Posts by Pascal Monett

Bank on it: It's either legal to port-scan someone without consent or it's not, fumes researcher

Re: "the scanning is done with Javascript running locally"

And NoScript to the rescue, again. Ain't nobody port-scanning my computer without my consent !

The age of hard drives is over as Samsung cranks out consumer QLC SSDs

You lucky guy ! My first was a 20MB MFM drive. I thought I'd never be able to fill it !

How wrong I was.

Internet overseer ICANN loses a THIRD time in Whois GDPR legal war

"raising questions over its competence" ?

Um, I think the time for questions on that matter is over.

ICANN is incompetent. Period.

Battle lines drawn over US mass surveillance as senators probe NSA's bonfire of phone records

What is the mandate here ?

If you are given authority to demand answers from a government agency without any means of coercition, it would seem that not answering your demands has become standard operating procedure.

If the investigative commission had any teeth, or balls as the case may be, then the response to such appalling lack of response should be :

"Fine, your continuous refusal to answer my questions is your prerogative, apparently. But I must say that, if you cannot convince me before <date> that American citizens are not being unlawfully spied upon, then I will conclude they are and that your Agency is in violation of the Consitution and I will have you all rounded up and put in prison. Your move."

Denial of denial-of-service served: There was NO DDoS on FCC net neutrality comments

I'm sure the NSA will shortly be sending a few nice people from the FBI to explain it to you.

Sur-Pies! Google shocks world with sudden Android 9 Pixel push

Re: Compelling, isn't it?

And with all the predicting, monitoring, fetching ads data, I wonder if that battery prioritization isn't going to be heavily in favour of the app that does all that "management".

In any case, I don't see battery life improving with this pie.

'Can you just pop in to the office and hit the power button?' 'Not really... the G8 is on'

A web power switch ?

I had no idea they made such things. I'm going to have to remember that for eventual future problems.

Thanks for the tip.

Porn parking, livid lockers and botched blenders: The nightmare IoT world come true

@Ben Tasker

Normally I don't much appreciate people using El Reg to promote their own web site material, but in this case I must say thank you for that. I have saved it for local reference and I will be using it as grounds for my own deep-seated mistrust in IoT.

Get drinking! Abstinence just as bad for you as getting bladdered

That's what I love about El Reg

There's regularly some bit of good news why I can have that glass :)

That is, until the day the science of our bodies has advanced to the point we actually know what we're talking about. Then the news will be final.

But until then, bottoms up !

IBM Watson dishes out 'dodgy cancer advice', Google Translate isn't better than humans yet, and other AI tidbits

Well Bing may be better in this case,

but if you can drop a bear, you have my respect.

Politicians fume after Amazon's face-recog AI fingers dozens of them as suspected crooks

Absolutely. Nothing like hitting their reputation to get things sorted out.

Our reputations ? They can lie in waste, no problem (for them). But theirs ? No way we can let computers call them liars - people might start believing it, and we can't have that, now can we ?

How to (slowly) steal secrets over the network from chip security holes: NetSpectre summoned

Re: Yup

And that is why you are not the Director of the NSA.

Official: AMD now stands for All the Money, Dudes!

That, unfortunately, sounds like the voice of reason.

So I'll just have a whisky and dream on . . .

I hope AMD can keep this up

I personally feel that AMD has suffered being in the red for far to long. I want it back in the black and staying there. AMD has historically been able to achieve world-firsts, and has consistently demonstrated inventiveness and reactivity.

Who knows what it could do if it had the financial reserves Intel has ?

Hurrah! Boffins finally discover liquid water sloshing around on Mars

That conclusion seems a bit fast to me

"... believe the highly reflective body is actually a pool of liquid water saturated with salty sediments"

There's a patch 1.5km under the surface that has reflective properties similar to a body of salty water. Yet, the conclusion is affirmative : there is liquid water on Mars.

I know we all want there to be, but shouldn't a scientist call it a "positive indication", or a "reassuring probability", instead of a definite ? Is there really no other possibility ?

HPE supercomputer is still crunching numbers in space after 340 days

"SSDs fail at an alarming rate in space"

They fail at an alarming rate on Earth as well. In the last five years, I've known of two people who's SSD just crashed and died. I would have to track the last fifteen years to find someone who's HDD died without a warning.

Okay, maybe that's not so alarming after all, but still.

Hey you smart, well-paid devs. Stop clicking on those phishing links and bringing in malware muck on your shoes

Re: you're not being monitored and filtered "because"

My view is simple : you are at work, it is normal that you be monitored and filtered. Even if you are God's gift to programming.

Full disclosure : I may be a developer, but I am also a consultant. That means that I develop on client site (which include banks), and that means that I have to be extra careful when I have Internet access to not click on a link that is possibly not work-related, because customer.

Some Things just aren't meant to be (on Internet of Things networks). But we can work around that

Re: aimed at businesses not homes

As far as the level of competence obviously required for all these points, yes. It is certain that claiming IoT owners need to "figure out the protocols" obviously means "you know what a protocol is and you can figure it out". That eliminates Joe Public right there.

Unfortunately, homes is where IoT is going to wreak havoc. It's Joe Public who wants his IoT door lock, his IoT lights with loudspeakers and fancy colors, and all the rest of that shite.

And understanding protocols, to say nothing of "sorting out security" (snort), is most definitely not in Joe Public's ability to comprehend, let alone take responsibility for.

This article's only merit is that it clearly outlines that IoT is not for the public.

But that's where it is going to be sold.

Mega medical tester pester: It smacked a big one, that malware scam, if indeed it was SamSam

"defenders don't have minutes to mitigate, they have seconds"

Absolutely logical. The malware works in CPU time, the defendants work in administrative human time.

The humans don't have a chance if measures are not already in place and ready to go.

Actually, active measures and surveillance need to be in place if malware is to be stopped.

So basically we're going to have a decade or more of these shenanigans before a proper anti-propagation network tool is made available and succeeds in stopping cold these kinds of intrusions.

If the board is ready to pay for it, which they will be after the first intrusion, of course.

Insecure web still too prevalent: Boffins unveil HSTS wall of shame

I protest

I followed the link and, to my surprise, found leboncoin.fr in their list.

LeBonCoin has been HTTPS for a while now. When did they compile that list ?

In any case, they're not maintaining it.

Core blimey! Apple macOS update lifts boot from MacBook Pro neck

You forgot the test-and-make-sure-it-works step.

Just like Apple did.

If you're serious about securing IoT gadgets, may as well start here

"if the cloud service goes down, it'll likely take its gadgets with it"

Won't be the first time. Just ask anyone who's ever had a music subscription - 99% of those are dead.

Yet people still keep believing in convenience.

Incredible.

I'm glad to know that you have the technical knowledge to handle your home network in all aspects. You do realize that you are part of the one-in-a-million club, don't you ?

I know just enough about networks to ensure that I can connect my home computers to my NAS, keep a firewalled router to access the Internet, and have all connected PCs, laptops and tablets be able to print on the shared printer. Oh, and ensure that my wife can access the WiFi when she's somehow unconfigured her phone again.

I'm pretty sure that there are a lot of people who don't even know what I know. They are the mass for which a solution must be found, because the blight that is IoT is only going to get worse. Any step towards a solution is a good one in my book.

Robo-drop: Factory bot biz 'leaks' automakers' secrets onto the web

A correction

It's not

""Level One takes these allegations very seriously and is diligently working to conduct a full investigation of the nature, extent and ramifications of this alleged data exposure,”

but more likely :

"Level One takes these allegations very seriously and is diligently working to create a lot of professional-sounding noise and pantomime to cover the issue up, brush it under the rug and get its incompetence forgotten as soon as possible,”

I know sysadmins are always harassed by new rush jobs, but the professionals I know are not going to drop anything concerning security just to get the boss his access to YouPr0n - not until the security stuff is finished. Normally, they wouldn't even put something online until the security has been properly configured.

Oz digital health agency tightens medical record access as watchdog warns of crim honeypot

What's that ?

"discretion to release information without a warrant, if it “reasonably believes that the use or disclosure is reasonably necessary”"

If the disclosure is reasonably necessary from a judiciary point of view, then there will be a warrant. If there is no warrant, then it is not warranted to disclose the information and I refuse to consider that the ADHA has that authority under any grounds.

That said, I don't live in Australia, but still, if I did, I wouldn't be happy about the situation.

Big bad Bluetooth blunder bug battered – check for security fixes

"within radio range and transmitting while the gadgets were pairing"

Okay, I don't like the idea that the protocol is stuffed, but frankly I don't see how someone could take advantage of it for long. When I start my car and my phone pairs with it, I'm not staying there, so the miscreant would have to follow me and stay in range.

I'm putting this in the forget it folder.

Psst, says Qualcomm... Kid, you wanna see what a 5G antenna looks like?

Everything is mmWave

After all, one meter is 1000mm, so . . .

That said, the custom when using the mm measure is to deal with a few of them, unless you're in the construction business when practically everything is measured in mm, even if there's 250 of them. Looks like the comms business is using the same approach.

Re: In other words

If the speed really is almost twice as fast, they'll notice something. Especially when comparing a YouTube video on one with and one without one of those 5G thingys.

Engineers, coders – it's down to you to prevent AI being weaponised

That it may not have, but it curtailed the hell out computers, to the point where they had to invent mentats - human computers (because human, it was okay).

Because advanced civilizations will always need computers, whatever the form.

AI principles, yeah

I followed that link, and found exactly what I expected : a nice, touchy-feely, heartfelt list of things goody-two-shoes Google promises to do and not do with AI. Nice to see they have found the light.

But I'm sure they did it with the best of intentions.

Microsoft: The Kremlin's hackers are already sniffing, probing around America's 2018 elections

Re: Paper ballots only solve a tiny part of the problem

I think you are assigning way too much power to the disruptors.

Paper ballots are traceable. The results are sent electronically are, these days, are most likely encrypted. Even if not, when the results are published, they are also controlled. Any error is called out and corrected.

Whatever attack can be set up on data transmission cannot survive a proper error correction procedure.

You need to remember that there are countries using paper ballots. You don't hear much about their vote count being called in question, now do you ? There's a good reason for that.

As for phoning electors and spreading misinformation, hackers (Russian or otherwise) are not going to do something that so obviously points to them. Remember that it took a state agency investigation to find the hacker's traces. With phone calls, it'd take a quick check at the phone company to get proof.

Facebook, Google, Microsoft, Twitter make it easier to download your info and upload to, er, Facebook, Google, Microsoft, Twitter etc...

Well that's easy ; the non-account holders will never ask about it since they don't have an account, so Google et al can do whatever they want with that data.

Microsoft still longs to be a 'lifestyle' brand, but the cupboard looks bare

Me neither

It's my PC. I paid for the hardware.

If Microsoft wants to control my hardware, then it should give me a PC. If it's their hardware, then I accept their control over it.

But as long as I'm the one footing the bill, I expect to be able to use it as I intend without anyone or anything watching over my shoulder.

Mmm, yes. 11-nines data durability? Mmmm, that sounds good. Except it's virtually meaningless

Re: smoke and mirrors

There is practically nobody today that can actually prove 6 nines uptime - especially not The Cloud - so 12 nines is just horseshit, and let's just forget that mention of 16.

Alien sun has smashing time sucking up planets

Re: Planet definintion?

Well our solar system started in a similar manner.

If some planetoid hadn't slammed into Earth, we wouldn't have the Moon.

And in the early days of our Solar System, everything was being bombarded by asteroids.

So pretty exciting times back then. Things have largely calmed down now, after a few billion years.

We should check back on this star in a billion years or two, to see how the situation evolves.

Boffins mix AI and chemicals to create super-fast lab assistant

Congratulations on one thing

This is the first article I read about statistical analysis machines (ie pseudo-"AI") that does not crow to high heavens the incredible benefits that AI will bring to the proceedings as if all issues are already solved, as is usually the case.

The article actually states "It all hinges on human expertise to tweak the algorithms behind it and the AI is only as good as its trained to be." - that is a first.

Bonkers Azure bookings give Microsoft a record-breaking $110bn year

Great, just great

There is no better validation for the usefullness of The Cloud (TM) than making oodles of money out of it.

Despite its failures, despite the security issues, The Cloud is milking it, ensuring that people will use it and companies will want their share of the pie.

So The Cloud is here to stay.

Humbug.

Revealed in detail: World powers stuff spyware kit, how-to guides in dodgy nations' pockets

Security aid ?

You mean making sure that the NSA has access, right ?

Don't try to tell me the contrary, I won't believe you.

Sub-Prime: Amazon's big day marred by server crashes, staff strikes

What would you have him do ?

"..it's pointless geting infeasibly rich, then looking back on your life and all the shoulders you've ground into the dust in order to get there, only to give it all away at the end"

Um, I would think that solving a deadly disease problem is something that a minimum-wage worker would have a bit of trouble doing.

So, what do you think he should have done ? Build a Coliseum and reinstate gladiator fights ?

Re: "Once these obscenely rich people have grown out of their thirst for continuous success"

Um, as far as I can tell, that never happens.

Bill Gates is the exception to that rule, which, as any Frenchmen knows, proves the rule.

L'exception confirme la règle

Official probe into HPE’s Oz 3Par crashes would create 'further negative publicity' if revealed

Don't you just love it when so-called democratic governments do a public cover-up ?

I just love it when any government spouts nonsense to cover up some embarassing failure, but when a "democratic" government does it "for the good of the People", masking why a project paid for by The People's taxes failed abysmally, it has that special "you just continue paying your taxes and watching football, we know what we're doing" tang.

If it's paid for with public money, the Public that paid for it has the right to know the why and how. The only thing you're really saying is that someone should be losing his pension over a monumental cock-up.

And we can't have that, now can we ?

Intel and Micron downgrade 3D Xpoint relationship from friends with benefits to partners

"Micron can [PR bull] maximiz[ing] the benefits for [..] shareholders"

That there is the real reason, as usual : money, profit and shareholder ROI.

Customers are just the inconvenience that companies put up with to get money.

Western Digital formats hard disk drive factory as demand spins down

Yeah, case in point : where am I going to go to replace my NAS drives now ?

I don't have the money to put 4 3TB SSD drives in there, not at current prices.

I guess I'll just have to advance my plans to replace the 3TB drives I have now with 8TB drives sooner than later, and hope that they'll last until SSDs become a dime a dozen.

Gov.UK to make its lovely HTML exportable as parlous PDFs

Re: Stand alone, reliable documents

A pdf also requires a computer/device, the knowledge to install a PDF reader and the ability to use it.

If you're talking about printing then I don't care if you printed from a web page, a Word document or a PDf - it's printed and that's the end of the problem.

Azure certifications are awful, Microsoft admits, so it has made new ones

Certifications, pah !

As long as the exams are done by sitting in front of a computer and divining which option is the least infeasable, certs are really only an excuse for the existence of an entire industry.

A real cert would be a panel of three experts grilling the candidate for twenty minutes, or, for more practical things, a misconfigured server to correct and put in working order. Or sit the programmer in front of a computer and give him two hours to pound out the code to solve a given problem, then review the code. Bonus points if the program compiles and actually works.

Obviously, that would rather limit the number of certified people and would kill the certification industry as it stands today. But the certification would actually mean something.

Notes/Domino is alive! Second beta of version 10 is imminent

Notes haters gotta hate.

As a developer, I love the Notes environment. I can do everything ; use LScript, JavaScript, make webservices, design web-enabled applications... I even made an approval process for the Boss's iPhone which worked without processing anything on the phone side - all server-side processing. No add-ons needed !

I've written code to FTP data to mainframes, reformet CSV files for JIT server treatment, send webservice requests to the proper server for data processing - all without using anything other than the Notes Designer.

It is one hell of a powerful tool.

But the client ? Even I must admit that that thing is a dinosaur that the metor missed. It needs not a redesign, it needs to die in fire and be entirely replaced with something else.

But for development ? I can do anything.

I hope IBM will finally put some marketing muscle behind the next version.

Two-factor auth totally locks down Office 365? You may want to check all your services...

I always love these tales of companies losing money because of a mail

It tells me two things :

1) the company is not using a CRM, does not have client/supplier account numbers on file and

2) nobody bats an eye when getting a mail telling them to wire money to account 0123456789, instead of "wire this amount to client/supplier XXXX using the already recorded IBAN we have"

They deserve everything they get.

Timehop admits to more data leakage, details GDPR danger

"by the time incident response processes kicked in"

That means that "incident response" is the headless chicken phase of the IT department panicking amongst calls from upper management to know what the hell is going on, preventing anything from actually being done.

Brilliant example of closing the stable door after the horse has bolted.

Now maybe would the time to analyse proper network surveillance options and revise the security procedures ? Nah, just make noise about how security is at the heart of everything you do and lessons will be learned to prevent this from ever happening again until next time.

Tomorrow it'll be business as usual anyway, so why spend money that could go to CxO bonuses ?

I see you're trying to leak a file! US military seeks Clippy-like AI to stop future Snowdens

More "AI" nonsense

"machine-learning technology could be used to suggest levels of classification, as well as automatically monitor and log records of who accessed files, where they were accessed, which systems were used to access the materials, if any changes were made, and whether that person really had a need to know the contents"

If I can accept that data analysis could suggest classification levels, you don't need pseudo-AI to log activity records, detect changes and flag inappropriate access. Those are things that we have been doing for decades already with normal code.

This is just more "AI" bullshit to make people think things are going to work better.

Your phone may be able to clean up snaps – but our AI is much better at touching up, say boffins

And this will be defined by future historians of what is left of the human race as the exact moment the conflict started.