Posts by Pascal Monett

Months after breach at the 'UnBank' Ffrees, customers complain: No one told us

I can tell you why I object :

The fact that I do have nothing to hide does not mean you have permission to rifle through my life without a warrant (implying probably cause, which you don't have since I have nothing to hide).

The fact that so much data is gathered on everyone allows Big Data to find correlations that a human would take thousands of years to spot, meaning that advancements in data mining imply that all that data can conceivably find a way to implicate me personally in something I absolutely had no intention of participating in.

As in, if I somehow go every week at about the same time to the same place as an actual terrorist (think supermarket for food), my bloomin' so-called smartphone localizes me in the same general area at the same times, and I happen to be on camera with said terrorist (in the canned food aisle because he was asking about a specific price), I may get flagged as a potential contact, become a suspect and get my life invaded and overturned to find whatever excuse to jail me or at least ruin my future when I was just frakkin' shopping and so was he (because terrists eat too).

How to build your own DIY makeshift levitation machine at home

"new applications of acoustic levitation"

As long as you are focused on things that weigh only a couple of grams, I guess it works fine.

I wonder what the settings would be to levitate a car. Actually, I wonder if the car would levitate, or explode.

Batteries that don't burn at the drop of a Galaxy Note 7? We're listening

Yay, Yet Another Battery Tech Article

What fun. Yet another article on future battery tech that we won't see before decades, full of chemistry-heavy references to make it look serious.

Look, guys, I know that there are people working on batteries, but I've got a bit of a case of burnout reading about all that extraordinary stuff they're doing in the labs when the only types of battery I've been able to buy since 1990 is good old Alkaline, Mercury-Cadmium or NiMH.

Been hearing about carbon nanotubes since it seems forever, but nothing on the shelves. Here comes another nothing then.

Who knows, maybe my daughter's children will see something new. Whenever she gets around to having some, that is.

Love cloudy HPC? Microsoft does, slurps Cycle Computing

Well MS bought Skype for 8.5 billion

This will actually be of use, so I'm guessing MS paid way more.

Creepy backdoor found in NetSarang server management software

"a virtual file system inside the registry"

Thanks again, Microsoft, for this abomination of an excuse that you included since Windows 95.

The Registry : the gift that keeps on giving (to DRM makers and hackers).

Azure Stack will need special sysadmins, says Microsoft

"how quickly the certification will expire"

That'll be easy : every quarter.

Because Microsoft is operating on a rolling update framework, and Azure is as constantly updated as can be, after a quarter you're probably going to have to update your cert to prove that you keep up with the times.

Intel's diversity numbers are out – and that 'push' has become more of a 'gentle nudge'

Why "White and Asian" ?

If you're tallying the various origins, I'd think Asian should be separate from White. It's only one more line in the table, and you can't tell me that they don't have the data.

So why did they decide to lump these two very different categories together ?

A glimpse of life under President Zuckerberg? Facebook CEO's boffins censor awkward Q&A

So The Zuck is setting up a "research" company

And he's trying to make it look like a charity when it is clearly a for-profit entity that has zero transparency and no obligation to report anything. Typical.

You'd have to be daft to give him money anyways. I'm sure he'll find some who will, though.

Taken a while but finally here's the first proper smart-home gizmo

Re: I too seek out ever brighter illumination

No, you're actually looking for a vivifying accent in an energetic mood in a solar hue (ie white).

Uber to bend over, take privacy probe every two years for next 20 years

"Uber has a strict policy.."

The only strict policy Uber has to is to screw everyone everywhere for as much as it can.

The rest is at the whim of the manager confronted with the decision to be ethical or not and, as we know, ethics is not even sweeping the floor in Uber offices.

Slurping people's info without a warrant? That's OUR JOB, Google, Facebook et al tell US Supreme Court

"he provided that information to the phone company voluntarily"

I will accept that I provide phone numbers I call to the phone company "voluntarily" the day someone can show me how to make a phone call without giving the phone company the number.

I won't be holding my breath waiting.

Datrium claims its split-provisioning DVX array is 'tomorrow calling'

Disaggregated and converged simultaneously ?

Ah, Marketing, the games you can play.

Looking forward to a "partially unified unassembled disaggregated converged virtually overlayed storage array".

RBS sharpens axe again: 900 IT jobs to go by 2020

They do seem to be doing their best to please you.

Fresh Microsoft Office franken-exploit flops – and you should have patched by now anyway

I'm on LibreOffice for home use.

Goog enough for what I need, and I'm not concerned by Office attacks.

NASA delivers CREAM-y load to ISS to improve cosmic ray detection

90 billion cosmic ray events in 6.25 years

By my calculations, that makes for almost 463 cosmic rays per second.

I had no idea there were that many !

HP Inc vows: We're not walking away from Continuum

"More evidence that MS (And HP) are fiddling while rome burns perhaps?"

Just evidence that Microsoft is a tired behemoth vainly struggling to get out of the tar pit of history. It has never been capable of adapting, much less forecasting change, and is now too entrenched in its own hubris to do anything that would make it change its habits.

Of course, said behemoth is still sleeping on a rug woven from diamond and platinum, so it will be a while before it dies out. Meanwhile, it is quite possible that it may gobble up a newcomer that just happens to have a good idea, which means that Microsoft will have a stay of execution for the time it takes to inevitably stuff it up and abandon that market.

Nevertheless, Microsoft is now a dead man walking.

Are Asimov's laws enough to stop AI stomping humanity?

Yep. They'll invent the perfect reality show and we'll do the rest of the job on our own.

The Constitution of the United States of America is a wonderful document that, unfortunately, has no more bearing on the decisions of the US Government, emasculated as it is by corporate lobbying and gutless politicians.

Police camera inaction? Civil liberties group questions forces' £23m body-cam spend

"the data wasn't collated or held in an accessible format"

Okay, so here we have different police forces that have spent valuable money on recording equipment, then state that said equipment is either not used, records not kept or not accessible, or records even not made.

What the hell is the use of the purchase then ?

Oh, boy! Uber investors behind CEO sueball say Travis Kalanick won't let the company grow up

So, let me count the ways . .

Uber is :

- widely reviled by the public at large

- not trusted by its own drivers

- has a rotten workplace atmosphere

- has no leadership

- is being actively disrupted by ex-leadership

- is burning money without oversight

and it still has investors ?

That is definitely called throwing good money on the bonfire. Let the company crash and burn and pick up the pieces without the rot. THEN put money into something that works and is not a public example of everything you shouldn't do.

Google bins white supremacist site after it tries to host-hop away from GoDaddy

Unfortunately, paedophilia is a sexual issue, while Naziism is a political one.

As disgusting as it may be, Naziism is actually protected under Free Speech. So, while it is definitely not a good political system, one cannot prevent people from entertaining the idea openly.

One can, however, identify the individuals, never speak with them again and warn all of one's friends and relations.

US military spies: We'll capture enemy malware, tweak it, lob it right back at our adversaries

"We must disrupt to exist."

I find quite disturbing that a person with that mentality is in charge of a cyber-warfare division.

It's like putting a sadist in charge of a prison.

US prosecutors demand data to unmask every visitor to anti-Trump protest website

So, Trump now wants to jail the people who don't like him ?

In America ? Seems like that shining beacon has rusted through and through.

On the other hand, he'll have largely enough forced labor to build that wall . . .

If Anonymous 'pwnd' the Daily Stormer, they did a spectacularly awful job

I wonder how many of these "neo-Nazis" play Call of Duty, and don't realize which side they're playing on ?

Dismayed by woeful AI chatbots, boffins hired real people – and went back to square one

"It was hoped by businesses the world over" . . .

. . that they could finally kick out all those smelly, expensive meatbags and replace them by one single, shiny electronic server that they could then shut in a room and ignore for the rest of time while paying a minimal fee on power, air conditioning and replacement parts now and then.

Sorry, Megabuck CEOs, seems like you're first going to have to invest another few hundred billion bucks in R&D before seeing that rosy future.

Toyota, Intel, Ericsson team to get cars talking to the cloud

"From a technical point of view"

It makes no sense to have cars connected to a global network for warning of local problems. Given the security history of car makers, it would be perfectly acceptable to have cars send a warning by radio signal, with other cars arriving on-site getting the warning and displaying the corresponding signal.

It's a local problem. People on the Internet in Singapore have no use knowing that I have a flat tire in the plains of France.

And we are not yet at a point where we need nanosecond reaction times when driving.

This is not pod racing.

Sneaky devs could abuse shared libraries to slurp smartphone data

I cry foul !

Google-analytics is not first ?

Based on that fact alone I say this list is rubbish. Google analytics is everywhere. I just can't believe bloomin' Facebook is first.

Antarctica declared world's most volcanic region as 91 new cones found beneath ice

Time to start looking for ways to cleanse the atmosphere of sulphur dioxide

Before those volcanoes start belching and it's too late.

Yellowstone supervolcano is another risk. We need to have a method to clean our air, just like we need a plan to divert asteroids !

Infosec eggheads rig USB desk lamp to leak passwords via Bluetooth

"It's not a particularly practical or terrifying scenario"

No it isn't, because we're back to the physical access = game over scenario.

I thought I was going to read something exciting about how a lamp had been modified to accept a USB key that could monitor signals from a laptop next to it.

THAT would have been frighteningly exciting, even if we're almost at physical access again.

In short, I feel let down by this article. Much less than I had hoped for.

Firmware update blunder bricks hundreds of home 'smart' locks

A mistake was made.

Instead of faffing around with the usual "only a small number of customers was affected", the company responsibly owned up to the blunder, contacted the affected users (meaning the company knows who was affected), offered two means of repair/replacement and foots the bill in either case.

That points to a seriously well-organized company that is probably intent on keeping its customers and showing how professional it can be in handling issues.

From where I stand, although I have no use for their product, I do appreciate how they are dealing with the situation and wish that more examples of that behavior were available.

Kalanick stations! Ex-Uber CEO sued for fraud by soured sugar daddy

Re: Uber is looking like a seriously toxic company...

This is board level problems. That is where the buck stops.

As far as I'm concerned, given the scumbag approach to everything this company has, the board can have as many issues as it wants to bear.

I'm not shedding a tear for them.

At last! Vivaldi lets you kill looping GIFs

"they evade ad blockers"

They don't evade NoScript.

Nothing evades NoScript.

Brit folk STILL not getting advertised broadband speeds – survey

The widespread understanding in the broadband industry . . .

. . is that saying "up to" means you cannot complain if you're not getting the top tier performance. It'll always be down to your local connection issues and they're in the clear.

Checking the speed you actually get isn't going to change things one iota.

Lauri Love and Gary McKinnon's lawyer, UK supporters rally around Marcus Hutchins

"accept a plea deal"

No. Never do that. Accepting a plea deal means two things : first of all, the prosecution (and everyone else) now has firm ground to believe that you're guilty and two, you set a precedent whereby anyone else accused of the same has that much more trouble being recognized innocent.

Let's be clear : a plea deal is the prosecution convincing you that you'll get worse if you go in front of a judge.

Where's the proof of that ? If you're innocent, you go before the judge and get your innocence recognized to the world.

Of course, in the Land of the "Free", that means you need money. So, no money = you're fucked.

It's the Land of the Free To Be Fleeced.

US court system bug opened hole for hackers to scoop up legal docs for free on victims' dime

The flaw exists since the 90's

Is there absolutely no chance that anyone has had their filings perturbed by this ?

Maybe not, but are we sure ?

Brits look at Google and Facebook every 210 seconds, says survey

Re: Please don't Feed the Search Giants

There's this thing called "bookmark". I hear it takes you directly to whatever page you wish.

You might want to look into that, I've heard it works quite well and does not require any search engine.

US border cops must get warrants to search phones, devices – EFF

Re: the sort of precautions you would take if you were being parachuted into [..] France in 1941

That is why it has to be said that Bin Laden has won.

We have been turned around and now we accept draconian and Stasi-level impositions on our personal freedoms because we are all too lily-livered to stand up for our rights.

If I have to travel, I forego phone and all electronics. I take a book for the trip. Of course, I haven't ever had to take a plane for business reasons, so it's easy for me.

Obviously, the day a Facebook profile is required to pass border control, I'm screwed.

Re: Which could power up each hour or so

and would wait for PIN confirmation before doing anything.

I don't think that there is any app that go around that.

It's August 2017 and your Android gear can be pwned by, oh look, just patch the things

Damn right

I've had a Galaxy S2 since 2012. I've seen, all told, ONE single OS update in that time.

Oh, I've had plenty of app updates - to the point I had to reset a bunch of the non-uninstallable crap and force them to NOT update because space was getting thin, but I have not seen ANY OS patch of any kind.

Thank God I have no apps installed. I use a phone, not an entertainment platform. For my entertainment, I prefer a desk, a widescreen and a proper keyboard/mouse combo.

Can GCHQ order techies to work as govt snoops? Experts fear: 'Yes'

"threats about what would happen if they revealed its existence"

Um, sorry but issuing warrants is one thing, having them automatically accompanied with a gag order is another issue entirely.

Are we in democracy or not ? Since when is the proper functioning of Justice supposed to be secret ? Secrecy is the tool of oppressive regimes and dictatorships, not the tool of political regimes that respect the individual.

If I was faced with a warrant, I would likely comply, but if I were threatened to keep it silent I would most strongly consider shouting the fact from the rooftops by sheer spirit of resistance. And with a lawsuit if necessary. I do not consider saying "I am constrained by a warrant" to be a matter of National Security.

Salesforce sacks two top security engineers for their DEF CON talk

"There may be a severance package contingent on them leaving the company quietly"

Um, the fact that they've been fired is now public knowledge. I hardly see how removing a tweet is going to change the facts.

PR really is a shite business. It skirts around the law so often you have to wonder what kind of people work in it.

Horsemen of the disk-drive apocalypse will ride upon 256TB SSDs

@ The Original Steve

What makes you think I don't back up regularly ? Just because I say I'll make a full backup before reimaging has no bearing on what my other backup procedures are.

For your information, there is nothing I consider important that is not copied onto my NAS for one, and onto optical storage for two. But I hardly see why I should bother stitching things back together when I can just backup the current situation and re-copy it when the new disk arrives.

As for my NAS, I took the precaution of staging my HDD purchases. Four disks, one per month. That way I am convinced that there will be no mass failure all at once. And when one fails, I'll start buying four more, one per month. That way, I'll have backups if the rebuild process is too stressful on another one.

I know HDDs fail. Its happened to me like it has happened to everyone else. That is why I included the term "generally". I have never personally had a disk die on me from one minute to the next. There was always time to recognize the issue and get a replacement. But that's just me.

On the other hand, I witness an SSD in a colleagues' laptop go from working to dead in the space of ten seconds. One blue screen, and no reboot possible. There was no SMART warning. That's why I am a bit wary of the things, even though my personal SSD experience is totally reliable up to now.

SSD is fine - while it works

An SSD can work fine right up to the moment it dies. Then its a messy surprise because your computer is bricked and you have to find another one to order a replacement part.

Disks die as well, but generally you have a bit of warning with corrupt clusters or such, so you can order a new disk, make a full backup, and get the replacement disk formatted and ready before your PC is bricked. Generally. Of course, bad surprises are possible as well.

For businesses, I don't think there is any question that SSDs are the future. With their backup procedures and IT support, if an SSD dies, there will be spares and personnel to get everything set up and running again quickly.

For individuals, I think a hybrid situation is best. I have an SSD for booting Windows, and all of my data is on HDDs. If my SSD disk dies, I order a new one, re-image that and I'm working again. If one of my disks starts showing trouble, I'll back it up on my NAS and have a replacement delivered in time to not be bothered.

I like the idea of TB-size SSDs, but I have to admit that, until SSDs can show a bit more durability, I'm holding off from putting my data on something that can die from one minute to the next. That said, my Windows SSD has been chugging away valiantly since 2011. Might be time for me to order a spare . . .

So you're thinking about becoming an illegal hacker – what's your business plan?

Spread the risk

Good for the financial side, disastrous for security.

Secrets are best kept between one person. Adding another one is a risk. Adding a third is a liability. After that, you can be sure that someone will squeak - especially if the law is breathing down your necks. Someone will break, and then you're all screwed.

Although I admire the intellectual knowledge required to find ways into a network you are not supposed to access, I have only contempt for people who do that with the intent of extorting money. It is good to see that at least some of them are getting caught.

If we're in a simulation, someone hit it with a hammer, please: Milky Way spews up to 100 MEELLLION black holes

Quid of dark matter then ?

If there are supposed to be millions of black holes in our galaxy alone, does that have any impact on the matter / dark matter ratio ?

Toshiba fires off trifecta of SSDs with 30TB range-topping whopper

30TB

Of course, if I had won the lottery, I wouldn't worry about the how much, I'd just buy 12.

Of course, since I haven't won the lottery, I might think of getting me a 400GB version. Maybe.

Core-blimey! Intel's Core i9 18-core monster – the numbers

I want one !

18 cores. Miam.

Got a 4 core i7-6700 since 2015. I also slapped in 32GB of DDR4-3200.

Can I justify upgrading ? Not really. Doesn't matter. I want one of these babies. I'll get one in 2019 probably. With 64GB of DDR5 (by then).

I'll be able to push 7 Days to the full 3840 x 2160 of my widescreen. Finally.

Of course, by then another game will come out that will put my rig to its knees. As usual.

Hackers could exploit solar power equipment flaws to cripple green grids, claims researcher

Re: you'll probably end up having to build it yourself

I am building it myself.

Starting with a moat. I am in negotiations for some grizzlies, but there are authorization issues.

Movement detectors are not a problem, of course, but the permits for the gatling guns on the corner towers are - you wouldn't believe the conversations I've had on the phone. Some functionary actually had the gall to tell me it was illegal !

Slacking off? ICO probe throws up concerns over instant messaging

I see Sir Humphrey is still at work

"The Cabinet Office might argue that the data that cannot be extracted is not actually 'required', and so there is no need to access it."

I am quite certain that a judge would not be impressed by that argument.

The Next Big Thing in Wi-Fi? Multiple access points in every home

"controlling software in the cloud"

Because what on Earth could go wrong ?

In any case, thanks for the heads-up. Now I know that, the next time I need to shop for a Wi-Fi extender, I'm going to have to ensure that I can cut all cloudy control stuff before I complete my purchase.

Here's hoping that that won't be a complete nightmare.