Posts by Pascal Monett

Encryption backdoors? It's an ongoing dialogue, say anti-terror bods

"secure comms are the point at which people move from curious innocents to national security risks"

False argument. The US Constitution, if it were still respected, is that point.

"The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized."

This Amendment does not care if unreasonable searches are conducted via electronic surveillance or by goose-stepping through the house. Neither are permitted. The Constitution says you need a warrant to invade a suspect's privacy, period.

Why this point is not driven home with a bat sledgehammer is beyond me.

French hackers selling hidden .22 calibre pen guns on secret forums

"bagging between €5 million to €10 million a month"

How is it that such financial volume is not tracked down and under surveillance ?

We're not talking about cash changing hands in a dark alley, this is online financial transactions. The police have all the tools they need to track this, so how do scammers not get caught ?

Is there only one cop on duty at any given time ?

Songsmiths sue US antitrust over Google-friendly rules ruling

"To understand [..] requires understanding how song licensing works in the United States"

Short version : it's fucked by corporate interests.

You can say that about most of the American judicial system as well.

So, time for a little revolution ?

Dell overtakes HPE in server shipments as worldwide sales shrink

If you lose money on everything you sell, volume is hardly going to help.

Good luck squeezing saturated market, Euro mobe firms, say Orange, Telefonica

Re: accept that they're in a mature market.

Agreed. Except one thing : when's the last time you've heard of a Bord accepting anything that didn't increase their share value ?

Great British Block-Off: GCHQ floats plan to share its DNS filters

"allow the public to be protected from [..] attacks that have already been spotted by GCHQ"

Sorry, but what attacks have the GCHQ spotted up to now ?

Apart from those the NSA told them about ?

I don't think a blind man is the best thing to warn me about obstacles on the road.

Top infosec vendors, cops, liberate thousands from ransomware

Excellent

No cat to pat right now, but I am immensely pleased that the scum are getting their rug pulled from under their feet.

There are intelligent people on both sides of the judicial fence. Kudos to this group for hitting crims where it hurts.

HPE EMEA boss confirms shuffling of exec deck

“We will have a big bank of money to hopefully allow us to do things moving forward.”

Sorry, but if you have a "big bank of money" and you don't manage to "do things" then you are a waste of time.

That simple sentence is everything wrong with out civilization today. Hey, I've got mountains of cash ! Maybe I'll get lucky and accomplish something !

Scarcity is what prompts true greatness. Let's see you get along on 1% of your bank. It will be harder, but your efforts will actually bring something to the table.

VMware Workstation's installer loads danger-junk, so patch it ASAP

Before pitying Microsoft, check its bank balance again.

Sports doping agency WADA says hackers lifted Olympic athletes' medical records

Re: I don't agree that it should be *public* knowledge

Everything is public knowledge these days, because people trust nobody.

Ironically, people spaff every detail of their lives on Facebook anyway.

Explain if you can, I'll just have another whisky.

Using a thing made by Microsoft, Apple or Adobe? It probably needs a patch today

Patching, in itself, is not the issue

having patches means the software is maintained, which is a Good Thing (TM), because the threat landscape evolves constantly. It is ridiculous to imagine that any group of developers, however smart they may be, could preconceive every single possible threat scenario that will crop up.

Given the complexity required of today's software, that must interface almost with everything under the Sun, some bugs obviously slip through as well. It is nice to have those bugs squashed in a timely manner.

The issue is not with the patching. The issue is with the fuckups that insufficient whiteboarding and testing introduce into patches that pretend to solve something and either don't, or fuck something else up along the way.

I am prepared to accept that a patch does not wholly solve a problem. Writing software is difficult and I know by experience that edge cases are a maddening nuisance to deal with.

I cannot accept that a patch bricks a computer, or otherwise trashes an entire environment. That can only happen when next to no testing was ever done, in a case of "oh that problem ? Just flip the bit to 0 and we're done with it". Seems obvious, but even when it is, test, test and test again, especially when your customer base numbers in the millions.

And I accept that, even when you do test against every single scenario your PC catalogue has, there's always some extreme case that slips through. PCs are the ultimate hardware platform, they can modified in uncountable ways.

But if you fuck up a console, you deserve to be fired, if not shot.

Yelp wins fight to remain morally bankrupt

Editorial immunity ? That is a thing ?

I think that a lot of websites slammed for being responsible for the posts on their site should take a loooong look at this ruling.

I'm ordering the popcorn now.

It actually will be Obama who decides whether to end US government oversight of the internet

Re: ICANN needs much stronger controls in place before it should become independent of the US

Indeed. In that spirit, here is my flamethrower range called "The Persuader" . . .

Google's become an obsessive stalker and you can't get a restraining order

It will continue for a while longer

Social inertia is holding up this kind of thing and will likely do so until people start getting annoyed by it in massive numbers. From the enthusiastic gushing I hear around me concerning phone abilities, Cortana and Siri, and "how practical it is", I don't think we will reach that stage anytime soon.

But something, someday, will cause a massive change of perception, and then Google will have to dial back, which it will because Google is not full of idiots. Google employs very intelligent people and they are measured against the ultimate benchmark : ad revenue. Anything that makes that go down is anathema, and what was declared the month before in PR speak doesn't count.

So, one day, people will get fed up with this, just like one day, people will vote intelligently.

In other words, not during this century.

Daddy, what's 'P2P file sharing'?

"Thanks to the "user-generated content" loophole in the Digital Millennium Copyright Act"

Funny that, YouTube has absolutely no qualms in citing that very act when its automated infringement tool decides your "user-generated content" is a copy of something a bunch of lawyers decided was copied.

And in that case, you have zero recourse, because the choice is accept and keep at least your account, or contest and then, if decided against you (by whom, already ? Ah right, some guy at Youtube you didn't vote for), your entire account is cancelled.

Talk about balanced.

Post-Brexit UK.gov must keep EU scientists coming, say boffins

"attracting European students and staff members to the UK was necessary"

Sorry, but Brexit means that is over. You have specifically voted the EU out, so there is no incentive for EU students to deal with you any more.

Next question ?

Nvidia: Eight bits ought to be enough for anybody ... doing AI

"increasing our reliance on stable internet connections and trust in far-away platforms"

Far-away platforms hosted in NSA land ?

Nope, no trust there.

Meet DDoSaaS: Distributed Denial of Service-as-a-Service

"buying DDoS protection offered by CloudFlare is almost mandatory"

Nope, no need. Just put down some money for a DDOS attack on Cloudflare. See how they like a spoonful of their own medicine.

VMware eases Windows Mobile 10's turn-your-phone-into-a-PC pain

Great news

I'm sure the 5 owners of Windows Phone will be overjoyed.

Bug in Microsoft's StorSimple arrays can kill backups

It's Microsoft

Microsoft doesn't need a bug to kill your backups, it does it through sheer force of habit.

Dropbox apologies for clunky administrator account access on Macs

Re : it works for some people

It works for way too many people, which is why these "apps" continue to request - and obtain - access to elements that have nothing to do with their stated purpose or requirements.

Since when does an app retain the passwords it needs ? It hands the request to the OS, which hands the answer back : fail or pass. Then the app deals with the result. That is called managing security.

This is just the consequence of the phone-app environment where everything accesses everything and the clueless masses bleat in unison while accepting the situation.

HP Inc dumps Salesforce, adopts Microsoft's cloudy CRM

"perhaps [HP] just reckons Microsoft offers a superior CRM"

Nah, you see it's just that Philip is the nephew of a board member and he just got a job at Redmond.

Now his uncle is going to get a shiny new Mercedes SL.

Phones exploding in kids' hands, shares tanking – but it's not all good news at Samsung

Indeed

I find it hardly a good point to know that a phablet is less likely to spontaneously combust.

Like having a car that only has a 1% chance to explode.

Nope, don't want.

Delete Google Maps? Go ahead, says Google, we'll still track you

"basic features of your device may no longer function as intended,"

It may be that they won't function as Google intended, but they will function as I intend them to, meaning not at all.

Google Play is not something I have use for. It is never called on and I have disabled updates on it.

Turning on GPS, WiFi and mobile data are things I do when I need them, not when the phone goes on.

It's a fucking phone, not an extension of my life.

Tesla to stop killing drivers: Software update beamed to leccy cars

"it was the car's failure"

Sorry, but no. It was the drivers' failure to stay alert and in control that caused this regrettable accident.

Blaming the car, the software or anything else is just trying to justify his unacceptable behavior.

Until truly self-driving cars exist on the market, it is the driver who is responsible for what his car does, nothing else.

Kneel before Zod! OpenText claims mighty Documentum from Dell

Re: just so they have new fields of potential customers to harass

From a marketing point of view, that's a pretty good reason.

Upstart AI dreams of 'disrupting' digital marketing – with sex

"the power of evolutionary algorithms"

Alert ! We have a new entry in the Bullshit Bingo database !

All players revise your cards.

Brexit makes life harder for an Internet of Things startup

This link might clear up some confusion.

Edward Snowden's 40 days in a Russian airport – by the woman who helped him escape

It's no longer "innocent until proven guilty"

The current system is innocent until suspected of guilt.

Proving guilt is becoming less and less mandatory. I'm reminded of police procedures in the late 1800s, where you had inspectors gathering a fourth of a proof, a half proof, and a few eighths of proof, and hey ! that adds up to a full proof ! Guilty as charged !

"Justice" is going the same way now, with the terrism charge demonstrably used as go-to-jail card. Once there, they gather just four quarter proofs and you're never getting out again.

Ain't progress wonderful ?

Hololens for biz shocker: Surprisingly, it doesn't totally suck

"evaluating the insurance risks for buildings"

The expensive inspector is expensive because he goes on site and makes sure that the insurance knows the state of the building to be insured.

If I were an insurance company, I sure as hell would not accept a virtual tour of a building unless the company being insured agreed to virtual insurance - in other words if anything happens they don't get reimbursed.

And gestures. I can't stop picturing a guy in a suit waving around frantically during the whole call because his PowerPoint presentation isn't going well due to a botched Windows 1 0 update. Gets me giggling.

Really guys, video conferencing already has a hell of a time taking off, you think silver-haired suits paid 1000$/hour are going to don one of these things and talk blindly in their conference room ?

If there is one thing high-paid suits cannot stand, it's looking ridiculous. Gestures ain't helping on that point.

Just not cricket: Microsoft's big data Googly called No Ball

Re: Sight

Agreed, begin able to see is good.

Or did you mean, sigh ?

Ah, the marvels of spelling...

Kudos to the academician

That Stern guy deserves applaud for resisting the current ever-present urge to put computers in charge of even more data and for doing it with rock-solid arguments to boot.

Indeed, it would seem that the suggestion to use Big Data for the DLS evaluation is just another shiny shiny that would excite the engineers but is useless to the real world since, apparently, DLS only takes the last 4 years of data into account.

And I like very much the point about not taking into account personal stats since it could skew a team's entire strategy. Very realistic.

Thumbs up for keeping a sport about the sport and resisting the siren song of borgification by engineer.

Israeli Pentagon DDoSers explain their work, get busted by FBI

"prohibited from stressing internet connections [that they] do not have [..] authorisation to test"

If that is true, then their DDoS of the FBI site is justified by invoice and they can easily name the contact and get their name cleared.

Unfortunately for them, if the FBI arrested them it would seem that they have a bit more explaining to do than that.

Florida Man's prized jeep cremated by exploding Samsung Galaxy Note 7

Re: The windscreen glass melted

@Are car fires usually that hot?

Personal experience :

I was doing a consulting job for one of the larger French banks in Paris in the summer of 1997 (good times). It was lunch hour, the canteen was on the 3rd floor, I was sitting next to the window overlooking the street. Although the windows were soundproofed, I heard a collision. Curious, I looked outside.

A small Renault 5 had ran into a street pole. The driver was trying to get out. I noticed the police sirens when three cars came careening in. They arrested the guy without trouble.

That's when I noticed the gas dripping from the rear of the car. I don't know how long it had been dripping, but seconds after I noticed it, the gas caught fire (it was summer). As I watched, it took about three to four minutes before the fire appeared inside the car, but when it did, it took less than 90 seconds and the car was a raging inferno. Seats, tires, paint, everything was burning.

In the middle of that inferno, I heard a big bang - the windshield had shattered and wanted people to know it.

That's how hot a car fire can get.

End of story ? The cops spread out as soon as they noticed the fire, making sure nobody got too close, but they didn't try to put it out. I didn't see anyone radio in, but the fire truck arrived in due time - after the car was reduced to a metal husk. In all the confusion, the perp had been taken away without my noticing.

A most interesting lunch.

SOHOpeless Seagate NAS boxen become malware distributors

Any time you get money by just sitting on your ass and waiting for it to roll in is very good ROI.

Humans are terrible when it comes to realizing what they are doing. When VCRs were in all living rooms, we had the blinking 12 problem*. Now that everyone and his dog has internet access, we have the default password problem.

Do we learn ? Nope.

* for you younguns that never saw it : VCRs that blinked at 12:00 were the ones that their owners didn't know how to set the time and never bothered finding out. There were enough of them for the Internet to remember.

Google's AI finds its voice ... and it's surprisingly human

"a system modelled on how the human brain works"

No. A system modelled on how we think the human brain works.

We still don't understand everything, and it will take at least a few more decades before we do.

I don't even want them to look human. Robots should not look human, nor sound human. They are machines, they are tools.

Let's not add more confusion for the weak-minded. They have enough trouble already with all those conspiracy theories.

Petulant Facebook claims it can't tell the difference between child abuse and war photography

Re: At age 32, one is fully responsible for their actions

At age 32, one is considered, often wrongly, fully responsible for their actions etc.

FTFY

US Congress blew the whistle on tax-dodging Apple, claims Europe

Somehow I don't see why this is sooo difficult

Apple is a US company. As such, it declares profits, and the US government should just say : you made this much profit, you pay this much tax. Why is it such a problem ?

The entire issue is based around where the profit is made. Wipe the table clean : if you're a US company, it shouldn't matter where the profit is made in order to pay US tax.

As a friendly gesture, Apple could deduct taxes paid in other countries (yeah, that'll help them).

Foreign companies, of course, would only pay tax on profit made on US soil, deducting that from the taxes to be paid in their own country.

As always : KISS.

NASA's OSIRIS-REx is off to nick some rocks from asteroid Bennu

Re: If the Bods at NASA can see that far ahead

If they can "see" that far ahead it is because they are engineers, scientists and astronomers and they are working with rules that have been well-proven that they know by heart.

The only rule about the Euromillions is that it is specifically tailored so that you lose. Which doesn't keep me from playing a ticket regularly, just like you.

EU court: Linking to pirated stuff doesn't breach copyright... except when it does

Just goes to show

It seems to be open season on copyright right now.

Oh well, a bit of disruptive justice can't be all that bad, eh Uber ?

Inside our three-month effort to attend Apple's iPhone 7 launch party

Saving face becomes a questionable effort when said face is covered in tar.

BT needs to ditch its legacy to be competitive, says chief architect

"unfortunately that’s what makes the press"

Sorry, if you are a services provider, it is quite normal to be judged on your poorest performance because that is what your customer might get.

I'd like to see the ad world in a universe where companies had to advertise only their least appealing offering.

"10 kbps guaranteed !"

I think that would set some things straight.

Apple: Crisis? What innovation crisis? BTW, you like our toothbrush?

"if they didn't, the other one would, and take all the spoils"

And, if the Watch table is empty, then how many spoils are there to take ?

Ten-year-old Windows Media Player hack is the new black, again

Those who forget history . . .

Intel's makeshift Kaby Lake Cores hope to lure punters from tired PCs

I'm well aware of the technicalities of the legal side of the argument.

They say it's a license. I say bollocks.

If it were a license, then you could bring in a broken disk and get a free replacement, because the disk is your right to view.

But that never happens, ergo it's mine, license be damned.

Sex is bad for older men, and even worse when it's good

That is a valid question

But in any case, if I'm told that in seven years' time I'll have to have boring, infrequent sex to live longer, I have but one thing to do : thank God for whisky !

It's time for humanity to embrace SEX ROBOTS. For, uh, science, of course

So, sexbots and child versions in the cards ?

As much as child pornography disgusts me, if it can keep a percentage of pedophiles from harming actual children, I say go for it.

As for the stuffed up repressed puritans who would like, once again, to banish all thought of fun, I have one thing to say : good luck with that.

Hacker takes down CEO wire transfer scammers, sends their Win 10 creds to the cops

Don't think so

The real solution is to have proper checks and balances, and a CRM solution that is up to date.

If these spammers can send you mail that looks like your Financial Officer in <other country> needs money, then they can probably send you one that looks like the Secure Mail conditions are correct, even if the normal flags are red.

Managers are not technical people. However, sending money should be an easy affair of telling the local accountant : send this amount to our <country> branch, and ask a report as to why they need the money. The accountant then fires up his accounting package that has the IBAN account number and does the transfer.

Of course, the real CEO of <country> branch then calls to find out what the hell is going on. the situation is resolved without trouble.

The issue is only that people get mails telling them to wire money to an account in the email. Sorry, that should just never work. You tell me to send funds to one of my suppliers, I don't need your mail to know what account to send the money to. I will also check whether or not I have any pending invoices with that customer before sending anything.

Organization, people. It is just inconceivable that major organizations depend on IBAN account numbers sent in emails to do their work. If they are so big as companies go, then they have all the details in their accounting packages, so why is this a problem ?

Lose a satellite? Us? China silent on fate of Gaofen civilian/spy sat

"If it is indeed a failure, it's the first for a Long March lifter since December 2013"

Correction : it's the first we know of.