Posts by Pascal Monett

Anon man suing Google wants crim conviction to be forgotten

How is it Google's fault ?

"ABC wants to remove public references from Google to a criminal conviction that are apparently stopping him from setting up an investment business"

I'm sorry, but a country with a registry of companies should have its own access to police records, and should definitely be capable of deciding whether or not to grant a license to someone without using Google.

In Luxembourg I can tell you that if you have a criminal record, you will not be setting up a company, nor will you have manager status in any company - and Google has nothing to do with it.

If this ABC thinks Google is keeping him from becoming CEO, well that says a lot about his level of intelligence.

TSB goes TITSUP: Total Inability To Surprise Users, Probably

"some of our customers are experiencing intermittent issues with online and mobile banking"

Yeah, 99% is "some".

The same old words, the same lame excuses, the same bungling ineptitude. I feel like yawning, it's not even funny any more.

On the other hand, maybe TSB is going to be the first bank where customers actually vote with their feet.

Nah, not gonna happen.

So, what's the news about bears in the forests these days ? . . .

Let's get ethical, says Salesforce as revenues rocket 27% – thanks in part to US Border Patrol

The USA is not supposed to compare itself to lesser countries to feel good about itself.

Since WWI US policy has always been to set the best laws and follow them, compare its success to itself and declare whether or not it was doing well. If it wasn't, it was time to try harder.

Until the NSA took over, Eisenhower left the political scene (with a warning) and fraidey-cat politics became de rigueur. So now you have to compare yourselves to Russia and China to feel better.

What a pity.

Huawei's Alexa-powered AI Cube wants to squat in your living room too

"it isn't that large – as you can see."

No, I can't see how large it is. There isn't a single thing I can use as scale on that first picture. The second one has apparently some fleshy bit on it I interpret as a hand, but I'm not sure. As far as I know, that iThingy could well be sitting on a regular 1 meter diameter kitchen table, which would make it frikkin' huge.

The next time you want us to "see", chuck a ruler next to it.

C'mon, if you say your device is 'unhackable', you're just asking for it: Bitfi retracts edgy claim

Re: my grandfather [..] invested in Russian railway shares

As did half of France at the time.

I found my grandpa's shares in the attick, while cleaning it out one day. They went to the recycling bin.

Apple to require privacy policy on all apps

Re: Apple needed my starting location and my destination

Well of course it did, but that doesn't mean you were at the starting point. Not until you start using Apple GPS, obviously.

I can check out the road from New York to Philadelphia, but I live in France, so any consideration that I am at either of those locations is wrong. Of course, I'm guessing that >90% of such consultations is done by people who actually are at the starting point, so the assumption must be generally right, but still : until you've turned on your GPS, the app is not supposed to know where you are.

@Richard 12 : your SatNav is a complete package, with self-contained maps (that you should be able to update). A smartphone may have maps for "offline" use with certain apps, but generally they use the server for the data and for navigation.

DraftKings rides to court, asks to unmask 10 DDoS suspects

“[..] the attack prevented [..] users from actively engaging with the [..] Website,”

In other words, the DDoS prevented DraftKing users from . . gambling.

Come on, if your site gets DDoSed and all you do is publish rankings, then your users are going to wait it out patiently until your site is online again and you're not losing money from users that are temporarily not "actively engaging".

If you're loosing wads of money for a "sports" site because you're offline for half an hour, then your site is a gambling site.

Lyon for speed, San Francisco for money, Amsterdam for fun: the best cities to be a techie

300+ mile range ?

Hey, don't knock it - they're progressing.

While we have 500+ miles as standard, USAians used to have very cheap oil. Twenty years ago, had there been an Internet, he would have been saying that he had a nice 200+ mile range.

Now that they're paying around the same price, their mileage is starting to go up. Good for everyone.

Good news, bad news, weird news – it's the week in networking

Re: A private network for aircraft controllers shouldn't be all bad

No, it would just be very costly. And replicating the resilience of the global web is very hard on a tiny replica, so public internet it is.

But I don't like the idea that some state-sponsored hackers (NSA no more than anyone else) are going to be able to play merry mayhem with ATC data.

Re: ATC over IP

And that is why our aircraft crisscross the world with so little accidents. If air traffic was controlled like Paris controls its périphérique, we'd be reading about a plane crash every hour.

Air traffic is the very last bastion of actual redundancy requirement, even NASA has trouble doing as well (not a good sign).

I remember that one time when a Swiss ATC was responsible for a plane crash. It shocked the world because everyone thought that Switzerland was the last place beancounters would have been able to interfere, but that's what it was.

Beancounters and safety do not go together.

Congress wants CVE stability, China wants your LinkedIn details, and Adobe wants you to patch Creative Cloud

“Funding this key cybersecurity program through piecemeal, short-term contracts..."

is exactly how the true amount of funding can be obscured to the public eye, so I really doubt much will change there.

And while on that kind of funding, does the White House still buy $1,000 toilet seats ?

Google goes bilingual, Facebook fleshes out translation and TensorFlow is dope

"using a combination of various new and old techniques, such as adversarial training"

Adversarial training ?

They whip the AI until it gets it right ?

First they came for the fish and I said nothing . . .

Europe's GDPR, Whois shakeup was supposed to trigger spam tsunami – so, er, where is it?

"spammers could run wild with no way to identify and stop them."

Well given how much spam was going around before GDPR, I'd say they were already running wild with no way to identify and stop them.

So, no change.

I love it when facts come like a clue-by-4 in the face of people who spew bullshit to the benefit of only themselves.

Chinese hotel chain warns of massive customer data theft

Inside job / 8 bitcoin per record

I smell a guy who had the data and got the bright idea to add another line to his revenue stream.

Anybody else think that 8 bitcoin is a tad expensive for info on one ID ?

No do-overs! Appeals court won’t hear $8.8bn Oracle v Google rehash

Re: "if their strategy had been different in the 80's"

If that were the case, IBM might have filed a patent on their PC and we wouldn't have the Internet today, or smartphones, or much of anything else in computer tech because IBM would have stifled the market by forcing everyone to work with it at its prices.

Companies would have a few PCs, like in accounting, design and HR, but that would likely be all.

Maybe Apple would evolved very differently, and the war between PC and Mac would have given Apple a far greater share of the market, but we're still talking closed design here.

It is the fact that IBM never put a patent on its toy that birthed the computing world we have today.

And gave many of us our careers.

So thanks, IBM, for not having had today's patent lawyers on hand back then !

Re: "the only thing that forces things like Linux to be open"

Is that they were presented like that from day 1, and thus they stay that way.

I do not care what copyright law says, if someone says : this is free, then I can take it and nobody can complain.

The law can dance any way it wishes, it cannot prevent free.

There can, however, be conditions to free. Not paying does not necessarily mean you can do anything with it, as in free for private use means you cannot build a company around it. But that is in the contract when you download the code and you are supposed to know about it.

Huawei elbows aside Apple to claim number-two phone maker spot

Re: "a 10% rise in food prices due to the weather"

Citation please ?

Or are you just pulling that out of somewhere I'd rather not mention ?

Indeed. A fine actress, and a fine series.

It's a wonder to think how the series would have evolved if they hadn't changed principle actress.

ZX Spectrum reboot scandal: Directors quit, new sack effort started

"Indiegogo is continuing the process ..."

Of pretending it gives a shit about scam artists using it to get money from the sheeple.

This is not first, and certainly not the last, group of pathetic liars to take advantage of this kind of service to line their pockets. And as long as Indiegogo cannot be held responsible, they've got no reason to stop the cash from flowing.

And hey, if some projects actually pan out, it's just a fringe benefit and good PR.

Ah, um, let's see. Yup... Fortnite CEO is still mad at Google for revealing security hole early

No, the moral of this story is that 30% is visibly perceived as normal.

Success is when your victims agree with your practices.

Windows 0-day pops up out of nowhere Twitter

"unaware of a practical solution to this problem"

Well that's reassuring.

MS continues its glorious history of selling swiss-cheese security to millions.

Thank goodness XP, Vista, Windows 1 0 were all rewritten "from the ground up", otherwise we'd have the same bugs and exploits that we had in every previous version.

Oh wait . . .

Boffins bork motion control gear with the power of applied sound

There are limitations to the attacks

No shit, Sherlock.

As in, you'd have to set up your emitters in the vicinity of the intended victim. Good luck trying that inconspicuously in public.

Then you need to have an eyeball on what the intended victim is doing, in order to manipulate at the right time. Good luck doing that if said victim lives on the 3rd floor.

As a theoretical exercise, this is somewhat interesting, but as a threat I really do not see how it can possibly be deployed.

UK getting ready to go it alone on Galileo

That is going to be one hell of an expensive failure

So let's see, what is the UK Gov history on hardware accomplishments ?

Oh yeah, they built a new aircraft carrier, but forgot the catapults.

Yep, great indicator of confidence there. They'll send up GPS satellites and forget the communication system, or something like that.

This is the start of a looong popcorn era.

We can rebuild him, we have the technology: AI will help security teams smack pesky anomalies

"UEBA baselining with machine learning can adjust its worldview of a user's behaviour"

So all a hacker needs to do is ensure that his package can shift the pseudo-AI's worldview bit by bit and then he will be right at home.

Given that there have been Tesla buyers stupid enough to think that their car was self-diving, marketing any technical solution with the notion of AI is a surefire way to ensure a catastrophe. Complacency and habit means that when this so-called "AI" security will be in place, as long as it doesn't squeak, admins will just take care of the daily panics and not worry about whether or not the machine is working right.

Hackers of the future will have a lot of fun with these toys, I think.

Intel rips up microcode security fix license that banned benchmarking

Re: No Benchmarks

Yes indeed. There should simply be a law stating that benchmarking is a perfectly normal thing to do and publishing said benchmarks is protected by Free Speech (aka these are the results I got in this situation).

From that point on, companies can put whatever they want in their licensing terms, a judge will throw out any gag attempt on the spot.

Winner, Winner, prison dinner: Five years in the clink for NSA leaker

Re: Reality Loser

Neither united nor a democracy any more.

States are refusing to implement universal healthcare, companies are subverting officials all over the place and even high-level government-appointed people are no longer doing their job to protect people, they're just catering to companies.

The USA is now officially a shithole country.

Just how rigged is America's broadband world? A deep dive into one US city reveals all

Re: How hard is it really?

Well of course, if you put like that it is quite easy.

So you're going to post online the list of addresses Provider Y can deliver broadband to ?

Oh, you don't have it either ?

Well maybe it's a tad harder than you thought.

Re: When I read articles like this...

Because 640K is enough for everyone, right ?

Re: Choice

Actually, it's more like 30 identical versions of the same breakfast cereal made by the same company under 30 different brands.

Because companies use branding the same way you and I use disposable mail addresses.

Muslim American woman sues US border cops: Gimme back my seized iPhone's data!

Re: Entering a country becomes more and more like entering a prison.

Do not confuse entering the USA and entering any other country.

Practically every single democratic country in the world is quite polite and somewhat subdued in its border controls - the USA is the only one I have ever been to to be so stuck-up and openly paranoid about visitors.

And yet, they still come.

Back to school soon – for script kiddies as well as normal kids. Hackers peddle cybercrime e-classes via Telegram

Okay, so where are law enforcement students ?

What should be done is that law enforcement should have some personnel sign up to these courses and learn the techniques.

Shouldn't be difficult and I don't see the crooks doing any reputation checks from their home base.

Once we have officers fully trained and up to speed (because $1,100 for 40 days seems a pretty good deal to me), then our Cybercrime units will know what to look for and how to fight it.

If that isn't being done, then our governments are even stupider than I thought - which, of course, is quite possible.

Teardown chaps strip away magic from Magic Leap's nerd goggles

@ detritus

Apparently I wasn't clear enough. I did not wish to draw any parallel between Google Glass and Magic Leap. What I wanted to point out is that Google's enormous resources were behind Glass and it tanked - due to social pressure as has been pointed out.

Magic Leap does not have Google's means, and it is disappointing people right out of the gate.

That does not bode well for the future of its little toy, especially, again - as has been pointed out, with ML's past as a swindler now public for all to see.

So it's not that magical now that it's real ? Shocking, innit ?

I'm sure that Reg readers were pretty much expecting this turn of events. Seems that the promotional videos were lies after all. No surprise there.

So it's a bum ride for over $2K. Google Glass was less expensive, and Google was behind it - it tanked anyway.

I predict the same future for this ex-Magic Not-such-a-Leap.

Facebook pulls 'snoopy' Onavo VPN from Apple's App Store after falling foul of rules

When will people understand that anything related to FaceBook has only one job, which is reporting everything to FaceBook ?

UK's info commish is having a howler: Site dies amid 'plagiarised' GDPR book scandal

"what criteria was used to make the claim that it was 'authoritative' "

She told her ghostwriter to be sure everything was factual, so she asserted to herself that the book was authoritative, as one would.

And it looked good in the foreward, didn't it ?

IBM slaps patent on coffee-delivering drones that can read your MIND

"if I see someone of high status drinking coffee, I'll want coffee too"

Um, no. I don't drink coffee. Ever. Not interested.

I respond quite politely when offered, but the answer is always no thank you.

And forgive if someone "of high status" having something I don't does not make my brain go into dumb mode and want the same thing.

US Democrats call in Feds: There's something phishy going on with our voter database

"This fake website was spam-vertised using bogus emails"

What is it about the human mind that pushes people to a) blindly accept what a completely unknown person sends them, and b) click on a link that they haven't the faintest idea where it will end up.

Especially at work.

Okay, this time it was a test. Fine. There will be a next time. And a next.

Until we all, collectively, understand that if someone you don't know sends you a mail, the only proper thing that can be in that mail is either a request for information or an introduction from a work colleague that has just taken his post, so you know you'll be working with him.

And you should check to be sure.

Anything else is spam and should just be binned.

The only person who can legitimately send you a URL is someone you already know. And that person had better have a good reason.

Redis has a license to kill: Open-source database maker takes some code proprietary

Whoosh !

My point is : nobody pays you dividends for Open Source code.

Yes, I know full well that people get paid to contribute. Good for them, and good for Open Source in general.

But their right to remuneration stops when the code is published. What is done with the code afterwards does not generate a right to get paid.

That was my point.

You're welcome.

I do not understand

Well I do, Redis wants a cut of the pie its code helped create. But when you contribute to an open-source project, you do so knowing full well that you're not going to get paid for that.

You are giving the code to the world for the betterment of everyone.

Now some of these code-givers are suddenly complaining that they're not getting a percentage of the revenue that other people are getting thanks, in part, to their code.

Well I'm sorry but that's exactly how it is supposed to work. You gave the code, they used it. Instead of complaining, make your own hosting service and generate revenue on it.

If I were to adopt Redis' attitude, I would ring up all the companies I have ever written code for and demand a percentage of their revenue because my code helped them get money.

Hmm. Maybe I should give that some more thought after all ;)

Apache's latest SNAFU – Struts normal, all fscked up: Web app framework needs urgent patching

Pluma ? Are you kidding ?

Notepad++ FTW.

Start the flame wars.

Everyone screams patch ASAP – but it takes most organizations a month to update their networks

These posts are very interesting

Most of them point to patching issues with large or very large user bases.

I am self-employed. If a patch borks my system, I am good for a full day of reinstalling everything to be able to work again. Who's going to pay me that time ? Nobody.

If my system is bricked, then I am good for an emergency trip to the nearest quality hardware dealer and a hefty ticket price to get a new machine, which I then have to spend the day cleaning, removing stupid vendor-installed cruft I couldn't care less about, and getting the stuff I need to start working again. So a day lost again, and a big expense that I have not budgeted. Who's going to pay me for that ? Nobody.

If my system should be hacked (has never happened), then at worst, I'm good for losing a day reinstalling.

So my threat profile tells me that I can wait a while before patching, to see if there are any howls of pain from the latest batch of Windows updates. If I don't hear anything for a few weeks, then I put Windows Update back into Auto and patch, reboot, finish the patches and reboot again. Then WU goes back to Disabled, where it belongs.

@ Mr Dogshit

It is obvious that you are not in charge of ensuring that over 1,000 people can work every day.

Neither am I, but have rather close relationships with people who do. And I have learned from them that patching is a tight-wire rope exercise in managing not only safety and machines, but people and expectations.

Yes, security is obviously preferable. However, you always have Mr Performer who just can't have a minute without his server access, because he is making all the money for the company so his needs trump server downtime needs. And since he is the guy bringing in a fair chunk of revenue, his managers are on his side.

Of course, the admin knows that if the network is breached, it will be his fault and maybe even his ass, but the divas are the ones who give the okay for downtime, not the admin.

When something's weird in your ImageMagick upload, who ya gonna call? Ghostbusters!

Kudos for stepping up to the plate

And an upvote for the clarifications. Now I understand what Ghostscript is doing and what it is based on, and yes, as a programmer I fully understand that you're working on interpreting a programming language.

That's obviously an open door to all sorts of shenanigans, and can only work if the spirit of the system is always honored.

But still, sanitizing the incoming code should be possible, to a certain point. Whether that would make any difference is not something I can judge.

Australia blocks Huawei, ZTE from 5G rollout

An interesting suspicion, to be sure. Sounds like a plausible one to me.

OpenAI bots smashed in their first clash against human Dota 2 pros

The humans won because strategy - no surprise there

I have played my fair share of Battlefield and other multiplayer mayhem fests, and if there is one thing I learned it is that the team that has a strategy is the team that wins.

Most humans go into these games thinking and acting as if they were alone. If everyone plays like that (most common case), then the win is just chance to the team with the more efficient killers. But play a team that has no cohesion and find that the other side has a group that are actually playing together, and they will wipe the map with your corpse.

Had these tests been against the regular human bozo, humans would have been squashed, no question. It is good that they play these matches against human players who do have team cohesion. That way we see that programming strategy into a statistical analysis machine is not an easy thing to do.

I wish those programmers all the luck. Or do I ? Did I just hear the whine of a phased plasma ri<no carrier>

Network monitoring is hard... If only there was some kind of machine that could learn to do it

Oh for God's sake

There is no AI. There is statistical analysis, and vast amounts of data, but we do not have a machine to which we can ask : "tell me what is working".

There are highly intelligent people who understand statistics and can fine-tune these statistical analysis machines, but AI it is not.

I would really like for the media to drop the "AI" in their articles, but that is obviously never going to happen because . . marketing. Ai is sexy, and because we don't have it, it is the perfect fantasy.

Ex-UK comms minister's constituents plagued by wonky broadband over ... wireless radio link?

"we’re doing all we can to resolve the matter"

Short of actually putting any money into infrastructure that is . . .

Everything's great at Supermicro, just small matter of impending NASDAQ delisting

Supermicro

That hasn't filed for Chapter 13 yet ?

Wow.

One-in-two JavaScript project audits by NPM tools sniff out at least one vulnerability...

Re: "The only way to be safe was to host absolutely everything that your code uses"

And that is also the only way to be sure of what the hell your website is doing.

I have never understood the mentality of all those who just outsourced half of their website code to people they don't know.

But hey, what do I know ? I'm just an old programmer . . .