Posts by Pascal Monett

Go fork yourself: Bitcoin has split in two – and yes, it's all forked up

"giant worldwide fraud created by bankers"

You have a unique world view. Are you a Trump supporter, by any chance ?

It’s 2017 and Hayes AT modem commands can hack luxury cars

@Afernie

I accept your scenario completely, but it still means that "they" checked out the house with cameras, then came to the house, broke into it, and did their nefarious deed. "They" did, not the camera. The camera was an accessory.

In the case of cars, you can get hacked, drive along obliviously, then suddenly have your car swerve into a tree, a wall or an oncoming bus.

The car, not the camera. That is the level of difference I am outlining.

The one domain where IoT shit cannot linger long

Babyminders, stuffed toys, surveillance cameras, nobody's life is in danger when these things get taken over. Cars are a different matter though, and it is reassuring to see reaction from the car makers.

Goes to demonstrate, though, that car makers do not have sufficient security controls in place to avoid this kind of thing before churning out hundreds of vulnerable vehicles. Of course, no amount of checking will find everything.

I guess they'll just have to design their components to not accept any outside commands not included in a whitelist, implement strict parameter size and content controls and, most importantly, separate the control bus from the infotainment bus. I'll wager that these three things would seriously cut down on hijacking possibilities.

Facebook pulls plug on language-inventing chatbots? THE TRUTH

"presenting something with the look and feel of journalism"

That is exactly what news channels have been doing for years already. The fact that nowadays they can get caught copying stuff from Twitter is simply because now we can check their sources since they use our feeds.

Skype for Business is not Skype – realising that is half the battle

Video conferencing is a niche product

I hate it, you hate it, practically everybody hates but a very small number of people/professions might actually have a use for it - and they just might hate it too.

I'm pretty sure that what people hate is the disembodied head effect, along with the fact that when you have a phone conversation, you are free to have it any way you like and most people wander around for some unfathomable reason. When you have a video call, you are suddenly stuck in front of your camera, can't walk around, can't fool around, you are basically under a spotlight and it's of your own making.

Yes, for personal, family calls it may be all right, from time to time. For business calls it never is.

Google tracks what you spend offline to prove its online ads work. And privacy folks are furious

"Google's refusal to disclose its partnerships with data brokers"

Is unacceptable. Knowing who they deal with is not knowing what they give, so there is no privacy impact.

Google should come clean on this point, no discussion.

Dirty carbon nanotubes offer telcos chance at secure quantum comms

"aryl sp3 is an organic molecule [..] bound to the surface of the nanotube"

And that's how the Borg got started . . .

Steve Bannon wants Facebook, Google 'regulated like utilities'

"a "shamanic" influence over [...] the 2016 Presidential Election campaign"

Really ?

Someone might want to point that out to the FBI probe concerning alleged Russian influence. After all, if the influence was so important, it might be worth checking if those people were embroiled in that part as well.

Scary news: Asteroid may pass Earth by just 6,880km in October

Indeed

Not only that, but when the article says "test how ready we are for a potential impact" - well I can answer that : we're not.

Any major asteroid strike in a populated area will just be mayhem, pure and simple. If we have advanced warning, there might be a way to evacuate, but given that this particular rock can pass 6,800km close or more than 200,000km away, if it did hit somewhere I don't think we would have the slightest idea of where before it was way too late to do anything about it.

As of now, our only chance for surviving an asteroid impact is that the asteroid itself is too small to do too much damage (with all due respect to the thousands who could potentially be killed even by a small one).

Australia's .au internet registry chair quits amid no-confidence vote

Re: Deja vu

For me, as soon as I read that they hire people from ICANN I filed the whole story in my Shoot-Them-Behind-The-Toolshed folder.

Ransomware scum straighten ties, invest in good customer service

When are they going to get caught ?

Ransomware scum signing up for customer service ?

Are they going to end up with a call center in India ?

Are we going to see a Ransom Transaction store front on the high street where people go to discuss their hacked PC with a "facilitator" ?

I think there's going to be heaps of irony doled out in this pure capitalistic venture. It's a case of greed vs stealth, and it seems like greed is winning. At one point they'll become big enough to be a target that even our myopic law enforcement cannot miss.

BOFH: Oh go on. Strap me to your Hell Desk, PFY

True to tradition

Once again the PFY forgets the basic rules of life around a BOFH and gets what's coming to him.

Plus another meddling boss bites the dust.

Brilliant start to a Friday.

After we ran our article about the fate of .sk, the nation of Slovakia flew into a rage. And now, here's part two...

"benefitting from something that you argue for ..."

"does not mean that you don't passionately believe that that is the right thing"

Indeed it does not.

But when you use lies, smear tactics and outright fabrications, it does mean that you are a scumbag using the whole affair to further your personal agenda.

Sysadmin jeered in staff cafeteria as he climbed ladder to fix PC

What is this ?

A sysadmin that doesn't know where an IP address is physically located on his own network ?

Tsk, tsk.

An 'AI' that can diagnose schizophrenia from a brain scan – here's how it works (or doesn't)

Re: perfectly normal

I have come to believe that "perfectly normal" can be replaced by "acceptably crazy" without any prejudice whatsoever.

ALIS in Blunderland: Lockheed says F-35 Block 3F software to be done by year's end

"Block 4 is said to be already in development"

Don't you just love it when the next version of a software is "already in development" while the current version is still not finished ? How's that for agile development ?

Okay, I have no idea how these kind of projects are managed, and I am quite sure that a lot of competent people are working on this, but it still doesn't feel right when I read those words.

In the normal world, you finish a project and get a report on performance and stability before you draw up a new version to that project - because you simply cannot say you're improving things when you don't know what to improve.

But hey, I'm 15 years from retirement so what do I know ?

Microsoft ctrl-Zs 'killing' Paint, by which we mean offering naff app through Windows Store

Re: And if you are on a corporate build....?

If you're on a corporate build, I'll wager you're not going to the Store either. You're asking IT to install it, whatever "it" is.

Paint.net is really very simple to use. It starts up in less than a second on my PC, and you can use a raft of keyboard shortcuts to get things done quickly. Comparing it to Gimp is really unfair.

Give it a try. It's free, so the worst case scenario is you uninstall it.

What sort of silicon brain do you need for artificial intelligence?

Your argument is flawless but for one detail : the marketing department will not be content with an AI that has only one idea every thousand years. It needs an "AI" that performs at lightspeed and wows everyone and their dog every second of the day.

At least during the TV commercials - once you get the actual product, you're on your own.

Firefox doesn't need to be No 1 – and that's OK, 'cos it's falling off a cliff

Re: FFS?

Of course it's important - to him. Other things are important to you. Other things are important to me.

One thing we can all agree on, I think, is that diversity is good. Choice is good. Having one browser on top is inevitable, but other browsers must exist to keep things fair.

For me, I do not mind at all that Firefox is not on top. Being on top makes you the prime target for all the nasties. Being obscure makes you uninteresting to the nasties. I will stay with Firefox as long as NoScript keeps on working. Firefox and NoScript are my preferred way of browsing and I will only change the day I have to.

Europe's 'one patent court to rule them all' vision may be destroyed by EPO shenanigans

Not a moment too soon

It is high time this nutjob is brought back under control. Erase his tenure, burn his career, trash every one of his decisions and put in place someone who is capable of advancing the whole process, not derailing it.

Oh, and can the nutjob have his pension revoked ? Please ? It would really be grating for him to get full benefits in retirement - he certainly doesn't deserve it;

.. ..-. / -.-- --- ..- / -.-. .- -. / .-. . .- -.. / - .... .. ... then a US Navy fondleslab just put you out of a job

"whether the Navy should be abandoning low-tech backup solutions"

Might the Admiralty need to have a general session and watch Tomorrow Never Dies ?

Or should we just ask them what they will do in case of an EMP ? Supposing they know what that is, of course. And supposing that those signal lights are without electronics, so as to be impervious to . . . ah, but motorized signal lights operated by tablets.

Ok, forget it.

School of card knocks: Russophone criminals offered online courses in credit card fraud

Great news

Now, can someone please explain to me why this publicly-available course isn't followed by every infosec agent at Interpol and lessons applied ?

How is it possible that such mediatisation of security data is not immediately followed by governmental measures ? I mean, if El Reg knows about it, surely government agencies do as well.

Ah, right, stupid me. Here I was again, thinking that governments are about protecting their citizens.

Right, I'm off. Carry on !

Segway hoverboard hijack hack could make hipsters eat pavement

"the holes have now been patched"

The code has been patched. That is the first major stumbling block in IoT - kudos to having passed that step.

The patches still need to be applied, which is the second major stumbling block. I recon that might take a while before all units are patched. I don't own any IoShiTe, so I wouldn't know.

China's censorship cyber-missiles shoot down pics flying through WhatsApp, chat apps

See, western governments ?

Encryption protects. If encryption could be backdoored, nothing would change because totalitarian governments would just use the backdoor (to say nothing of hackers).

Because WhatsApp uses proper encryption, China censors can only do wholesale blocking. They cannot go into the message content and pick and choose.

Okay, you might say that the message is still blocked and that is true, but it is blocked based on meta criteria (size, are there attachments), not on content. That remains an important distinction because it still means that censors cannot actually blame any blocked message for being illegal since they don't know what's in it.

Proper encryption protects the people. Do it right, because someone will anyway.

Hot HoloLens models 'shafted by Microsoft'

Thank you for such an interesting opinion.

Now go back to /.

Interesting development

In a company where the CEO believes that women should be happy with what he decides they should get, maybe this sorry affair is not so surprising.

A CEO is an example for his (or her) employees. Whether the example is a good one or not is a different matter. Maybe we have yet things to learn about Nadella and his secretaries ?

Insurers claim cyber calamities could cost more than Hurricane Sandy

These studies are incomplete

The total cost of all Internet hacking has been evaluated at $27 quintillion by my personal expert services. If you pay me $2000, I will send you a detailed, one-page summary telling you the number of elements I took into account to get to that figure, but believe me, it's true. Cross my heart.

UK regulator set to ban ads depicting bumbling manchildren

This is a good thing

Communication is extremely important, and it cannot be forgotten that many people make life decisions based on what they saw on TV.

TV has abandoned it's educational role (which is why we have public safety announcements like no alcohol for pregnant woman now), so it will have to be constrained to respect certain things.

As a result, I am entirely for this restriction because I am a bit tired of seeing the same old ads with women doing the same old stuff and men always having the same old role. I look forward to seeing what intelligent ad makers are going to do with this. I also look forward to seeing the stupid ad makers die - but I'm not putting much faith in that.

Another Brexit cliff edge: UK.gov warned over data flows to EU

"European courts will have no more influence after Brexit"

Of course not - as long as you have no more dealings with the EU.

Oh, you still count on having economic exchange with the EU ? Then I'm quite sorry, but European courts will have just as much influence as before - and you have no more say in it.

The curious case of a Tesla smash, Autopilot blamed, and the driver's next-day U-turn

Re: "when you're shook up and struggling to recall things"

Not what he wrote in his follow-up mail. He specifically indicates that he had a conversation with his friends, they reconstructed the ride and it was then that he came to the conclusion that the autopilot had disengaged.

He was shook up when he stated that it was on, and the media ran with it because headlines.

On the other hand, that tells me that Tesla's autopilot disengages when you touch any pedal, which is not what other brand autopilots generally do - they disengage when you touch the brakes.

2017: The FBI alerts parents to dangers of Internet of Sh*t toys

Good one

I'll be reusing that :)

Vendors rush to call everything AI even if it isn't, or doesn't help

"his document predicts it will be pervasive by 2020"

Fat chance of that. For AI to be pervasive, it first has to exist.

It doesn't. End of story.

Amazon mumbles into its coffee when asked: Will you give app devs people's Alexa chats?

I am so happy

I have just purchased a feature phone that boasts up to 200 hours on standby. My Android can barely manage 24.

I will have no apps, no effin spy thingy listening in, no messages sent back to the mothership. Just a phone and SMS.

Feels like freedom.

Don't panic, but your Bitcoins may just vanish into the ether next month

Ah, the joys of virtual currencies

So, forking BitCoin is possible too ? Wonderful. Forking its value seems to be in the works as well.

Ah, how wonderful it is to rediscover all the vulnerabilities of currency that we have spent half a millennium to iron out.

Slower US F-35A purchases piles $27bn onto total fighter jet bill

Re: How many hospitals is that ?

I perfectly agree with your sentiment. I feel it is high time we Western countries stop telling other countries how to live because our model isn't exactly a panacea either.

I would pull out of everywhere and leave other countries to progress at their own rhythm. It may be despicable to see the Taliban reign on Afghanistan, but until its own people understand how wrong it is, we cannot expect them to understand simply because we tell them.

The unfortunate truth is that simply pulling out and leaving them to their devices will most likely cause way more mayhem than keeping up a presence would. Counted in tens of thousands of lives, if not hundreds of thousands. What do you think is keeping Putin from outright invading Ukraine ? Morals ? His rating on Twitter ? No. It's NATO and, specifically, the US forces that are part of NATO.

This is the icky situation our interventionism has got us in : we can't retreat even if we wanted to. Cue ever-spiraling military budgets because the US is actually preparing to fight Russia, not the Chinese and especially not Somalian pirates.

AI vans are real – but they'll make us suck at driving, warn boffins

On the other hand, insurance companies aren't too keen on the idea either. They like having someone to put the blame on. Who are they going to blame with AI ?

WD gets court order: Toshiba can't block access to shared database

Re: "the market for those is tiny"

Yeah. No more than 5 computers worldwide surely.

Dell gives world its first wireless-charging laptop if you buy $580 extra kit

@Khaptain

Right, so when you're traveling you would prefer the hassle of not only taking a wire but adding the charging pad to it. Sorry, I don't see that see that as a convenience.

Plus, let's be honest, a charging pad is nothing more than moving the electric socket to the table surface. It is no more convenient than a docking station, it just sounds sexier.

Until wireless charging can happen from the outlet to anywhere in the room, it will be nothing but a hipster fad that can be advantageously replaced with a wire for a fraction of the cost.

If at first you don't succeed, you're Microsoft pushing its magical white space broadband

Brilliant financial plan

Really. Have the local government front half the cost. Of course !

That way, the people who sign up pay $1000 bucks, and them plus everyone who doesn't pay more out of their taxes.

So Microsoft is basically saying to 25 million people : "your taxes will be funding this, you might as well add $1000 and benefit from it".

I'm not sure I'd like that argument.

NASA flies plane through Earthly shadow of Kuiper Belt object

I'm lost

So, it's an asteroid 6.6 billion km out in the Kuiper Belt, that New Horizons is supposed to rendez-vous with. But suddenly said asteroid is passing between us and the Sun and we even put a plane in its shadow.

Article is a bit confusing, at first read I thought we put a plane in the shadow of something 6.6bn km away and thought : "not possible, even for NASA".

Anyways, this page clears up a lot of things. MU69 is traveling at an average speed of 4.47km/s (or 0.1491% of a sheep in vacuum), while New Horizons is currently whizzing along at 13km/s (0.4336% of sheep in vacuum).

Ah, the wonders of space. New Horizons is traveling almost three times faster, is already farther than Pluto, but it's going to take until the first day of 2019 to get to the same point.

Viking storms storage monastery wielding 50TB SAS SSD

50TB in a single disk

<speechless>

Wow. My workhorse PC has no less than 5 disks (including 2 180GB SSDs) for a total of almost 9 TB and I am quite happy with all that.

This puppy ? I stick in two 25TB disks and I have not only SSD performance for everything, but over 5 times more space to store stuff.

Looking forward to the HDD/SSD scene in a few years' time, when I will need to replace stuff. It'll be a dime a TB dozen.

<Snoopy happy dance>

Bloke takes over every .io domain by snapping up crucial name servers

"unaware of any issues arising from this brief exposure."

Oh well then it's all right, isn't it ? Everything peachy. It's not like procedures should exist so that the possibility of issues should not happen. Not at all. Procedures are only invoked when issues do arise - so that way we have someone to blame. The rest of the time, no need for procedures.

OMG, dad, you're so embarrassing! Are you P2P file sharing again?

@ratfox

Yes, it is free. As long as it is available, that is. As long as your bandwidth limit is unlimited and your Internet connection hasn't fallen over. By all means, re-dowload the same thing over and over if you like. It's not like that has any consequence on global bandwidth.

I take it you've never yet encountered anything you liked on the Internet suddenly disappearing forever ? Friendly warning : it happens. There's even a technical term for it : link rot.

When I find something I like on any page anywhere, I do my best to download it. Saves me the bother of looking it up again later and finding the link gone.

That said, I am over 50 and know how to organize my storage, not just type in search terms. Maybe that does make a difference.

Indeed

With all the hoopla around piracy, MPAA/RIAA court cases and travesty of justice, and here we have people who hear "Intellectual Property Office ? You want to know if I rip stuff ? Sure I'm gonna tell you !".

Count my mind boggled.

Google Chrome's HTTPS ban-hammer drops on WoSign, StartCom in two months

"tends to limit traffic and ad revenue"

Initially I thought that maybe those words would only apply to non-Chinese country activities, but then I checked out this page and found that Google is 3/5ths the Chinese market in browser share.

There is a "local" browser version, Sogou explorer, which, of course, snoops on its users, but I would have thought Chinese users would have much more use for China-made browsers.

Instead, Google has that market pretty much sewn up as well. Sheesh.

Talk about a hit and run: AA finally comes clean on security breakdown

How much longer is it going to take ?

How much longer will we have to wait until CEOs stop with the stonewalling, pretending and generally blundering blindly about the corridors of PR and just straight out admit there's been a problem ?

It's not like they can't see that, in the end, they always will, is it ? Or do we have a generation of PR people that have the same Pavlovian training and all have the same counsel : deny and wait ?

Kudos to AA for finally coming clean, but shame on you for trying to pull the same wool and utterly failing to do so efficiently.

Come on, CEOs ; we can accept that there are problems. Failures happen, mistakes are made. But we CANNOT accept being lied to and led through the dark. You published private data ? SAY SO.

It will be so much more impressive being the first one to actually do that, I think that in itself would be a worthy PR move.

May the excessive force be with you: Chap cuffed after Star Trek v Star Wars row turns bloody

@diodesign

No, he clearly meant Babylon 5.

Check out the pics here if you have any more doubts.

Largest advertising company in the world still wincing after NotPetya punch

I'm guessing that "world's largest" actually means "real-life world's largest", which would exclude the Internet and thus avoid shaming themselves.

But what do I know.

Web inventor Sir Tim sizes up handcuffs for his creation – and world has 2 weeks to appeal

Slowly and surely they drew their plans against us

This push to DRM is like Chinese Water Torture - but a drop at a time, but it still drives you crazy in the end.

Sir Tim - shame on you for accepting any sort of compromise on this front. Fracturing the ever-ineffectual efforts of DRM makers is the only thing that ensures that we can continue to benefit from our legally-acquired content without trouble.

Indeed, DVD's were made copiable because one of the many publishing companies included its key in an unencrypted manner, IIRC. The result ? Piracy for the MPAA, but for me it means that I have all my DVDs ripped to my NAS and backed up properly without those horrid effing ads or "previews" for films I never was interested in in the first place. When I want to watch a film, I watch the film, not an endless stream of drivel that was only relevant in the month or two when I bought the DVD.

By keeping this fracture, we ensure that DRM companies will only ever employ second-rate programmers whose code will inevitably kneel to the steely-eyed abilities of their betters who will mercilessly rip apart their stupid schemes and allow us to continue to master our content in the manner of our choosing.

Yes, piracy will be a continuous menace - but the response to piracy is not locking down the content, it is making content that people genuinely want to pay for. Minecraft can be easily pirated, yet it is making money hand over fist. Films can easily be pirated, the good ones still have many, many people who buy the DVD or BluRay because they want to have the box, the artwork, and the ability to watch it even if the Internet is down for whatever reason.

DRM is a relic of last millennium, like DVD regions and dinosaurs. Let them effing die already.