ensure that it doesn't go off again on its own and creates a conflicting standard.

Which it still could anyway, to be sure. And will, if it doesn't like how things will go.

Buying a Chromebook? Don't forget to check that best-before date

That's Chromebook right out of my buying list then

It is not acceptable to me that a supplier artificially limits updating hardware to less than the hardware's expected lifespan.

If I call a plumber for a kitchen sink, he won't tell me that he can't do anything about it because the sink is more than 6 years old. Only in IT do you have companies arbitrarily decide to stop supporting something they sold. And here, it's even worse, because the expiry date is not tied to the sell date.

That is disgusting.

Here's a top tip: Don't trust the new person – block web domains less than a month old. They are bound to be dodgy

I have a setting in my brain that makes it easy : don't click on dodgy links.

I never click on a bit.ly link or any other shortened link. I distrust those by default. I always check where the link goes and if it doesn't go to somewhere logical or reasonable, I don't click.

Of course, all that means that I'm not part of those people who just blindly click, then belatedly wonder how their computer got hacked.

Eighty-year-old US 'web scam man' on the run after pocketing $250,000 in Dem 'donations'

The people who donated might see a problem

Don't trust Facebook's Libra cryptocurrency, boffins warn: Zuck & Co know that hash is king

"could lead to biased decision-making"

Oh don't worry, it's FaceBook. Biased decision-making is their specialty.

I didn't need to read this to know that I do not want anything to do with Libra, but this is a nice confirmation of my own bias.

Microsoft: Reckon our code is crap? Prove it and $30k could be yours

"Yo browser sucks, Micro$oft" is unlikely to go down well

Yeah, but still, Yo browser sucks, Micro$oft.

Sorry script kiddies, hacktivism isn't cool anymore: No one cares about stuff that's easy-peasy to defend against

Hacktivism ? Didn't that become obsolete ?

Once upon a time the Internet was a paltry hundred million web sites. Deface one and it would be noticed. Today the Internet is billions of websites, the most consulted being the ones who are the hardest to hack, and if you hack a less-consulted one it will hardly be worthy a mention on Twitter.

Criminals, on the other hand, are making hay out of infiltrating and encrypting company data for ransom, and they're doing it by the bucketload apparently, because they have incentive to be better. Beats hacktivists by a country mile apparently.

Moore's Law isn't dead, chip boffin declares – we need it to keep chugging along for the sake of AI

Hey, I will welcome our 32GB SRAM CPU overlords as soon as they deign to show up.

Latest sneak peek at PowerShell 7 ups the telemetry but... hey... is that an off switch?

What the hell is the use of that ?

What is the point of getting a log on people's use of a given command ? If you're going to log command usage, why limit logging to a subset ?

I can't even begin to fathom the reasons for Microsoft's telemetry. It is useless to prevent botched patches, so what is MS doing with it ?

Brits are sitting on a time bomb of 40m old electronic devices that ought to be recycled

Don't be so picky. Just take dollars, like everybody else.

At least you can easily change the battery with an Android

Welcome to Hollywood, Claranet-style: You've (not) got mail, or hosted sites for that matter

"Apologies for any disruption"

Is it me, or is there an epidemic among hosting companies these last few days ?

It can't be a coincidence, now can it ? If the Flying Spaghetti Monster trying to drum up some attention ?

My MacBook Woe: I got up close and personal with city's snatch'n'dash crooks (aka some bastard stole my laptop)

Indeed

I wouldn't have chosen better myself. The bastard that pulled that heist must have been present and waiting for an opportunity. He saw it, and took it without hesitation.

The fact that nobody moved to stop a thief is a sad indication of the morals of our society today. That only one guy stood up after and offered help is good on him, but it would have been better if someone had tripped the thief.

Then again, with someone so obviously determined, it might have gotten ugly. Better off the police deal with that bastard.

Don't panic! Don't panic! UK IT job ads plummet as Brexit uncertainty grabs UK tech sector by the short and curlies

The search for good news is getting desperate

So job offers in IT are weakest ever but fear not, IT will grow by 4% in the next five years.

Yeah, maybe, we'll see, but it's hard to believe since Brexit has put a damper on everything and the outlook is neither certain nor looking good.

There may be good times ahead, but they don't seem to be coming any time soon.

Squabbles over NASA's lunar lander, Astrobotics takes a punt on ULA and India arrives at the Moon

BRUTUS

A rather unfortunate moniker. I seem to remember that the last person who counted on him didn't end so well.

iFrame clickjacking countermeasures appear in Chrome source code. And it only took *checks calendar* three years

Just don't allow ads to use JavaScript

Every single problem is linked to JavaScript. Okay, in-domain JS is pretty much inevitable these days, but simply don't accept running JS from another domain and the problem should stop there.

Of course, Google is not interested in locking that down because of the number of sites that use its code, so it'll never happen from there.

Thank God for NoScript. Again.

Trump blinks again in trade war bluff-fest with China: Huawei gets another 90-day stay of US import execution

And you have Fox News to get back to.

If you don't like The Reg, you don't have to come back again and again.

Bunch of US states said to be preparing fresh antitrust investigation into Google 'n' pals

Making things more complicated

Um, we're talking about billion-dollar behemoths that don't pay taxes.

Make their lives difficult, they'll just have to hire more lawyers.

It's not like they don't have the means to do so.

Generous Google gives Chrome users Inbox Zero: Sign-in outage boots own browser out of webmail, services

Re: dumbing down error messages

Well that is kind of inevitable, isn't it ? Given the level of understanding of 99% of users, they'd be complaining that the error was incomprehensible.

Something went wrong is something they can understand.

That said, adding another line saying "Error #0068410B" wouldn't kill the devs either, and then we'd have something to Google and evaluate our situation better.

Behold, the quantum lawsuit in which both sides claim victory: Rimini St fails to bag $30m refund from Oracle

"Oracle lost 23 of 24 claims"

I'm glad you're happy about your success, but from where I sit, you've lost $90 million, you're banned from doing what you did and you're not getting any money back.

In short, you're lucky Oracle did lose those 23 claims, because if it hadn't, you'd be buried by now.

The Pwn Star State: Nearly two dozen Texas towns targeted by tiresome ransomware

So that's how they do it

"In almost every ransomware attack we've looked at, the company was been compromised six to nine months before the attack was launched," he said, noting that allows the attacker to conduct reconnaissance.

When I read that line about how attackers start by deleting accessible backups I wondered how they could get to them. If, however, you infiltrate an organization and lay low for months while gathering data on the network, then you have all the time you need to discover network storage and passwords to access it.

Given that cities are not known for having bank-level network protection, I'm guessing that once in, there won't be much of a warning to IT admins that an enemy process is worming through their systems.

Breaker, breaker. Apple's iOS 12.4 update breaks jailbreak break, un-breaks the break. 10-4

So, unc0ver is open-source ?

Interesting. So Apple should be all over that code to see what it's using and patch the holes. Apparently, Apple does not do that.

Now the question is : why on God's green Earth did Apple unfix a fix and re-allow jailbreaking ?

Another question : how long before a patch is published that re-applies the fix, thus locking the phone down again ?

Because Apple is aware of this, and they had the fix, so I really don't see that it is interesting to go and use the unfix to jailbreak the phone since it's likely going to be locked down again at the next patch release.

Lenovo ThinkPad X390: A trusty workhorse that means business but it's not without a few flaws

17.6 hours

Oh, I'm sure you can get that - if you throttle the CPU to 20% of its capacity and turn the screen brightness down to minimum, set the disk to sleep after one minute of inactivity and the screen to go blank likewise.

In other words, you'll get 17.6 hours of use if you make the i7 function like an anemic i3. Yay.

I'd like to see battery life expressed in real-life, pedal-to-the-metal situations. If you're a programmer, you're going to be taxing those 16GB of RAM and probably the disk as well. I want to know how long I will be able to work, not just look at a dimmed screen.

But that'll never happen. Nobody will like to publish those numbers, they're too weak.

Subcontractor's track record under spotlight as London Mayoral e-counting costs spiral

"whether electronic counting is in fact the right approach"

Simple answer : it is not.

Use paper. That won't cost you £9M this time, and it won't cost you more next time. Better functionality ? It counted the votes last time, didn't it ? So what better functionality is worth double the price ? Is it more secure ? Somehow I doubt that that is what they have improved.

I want the code to be public and open, so that we can get eyeballs on it and ensure that it does what it says on the tin in the proper way. Until that happens, I won't trust it and neither should anyone else.

It will never be safe to turn off your computer: Prankster harnesses the power of Windows 95 to torment fellow students

BOFH potential for sure

Personally I am content that he does not get to exercise that particular potential in a major IT outfit of any capacity.

I hate it when people think that they have the right to go and wreak havoc on someone else's computer and find that funny.

Overstock's share price has plummeted. Is it Trump's trade war? Bad results? Nope, its CEO has gone bonkers...

That is not an example to follow

Re: I'm not trolling

The general message is that this has nothing to do with Overstock, is not something a CEO of a billion dollar company is supposed to say, and frankly, being part of an international conspiracy / spy ring is something that happens in books, not in real life.

If Byrne was just another Twitter user, or had a blog like some other Jones, it would be inconsequential. But a CEO is supposed to be objective and rational, and nothing he said belongs to the world of reality.

So there's a problem, and people who value their money are fleeing the scene.

Astroboffins have spied the largest star that has gone supernova and it's breaking all the rules

Why the hell bring the Maori into this ?

And, if you're going to show off your scientific credentials, you need to put a link to what you've published, otherwise it's not credible.

Anyone can say they've published in Nature.

Fancy a career exposing cloud data leaks? Great news, companies are still largely clueless

"protocols that were superseded more than a decade ago"

Um, just a thought : how come those protocols are available on The Cloud (TM) at all ?

Or did they create The Cloud (TM) by including every protocol that has been created in the past twenty-five years, regardless of whether or not it was secure ?

UK.gov opens £250k competition to tackle first-world problem of crap conference Wi-Fi

"help Britain attract more international business events"

Yeah, Brexit is going to make it so much easier to capture all those European company conferences, isn't it ?

And the Japanese, Chinese, Indians and South Americans are just clamoring for the privilege of spending a day in a plane to get to the UK to chatter and feast on stale fish.

Another success story in the making.

And you thought the cops were bad... Civil rights group warns of facial recog 'epidemic' across UK private sites

"There is a dark irony that this authoritarian surveillance tool is rarely seen outside of China"

Um, from what I've read, the UK is just as surveillance-camera bent as China, if not more so.

So the dark irony is that there still are people in the UK who consider that China is worse then them as far as camera surveillance is considered.

Data cops order Ireland to delete 3.2m records after ID card wheeze ruled to be 'unlawful'

Here's a wild guess : Ireland.

You know, St Patrick's Day ? Green ? Ring a bell ?

Top tip: Don't upload your confidential biz files to free malware-scanning websites – everything is public

"In a month, a threat actor would have enough data to target multiple industries"

Great. Give them ideas while you're at it.

NSA asks Congress to permanently reauthorize spying program that was so shambolic, the snoops had shut it down

"the program is a mess but says the NSA should have the powers anyway"

Well of course, grant the NSA the power to ignore the Constitution and citizen's rights, because hey, they're doing it anyway so might as well make it official.

No way you're actually going to institute oversight, right ?

Apple's WebKit techs declare privacy circumvention to be a security issue

Re: Minor Browser?

Safari is at 15% market share.

So, yes, it is a minor browser.

And, since Apple has restricted it to not run under Windows, it's going to stay that way.

Criminal mastermind signed name as 'Thief' on receipts after buying stuff with stolen card

What ?

And where does this Ewari Ellis come out from ? What is the process that allowed the police to get their hands on him ? Why is there nothing about that guy before the last paragraphe of the article ?

We have an interesting read, somewhat copied rather directly from the affidavit, but then the journalist just took the rest of the day off and didn't finish the job.

This article is not finished. We need to know how the police was directed to Ewari Ellis and what he did to get this whole mess started in the first place.

So, waiting for the rest of the article.

'Deeply concerned' UK privacy watchdog thrusts probe into King's Cross face-recognizing snoop cam brouhaha

Re: Why?

What they are using it for ? The article states : "and insisted is there to 'ensure public safety'".

So a private consortium has installed facial recog for safety reasons. I'm guessing that they would have security cameras in place and nobody would mind, obviously they have guards that are viewing the feeds in real time to ensure that nothing bad is happening, but what does facial recog bring them ? If they happen to tag a recognized Syrian terrorist, what are they going to do ?

Call the cops is what they should do. After that, I haven't a clue and I doubt they do either.

I have another question : what data are they comparing faces to and how did they get it ? If they are using criminal data from police databases, how did they get the authorization for that, and if not, what's the use of the facial recog in the first place ?

To harass somebody they think is a shoplifter without any proof ?

Security? We've heard of it! But why be a party pooper when there's printing to be done

Re: One rule for you...

Two obvious issues with that one :

1) no manual release would have dreadful consequences if a fire broke out and shorted the power before everyone could get out

2) they forgot to consider all possibilities of manually opening the doors, such as something to prevent the bolt from being moved outside of an order from the proper process

Thankfully, the company that made those doors only end up being ridiculous. They could have ended up being charged with manslaughter and someone would have gone to jail for a long, long time. Which would have done nothing for the people who had died.

Cisc-o-no! 'We’re being uninvited to bid' on China deals admits CEO as Middle Kingdom snub freaks out investors

The USA believes itself to be the leader of the free world because

1) Hollywood has made countless films describing how the USA won WWII

2) The US dollar is the defacto international exchange currency

3) the USA has the most powerful navy in the world and is not afraid of showing it

4) the USA is quite capable of invading other countries (that don't have nuclear warheads) and is not afraid of doing so (if there is petrol to control)

How dodgy browser plugins, web scripts can silently rewrite that URL you were about to hit – and throw you into an internet wormhole

"If a user downloads a toolbar or extension.."

Then the user is already making the first mistake. The only extensions you need are NoScript and uBlock Origin. No one needs a toolbar, they are all malware and have no other reason to exist than to hijack your browser for nefarious purposes.

The second mistake is not running a JS blocker.

The third mistake is not running an adblocker, or a browser that does not handle ads properly (like Brave).

Cryptocurrency lovers slip US watchdog $7m to make claims of ripping off investors, other rule breaking simply vanish

Not very bright

He actually thought that living in Canada was going to shield him against the SEC ? What a moron.

You're all set for your long summer vacation. Suddenly a text arrives. It's the CEO. 'Data strategy by Friday plz'

Good read

But the very content of the article kind of contradicts it's starting premise. After having read the article, it is clear that you do not set a data strategy "by Friday". It seems to me that that is something that will take weeks to elaborate properly, with many a meeting along the way.

I don't think Goldman Sachs got their petabyte-sized data lake described and specced in one week.

But, apart from that, good read.

Apple is a filthy AWS, Azure, Google reseller, gripe punters: iPhone giant accused of hiding iCloud's real backend

Wait a minute

"these iCloud subscribers had their data turned over by Apple to third-parties for these third-parties to store the data in a manner completely unknown to the subscribers"

When your order something on Amazon, you don't care what vehicle is used to get it to you, now do you ?

And when you subscribed to the iCloud, you had no idea of how it worked either, now did you ?

But now you've learned that Apple has actually managed to leverage three* different cloud environments to store your data, and all of a sudden you're all hot and bothered ? More than by learning that Apple uses slave labor to bring you your iShiny ?

Hypocrite.

* I'm supposing Apple does actually have a cloud, and that it is not just using its two competitor's stuff

Yet another reminder: When a tech giant says its AI listens to you, it means humans listen to you. Right, Facebook?

"we paused human review of audio more than a week ago"

Right, the time for all the fuss to die down, then they'll resume. Got it.

It's official – Google AI gives you cancer ...diagnosis in real time: Neural net can spot breast, prostate tumors

Proof of concept

To me, the fact that it is real time is less important than the fact that it is accurate.

I'm less hot on doctors being able to ask the machine what it is they're looking at. Replacing doctor's knowledge with a machine's knowledge just feels wrong to me somehow. If I am to be treated, I want to be treated by a doctor, not a guy who's googling the problem.

Let's see what the sweet, kind, new Microsoft that everyone loves is up to. Ah yes, forcing more Office home users into annual subscriptions

But of course it is

"Microsoft is keen that everyone recognizes this change for the wonderful opportunity it is"

Oh don't worry, we immediately recognize that this is an absolutely wonderful opportunity - for Microsoft.

For the rest of us, it's basically roll call. Who wants to pay for the rest of their lives to be able to use their data ?

Once again, Microsoft is the best argument for Open Software there is.

Viva LibreOffice !

Arrow? More like Boomerang, amirite? Computacenter buys back tech disposal biz it disposed of

I just love it

I just love when companies waste millions acquiring then selling a business, and then turn around and spend more millions, if not billions, re-acquiring the same fucking business.

Kind of demonstrates just how ignorant the CxO-level types actually are, despite all their qualifications and titles. They haven't a fucking clue, just like the rest of us.