Posts by Pascal Monett

So you're doing an IoT project. Cute. Let's start with the basics: Security

IoT is going to be the poster child of "self-regulation"

One of the basic tenets of capitalism viewed by right-wing Republicans is that the market is self-regulating and thus, should not be regulated.

As far as IoT is concerned, that means that they view millions of people spending money on products that are not secure, are eminently hackable and can cause major disruption of private life as a perfectly acceptable consequence because the market will just "adjust accordingly".

IoT is the "Unsafe at Any Speed" of the IT industry.

It needs regulation, and it needs a global body to evaluate and approve stuff for selling.

If we don't do that now, untold millions of people will suffer needlessly while crap-sellers stuff their pockets in what is surely a most immoral way.

But it's legal, so Republicans don't care.

@Chris King

Bud, as far as I'm concerned, you can wrap whatever the heck you want around that large brick as long as you only target IoT guys. I suggest a submarine.

I'll even help you. With the wrapping and mostly the smacking.

It's getting more and more Azure'd: For Microsoft, sorry seems to be the hardest word

"There are, however, some catches."

"Schools keen to grab the freebie will need to offer GitHub to all technical departments, allow GitHub to use their logo on its website, receive GitHub announcements and finally place one person per department on GitHub's teacher-training programme."

In other words : it's free for you if you sell us your soul, give us your firstborn and allow us to spam you into oblivion. Oh, and we'll "monetize" all the data you give us, as per standard corporate procedure.

How typical of Microsoft. Acquire something good that works, and turn it into yet another waiting room to Satan's realm.

Thanks, I'll pass.

Uber's London licence appeal off to flying start: No, you cannot do driver eye tests via video link

Re: I'm wondering what sort of job they were doing

The only "job" Uber is doing is keeping itself as far away from an actual job as possible, whilst raking in the dough and driving competition into the dust.

The obvious end game is Uber being a monopoly and suddenly prices are going to hitch a ride on the Saturn V.

Taiwanese tech upstarts stole our RAM secrets and staff, claims Micron

"A presentation at the event used Micron DRAM technology code names"

I think you'd have to be pretty stupid to steal tech when moving to a competitor and not bother to rename everything along the way to muddy the waters. Don't talk about F32, talk about Skeletor. Don't mention F32S, mention Chakram.

Be inventive, for Pete's sake. Word processors have had Find/Replace for more than 3 decades now.

Get a grip, literally: Clumsy robots can't nab humans' jobs just yet

Re: Screw the people this will put out of work then.

I do believe there will be one point where humans will have next to nothing to do anymore, because we will have made robots capable of doing it all.

At that point, we're going to have to get to grips with what kind of economy we'll have, because nobody working means no salaries on company budgets, but it also means no money to buy goods.

While I will admit that our current money-for-work economy is screwy and biased and must be controlled, it is still something that provides for the majority in one way or the other.

What will be the rules in an economy where all manufacturing is done by robots ? Al all repairs and maintenance as well ? You cannot put a price on goods nobody has any money to buy them with. And is there any sense to put a price on stuff made by robots anyway ? Oh, of course, today's billionaires will obviously say yes to that, but today's economy is not based on robots, it's based on men with families to support.

The robot economy will be a world where you work if you want to, but you'll still need to eat, drink and be appropriately dressed for the weather. Today, money is what gives us the ability to do all that, money in exchange for our work.

But tomorrow, when robots do everything, we're going to need an entirely different set of rules. What they will be, I have no idea.

Linus Torvalds tells kernel devs to fix their regressive fixing

@Pete 2 Re: "A more professional approach"

Pete 2, I very much doubt you have any qulification to teach Torvalds what a "professional approach" is in kernel design.

I think he's been at it long enough to have a gist of the general idea.

It would seem that this time the problem did not warrant a full-blown volcanic eruption.

Pity, I always enjoy the colors (from a safe distance).

A volt out of the blue: Phone batteries reveal what you typed and read

Re: chars

Probably because of physical reality, such as position on screen and trivial difference in amount of current needed to draw one character instead of another.

For example, it is quite logical that drawing a T will light up more pixels than an I, and a W will require even more pixels, thus more power. A trifling more, granted, but measurable nontheless.

Re: "Always carry a burner phone when visiting the USA"

Visiting the USA ?

In the Trump era ?

Why on God's Green Earth would you want to do that ?

Outage? No, phones are playing silly buggers, insists Sainsbury's Bank

Fret not though, you are a valued customer.

Because zero is a value.

Intel CEO Brian Krzanich quits biz after fling with coworker rumbled

Because to a manager you can say : resign or you will be fired for gross misconduct.

They don't bother giving the choice to the worker because he can't afford to resign.

Please tighten your passwords and assume the brace position, says plane-tracking site

Re: Panic

That must have been a harrowing experience indeed - especially given all the terrible things Hollywood has taught us can happen on a flight (engine fire, hydraulic system failure, etc).

I guess you cannot help but imagining all the possible horrors and wondering which one it is. Getting the call was probably the greatest relief, learning it was "just" the A/C was the cherry on top.

NASA eggheads draw up blueprints for spotting, surviving asteroid hits

Not sure about that. If your only job is to constantly try and get funding for something to be done without actually getting anything done, it doesn't sound so glorious.

Atari accuses El Reg of professional trolling and making stuff up. Welp, here's the interview tape for you to decide...

Re: with love and compassion

Nope.

I have no compassion for a marketing guy who invites a technical journal to an interview without bringing any functional items, instead bringing mock-ups, not being able to answer technical questions and then pretending to be hurt when the ensuing article is not written like a Vogue-magazine fanpiece.

Flaming idiot. And now he's Streisanded himself.

No sympathy.

National ID cards might not mean much when up against incompetence of the UK Home Office

Don't forget that a card with a picture of your face on it is biometric.

Microsoft shoves US govt IT contract where ICE throws kids: Out of sight in a chain-link cage

Re: Who stole America?

That's easy : bigoted racists.

It's time for TLS 1.0 and 1.1 to die (die, die)

So we're to expect a raft of browser updates then ?

I wonder if Microsoft is going to update Internet Explorer . . .

Donald Trump trumped as US Senate votes to reinstate ZTE ban

Nice to see that some parts of US Government are still working for the US

A bit reassuring, really, what with the Republicans still blindly pretending to support Trump and the Democrats totally incapable of any action whatsoever, it is reassuring to see that there are still some people in high places who are actually interested in pretending to work for US interests and not for their own.

Caveat : I do not know those senators and have no idea whose campaign funds they are defending.

'No, we are not rewriting Office in JavaScript' and other Microsoft tales

Hooo, sneaky.

Well done pointing that out. So Tech guy is talking about Office 365, and SpokesMouth denies that Office is being rewritten.

Brilliant strawman. Totally got me.

So, let me see

A Technical Manager says they're done rewriting Office 365 in Javascript.

A Spokesperson says they're not rewriting office 365 in Javascript.

Given that the spokesperson is spouting the bullshit he's told to, my vote goes to the rewriting of Office 365 in Javascript.

Now the question is : is that supposed to be a good thing ?

Strip Capita of defence IT contract unless things improve – Brit MPs

Not a problem

There will be a brand new company soon available to replace Capita's dismal record. It will be named Atipac, and will offer true professionals and brand new management*, but all people will have at least 20 years of experience in government contracts.

Atipac : your new guarantee of success.

* any resemblance to Capita employees is purely coincidentail

What can you do when the pup of programming becomes the black dog of burnout? Dude, leave

Managers who have people working more than 60 hours per week are not doing their job.

A manager's job is to manage resources, not exhaust them. If your employees are working overtime all the time, it is on you to realize that you need more resources - else you will find yourself with a global revolt at some point and some, or most, of your resources will walk to other pastures.

And recreating a group is always an impossible task.

Somehow, that is not part of the MBA curriculum.

Pity.

Wires, chips, and LEDs: US trade bigwigs detail Chinese kit that's going to cost a lot more

Of course not. That sentence has never appeared in any of the comics he reads.

UN's freedom of expression top dog slams European copyright plans

Brussels ?

I think you're confused. You should go back and read the article again.

It's a United Nations official that is involved, not an EU one.

Silk road adviser caught, Kaspersky sues Dutch paper, and Vietnam's tech clampdown

Re: S3

I propose this scenario :

An internal IT jockey has a project and needs to test some functionaity. He goes to his boss and gets approval for a bucket. He loads demo data on it, nothing important or critical, no customer data. Security is not important, testing functionality is, so he keeps his life simple and doesn't lock anything down.

He does his tests, bugs out and leaves the bucket for another round of testing later on.

Meanwhile, pentesters happen upon the bucket, alert the meadia, articles screaming bloody murder are written, and the IT guy quietly activates security on the bucket thinking "bloody hell, what a lot of hot air for nothing".

ICANN pays to push Whois case to European Court of Justice

Re: What are ICANN smoking?

At this point, I think whatever it is it has been integrated into the atmospheric control of the building. The vast majority of the employees are inhaling it without even knowing - or have forgotten that they are.

There is only one who is responsible for all this : the one who keeps pouring it into the A/C vats. Marby, is that you ?

Would you rather health data or finance data in the cloud?

Glad to see that there's a strong consensus here.

Unfortunate that the decision-makers are not a part of this.

Microsoft tries cutting the Ribbon in Office UI upgrade

Not all of them. In any case, not to the satisfaction of the users I have talked to.

It's a standard process for me when I install Windows to go to the Sound panel and choose the "No Sounds" theme.

OS sounds were a novelty when Windows 3.0 came out. They've been a nuisance since Windows 95.

People don't like because it pretty much destroyed their acquired keyboard shortcuts habit which allowed them to breeze through complex operations that they were used to doing.

Especially in Excel and probably Word as well.

The main issue with the Ribbon is that MS didn't bother providing it as an option and keeping the menu interface (and proper kb shortcuts) for those who were used to it. No, you had to change your ways.

For professionals who actually want to work with the products, it was quite frustrating and painful.

US senators get digging to find out the truth about FCC DDoS attack

"maintain paper trails to help track ballots and guard against tampering"

Here's a novel idea : put the name of the candidates each on a piece of paper. Have the voters go into a privacy stall to put the paper of their choice into an envelope. Then have them go to a box, controlled by a voting committee member, and under the watch of the controller, place their envelope in the box.

They will have voted, the votes can be tallied, there is a paper trail, and fucking with the system is way, way harder than a stupid half-witted computer litterally made to be hacked.

But why make it simple when you can complexify things ?

Astroboffins 'sprinkle iron filings' over remnant supernova

Not too shabby indeed

A very interesting remark that puts things in perspective in a useful manner.

Space is very often awesome and mind-boggling given the size of the objects we look at and their distance. It's something that, I think, tends to numb the mind a bit.

So yeah, a reading on a magnetic field that is 50k times less powerful than a fridge magnet, from this distance ? That's hardly shabby, that's simply incredible and a wonderful indication of Humanity's technological level.

Now, where's my flying car again ? <ducks>

Microsoft reveals which Windows bugs it might decide not to fix

What all this boils down to

This article basically points out that Microsoft's reaction to a bug is as follows :

- is it a nuisance ?

and

- do we care ?

I think that clarifies things pretty well.

Dixons Carphone 'fesses to mega-breach: Probes 'attempt to compromise' 5.9m payment cards

Re: my domain has as many addresses as I want

Same here. I've set up a special account for that kind of situation : [e-mail]

I use that in response to any question and for online subscriptions that I do not intend to follow but have to sign up to get what I'm looking for.

Needless to say : all mail going into that account is immediately trashed.

UK.gov online dating tips: Do get consent, don't make false claims or fake profiles

Re: cock shots

I simply cannot fathom what kind of Neanderthal-level moron thinks it's a good idea to send a pic of the ugliest part of his anatomy to a woman he has never met (and will doubtless never meet after that). I'm as fond of my little sergeant as anyone else is fond of theirs, but that's the last thing you want to introduce yourself with to any woman.

I can very well imagine a woman's reaction to getting such a pic : burn it with fire and ban the offending sender from ever contacting her again.

Sure, there are certainly a portion of dating site subscribers that are there only to find a one-night stand, but even then, if your only game is grunting, you won't be scoring much I would think.

Trump's ZTE deal challenged by Senate

"a 180 degree turn away from the president’s promise"

No surprise there. The "President" is currently as reliable as a rooster weather vane in a hurricane.

Men are officially the worst… top-level domain

Re: so?

Exactly. The new TLDs have all the spammers ? Good. That way we know what to block and no useful traffic will be lost in the shuffle.

June 2018, and Windows Server can be pwned with a DNS request

Re: Where did Microsoft Secure Code Initiative go?

To that great Clippy store in the sky.

That was quick: Seattle rushes to kill tax that would mildly inconvenience Amazon

"overturn its earlier decision"

So Seattle got itself some balls, then realized next morning it was drunk and took an Alka Seltzer or ten.

<sigh>

Tesla undecimates its workforce but Elon insists everything's absolutely fine

"some kind of journalist rating system"

Oooh what a threat that is. How's he gonna do that ? A website called IsHeHotOrNot ? With article links so people can go read (ha!) and then judge ?

Sorry buddy, if it's not a 5 minute YouTube clip, you have no chance.

Besides, even if that does happen, the obvious response is a website called IsMuskHotOrNot, with every singe Tesla failure called for vote.

You don't look on stable terrain there, Elon.

Is Microsoft about to git-merge with GitHub? Rumors suggest: Yes

Re: most graphical improvements are Win10 only

You repeat that as if it was a widely known fact. Citation please ?

Judge on Microsoft gender discrimination case finds 'flaw' in class grouping argument

Re: Why try thinking about it in any other way than what the women claimed happeend?

The question was about Class Action, not about whether the claim was right or not.

Thorny issue to be sure, but . . .

The fact that they are all women should not be enough to validate a class action.

Besides, more than 8,000 checks sounds like a lot of payout hassle for a poor lawyer. Methinks a "cy pres" is in order here, no ? I'm there's at least two Universities that would gladly devote their bank accounts to holding that money in the "rare" case someone actually comes to claim it.

Right ?

What got breached this week? Ticket portals, DNA sites, and Atlanta's police cameras

"It’s not something that makes or breaks cases for us"

So let me get this straight : losing video footage of actual criminal activity is not a make-or-break situation, but not being able to decrypt phones that might have incriminating data is ?

Hypocrites.

Worst. Birthday. Ever. IPv6's party falls flat

Well, in all honesty, there may be no more IPv4 addresses to give out, but the ones that ISPs already have are not going to wear out, now are they ?

I think that, the troubles that IPv6 impose, plus the simple rule of if it's not broken, don't fix it, explain why IPv6 uptake is not the star-studded cakewalk some engineers thought it would be.

PETA calls for fish friendly Swedish street signage

Re: their most appreciative audience is themselves

So, basically, you're saying they're trolls ?

The hits keep coming for Facebook: Web giant made 14m people's private posts public

"at a time when the biz can hardly afford to cast further doubt"

Really ? FB cannot afford further doubt ?

Because I'm still waiting for news of the mass exodus and shutting down of accounts that has been promised everywhere and, as long as that hasn't happened, I fail to see what FB is mortally in danger of.

This is just more of the same ; FB cocks up, nobody moves, the world keeps turning, El Zuck keeps raking in the dough.

Chinese tech giant ZTE is back in business – plus or minus $1.4bn and its entire board

Re: I know who I would pick a fight with

I would be very wary of picking a fight with Obama - there is steel underneath that charming smile.

As for Trump, well I prefer to keep well away from him at all times.

Well, people without brains today aren't going to be getting them in time for Mueller's report, now are they ?