Posts by Pascal Monett

UK names Russia as source of NotPetya, USA follows suit

So it was Russia

That is not an excuse for hooking up work PCs and servers to the Internet without proper protection in the first place.

Nor is it a cop-out for not training personnel properly.

Finally, it is a wake-up call : organizations have no reason to allow the use of USB ports or CD players. In more and more companies where I consult, I find that the USB ports have been disabled and the desktops/towers do not even have a CD tray any more.

Couple that with the threat of firing the person who clicks on a bloody link/attachment without thinking, and we have the start of proper on-site protection.

Crypto-gurus: Which idiots told the FBI that Feds-only backdoors in encryption are possible?

A million politicians, a million typewriters, and we have found the copy that is actually interesting for defending public interest.

You're decorating it wrong: Apple HomePod gives wood ring of death

Re: Lace Doily

On the contrary, Apple is just about to announce the HomePod Base, a $150 wireless charger that the HomePod fits perfectly into. Entirely innocuous to all types of surfaces (*), the HomePod Base is the must-have purchase for this Spring.

Don't miss your chance, order now !

*) Doctors recommend not posing the HomePod Base on children of any age.

Six things I learned from using the iPad Pro for Real Work™

Shh, don't rock the boat

They're so desperate to try and make those slablets important, don't ruin their illusions.

Those things have their uses, but when surfing, email and chat are in the top 5 apps to use, you take the rear of the line when actual work is concerned.

IBM declares it's the 'backbone of the world's economy'

Nope, not gonna happen.

IBM is part of the companies that write the law. Don't worry about those work agreements either - the courts don't have time to bother with that, they have The War Against Drugs to occupy them.

Icahn't get right Xerox Fuji merger spoils, cries activist investor Carl

And now he's whining like the spoiled brat he is.

I have never ever heard of that guy unless it was in some shareholder scandal that he's in the middle of. This bag of hot air is one of the most toxic useless people on this planet.

Yes, Assange, we'll still nick you for skipping bail, rules court

"I find arrest is a proportionate response"

Indeed. You can lock yourself up for as long as you want, it makes no difference to the law.

What this whole affair shows is how twisted the mind of that man is. His ego is probably just a byproduct of that.

Equifax hack worse than previously thought: Biz kissed goodbye to card expiry dates, tax IDs etc

That is exactly the problem. Those in charge are never held responsible for the goofs. I don't care who you are or how well you've been working for the past 30 years, if your department or company negatively impacts the lives of millions, you're talking the fall and it should not be to land on a cushion full of money.

Except, of course, that in a country where the laws are written by corporations, that has a snowball's chance of happening.

Facial recognition software easily IDs white men, but error rates soar for black women

So facial recog is not reliable for non-white skin

If I recall correctly, there's an issue in the USA between the police and black people. This is certainly not going to help.

It is a curious result, though. One would think that the color of the people who wrote the facial recog code doesn't matter, a process was thought of, agreed upon and implemented and there isn't any reason why code examining a face should have a harder time detecting skin tone variations in dark pixels than in light pixels. I think that this might be a sign that the cameras taking the pics are having a bit of trouble properly capturing dark tones. If the data in is insufficient, the data out will be flawed.

Maybe the coding teams can find a way around that, but it looks like it's going to be difficult.

Until last week, you could pwn KDE Linux desktop with a USB stick

Um, looking at my Windows 7 install, that effing Autoplay is still there - even with all the options turned off.

So no, stuff like this is not thoroughly tested just because MSFT.

Generally, though, I have to agree that because Windows is still everywhere for the moment, whatever goes wrong on it is generally found pretty quickly. As for problems being corrected, that will depend on whether or not Microsoft decides to declare that it is a feature.

Absolutely agreed. Software is like the medical profession : beyond the common cold, you need a specialist to get a reliable diagnostic.

Creating an OS is not making a fart app for a mobile phone. Even making games has become a very complex undertaking, what with the predictive network code, world mapping and multiplayer handling, not to mention graphics and object interaction (with or without physics involved). There is no way a single human being can assimilate the particularities of each domain in what is commonly called a triple-A title.

You want code that a single person can understand ? Go for the 2D platformers in Early Access on Steam. That is likely to not be too complicated to understand because a lot of them are written by a small group of people. But if you get the code to Call of Duty, I'll wager you'll never get through it all.

So don't knock Open Source on such arguments. That simply doesn't hold up to reality.

Apple's top-secret iBoot firmware source code spills onto GitHub for some insane reason

@oldrusty

You had to drag Ukraine into this discussion, didn't you ? I see, Russia is pure as driven snow, it is the rest of them that are evil.

Of course.

Go tell that to Anna Politkovskaya. Or would you prefer some of her friends instead ?

Closed source code has a legitimate place in the market. As a developer, if I manage to code an application that has a market to sell to, I do not see any interest for me in posting the code on GitHub or anywhere else because that would remove any incentive to pay me for the application.

If, however, I want to create an application with the firm intention of giving away the code to ensure maximum adoption, I have the freedom of doing so.

On the other hand, I firmly believe that closed source is not the way to go in future for creating operating systems. Our computing platforms must be managed by things we can trust, and the only way to trust them is to have them based on open-source platforms.

Open-source platforms that will run the applications we need or want, whatever source the code is.

As for giving the owner root, on a PC I totally agree because I've been using one since the first IBM PC 8086. On a consumer item though, I can totally understand that no manufacturer wants to do that because customer complaints are already hard enough without allowing the clueless lusers the ability to royally fuck their hardware up and them come back complaining - which we all know they will do.

Re: "in [..] the "Communist" block, the party itself is not all powerful"

I think you have a rather nebulous grasp of what the Communist block is, and of how elections are held in those kinds of countries.

You might want to research that, for educational purposes, of course.

For example, are you going to maintain that Putin got elected for the people ? Did you actually follow his political career ?

I think not.

Ruskie boffins blasted for using nuke bomb lab's supercomputer to mine crypto-rubles

Re: Dosvedanya, nerdskis !

And you're not going to want to be in their shoes for quite a while, I reckon.

I don't think Russian prisons and methods have been upgraded much since the Soviet era, and these guys were fooling around in a top-secret, military-style location. The consequences will most certainly not be pleasant.

Winter is coming for AI. Fortunately, non-sci-fi definitions are actually doing worthwhile stuff

"We have only just seen the beginning of what AI can achieve"

No. What we are seeing is the beginning of what correlating and evaluating massive amounts of data can achieve with a bespoke program.

We are nowhere near AI and talking about improvements in translation, although impressive indeed, has nothing to do with AI and everything to do with better coding (meaning code that does the job better).

Besides, translation still needs a ways to go before you feed a text to Google Translate in English and get a proper German/French/Spanish/your choice version that does not need to be almost completely rewritten by a competent linguist to be up to par with the original version.

TalkTalk to splash £1.5bn laying full fibre on 3 million doorsteps

Yeah, but investors bought shares for the dividends, not because they're interested in the company's activity.

Talk about a hot mic: Dodgy Pixel mobe audio lands Google in court

Re: Crappy consumer laws in the US

That's what you get in a country whose laws are lobbied by companies.

PSA: If your security starts and ends with bug bounties, you're gonna have a bad time

"Uber has learned something from the public ignominy"

Yeah, it has learned it has to get better at hiding its activities.

I'm sorry but I do not, for one second, believe that an Uber exec can be "contrite". Just looking at the picture I am convinced that he just went through the motions, mouthed the words and scurried back to HQ to harass a secretary in order to wind down.

The fact that the guy looks like a creep is hardly surprising, he's CTO at Uber, the creepiest Internet scam outfit there is.

CLOUD Act hits Senate to lube up US access to data stored abroad

@veti

"The new bill would render this argument moot by adding a section to the SCA that says firms must pass on data in their possession, even if it is held outside the US"

Sorry, but there is nothing in that quote that gives anything to US companies.

"Lawful Overseas Use of Data"

The only lawful overseas use of data possible is respecting the laws that are in effect overseas. Yes, it is a nightmare for police in New York. It's supposed to be.

The fact that this bill handily disregards not only the above but also the framework that is already in place to grant access to personal data via diplomatic channels is simply the US being its usual bullying self. The fact that the title of the bill is actually the complete opposite of what the bill actually proposes is just normal US politics., par for the course.

Extraordinary Rendition got a bad rap and was put to pasture. Now we have Ordinary Data Rendition, and nobody gives a flying one.

I need a whiskey.

Unlucky 13 collared by cops hunting cyber-crew who stole up to $2.2bn

"as this case shows"

Oh really ? Nice to know. So all those Nigerian Prince mails are going to stop as well ?

I'm glad the law put an end to some criminal activity, but don't get carried away. You only got the guys because they got big enough to warrant however much money was spent on catching them. In multiple countries at that.

If that is what it takes to catch an Internet crook, I think the Internet is plenty safe for the small-time criminals who only bother a few thousand people with cryptomalware. And since that is being shelved in favor of virtual currency mining, there will be even less incentive to go after scum like that. After all, it'll be difficult to indict them for an hour of illicit CPU use. On the other hand, that's all they took, so . . .

I see you're writing a résumé?!.. LinkedIn parked in MS Word

I did delete mine. I still receive invitations.

Could someone please explain how that is possible ?

LISA Pathfinder sniffed out gravitational signals down to micro-Hertz

"a separation of 2.5 million km"

Are they going to use lasers to keep things in line with that as well ?

Humanity is truly a thing of wonder. On the one hand, we have people capable of thinking of, designing and creating wondrous things like LISA, and on the other hand we have . . . let's not go there.

Thumbs up for boffins, once again !

MPs: Lack of technical skills for Brexit could create 'damaging, unmanageable muddle'

Yeah, but that could still work by candlelight.

Something you might want to prepare for on your side of the Channel, if all those dire warnings carry any weight.

Oh FNZ, Aviva! System back up, still trudging through queries backlog

The "shiny new online pension system" . .

. . that was either not (sufficiently) tested, or not specced properly, or badly configured, or all of the above, but one thing is for sure : somebody did not do their job correctly.

I have the feeling that that botched job may have been right from the beginning, in not telling Aviva that what they thought they wanted would not work and needed beefing up.

In any case, this appears to be yet another project that was handled by high-level marketing people (ie shysters) who sold a dream to a bunch of clueless suits who were obviously eager to drink the kool-aid, before foisting the baby and the bathwater onto the techs and hightailing out of there with their bonuses.

And now everybody suffers except the marketing yoiks.

Here's an idea : marketing gets its bonuses when the customer is happy with the product. That might focus a few minds.

Newsflash! Faking it until you make it is illegal in Silicon Valley: Biz boss pleads guilty

Does this really count ?

So one guy in a startup nobody's heard of got caught cheating. And ?

It's going to take a lot more than catching one little pig to stop the likes of the board at Uber or other startups who claim great things and deliver nothing.

Spring Cleaning is long overdue in Sillycon Valley. I'm not taking this as a sign that winter is over.

UK Home Office grilled over biometrics, being clingy with folks' mugshots

There is indeed an interesting juxtaposition

But only if you forget the one big difference : people give their personal details to social media sites, the government takes that information without consent (unless you think they ask you to please stay for your mugshot) and does not give it up even when confronted with express demands in that sense.

For all their faults, social media are becoming experts in generating sympathy, something the government is totally clueless about.

CableLabs signs off MAC spec for DOCSIS full duplex

Another lease extension for the life of copper access

I wonder what law there is on copper data bandwidth increase ? In any case, kudos to the boffins on this one, I imagine there will be rejoicing in many telecoms data centers.

In response to the initial poster : currently people on cable in my area have, at best, 12Mbps for the household. Every phone in the house is capable of WiFi speeds exceeding that, which means that everyone in fighting for a piece of that bandwidth. Let us say that WiFi is capped at 30Mbps (don't know if that is case, just speculating). If you have 3 phones, that's a potential 90Mbps. And if you're streaming YouTube, you're likely to use a fair part of that. Add a torrent client on that and your Internet will be slow as molasses and everyone will be complaining.

Get a 100Mbps connection and all of your phones have their 30Mbps available - no more fighting for bandwidth. That is why there is no problem having a connection that is greatly more capable than the things that are attached to it.

Because let's be serious, even if overnight, by magic, all copper cables were replaced with fiber optics and everything was magically able to continue operating, ISPs will not be handing out gigabit connections to households. It'll be a looong time before Joe Schmoe can sign up for anything better than 100Mbps.

Knock, knock. Who’s there? Another Amazon Key door-lock hack

Okay, let's pretend I had an aneurysm and bought one of these IoT lock thingies

It's like Star Trek : why use ball bearings when magnetic confinement is soo more high-tech ?

If I ever was stupid enough to splash dough on one of these pseudo-locks, there is one scenario in which I could find a use for it - but that would require more dough. Indeed, I would not replace my trusty mechanical security lock with that piece of tat for protecting my house and belongings, no. I would build a small shack good enough for housing a few Amazon boxes and put the tat lock on that. Delivery guy can put the box(es) in there, and if shitty lock does get hacked, well the only thing to take is the boxes.

Meanwhile, my house remains properly protected by an actual, honest-to-goodness, proven security lock. One that even works if there is no power for a week. Can you imagine ? A week !

Exoplanets from another galaxy spotted – take that, Kepler fatigue!

"2,000 moon-to-Jupiter sized planets for each main sequence star"

I'm sorry, my mind has a problem processing that information. How can a star have that many orbiting bodies, and how is it possible to determine that there are that many free-wheelers in any galaxy, let alone one billions of light-years away ? My gast is well and truly flabbered.

Oh, and there's a problem in that paragraph. If there are indeed 2000 moons & planets per main sequence star, it means that there are trillions of moons and planets, not trillions of stars. That would be recursive and likely reverse the expansion of our Universe due to the creation of infinite stars with 2000 times more stars for every Universal Processor tick. Check your Unicraft Handbook, I'm sure it's explained in there somewhere.

Should ISPs pay to block pirate websites? Supreme Court to decide

Thank you for that information

I understand now how complex the situation has become. Indeed, blocking an address does seem to be a lot more difficult a prospect than I initially imagined.

Re: "Blocking ip traffic is really difficult"

Um, don't think so. Put an IP address on blacklist and you're done.

I'm not an expert, but if you can do exactly that in the Windows hosts file, I doubt it can be any more of an issue for an ISP with trained professionals.

Re: Pass it on

"an automated system that blocks *any* site requested by *anyone*, without any due process to investigate whether the request is legitimate or not"

Oh, I see, you're talking about YouTube.

I do believe that the issue at hand is not yet including takedown notices by "anyone". This is a court order we're talking about. I doubt the courts would start sending orders willy-nilly just because Bill Cartier, watchmaker, thought it would be funny to shut down Cartier.com.

Long haul flights on a one-aisle plane? Airbus thinks you’re up for it

I hate the nickel-and-diming

On our last vacation trip, we toured the US West coast, hopping 5 times to 5 different states. We were happy and tired at the end, but the flights were just nagging money all the time.

What's the use of boasting the lowest plane ticket cost if everything else is an added cost ?

I'm going to avoid flying in the future, but if I do, I swear I'll take a 1st class ticket just for my peace of mind.

Nunes FBI memo: Yep, it's every bit as terrible as you imagined

He's been doing that since Day 1 and he will never stop because that's just how he is. He doesn't know any different.

Yes, and the article specifically outlines why and why that is important.

India signals ban on cryptocurrencies, embraces blockchain

I'm glad you see unicorn rainbows every day. Your life must be just filled with Care Bears. Good for you.

Meanwhile, the continuous outrageous variations in BitCoin prices, the unending string of exchange scandals, and the fact that blockchain is not, contrary to popular opinion, security, not to mention the unacceptable transaction fees, mean that I will leave you to your "freedom" while I use a state currency that is actually reliable and secure.

Each to his own, but please do not rope in Freedom to excuse your lack of objectivity.

Re: "Stick to posting Anti Trump nonsense"

Nothing anti-Trump is nonsense. Everything sensible is anti-Trump by definition.

But I don't expect a card-carrying Republican to understand that.

Hey, you know what the internet needs? Yup, more industrial control systems for kids to hack

If it is to remotely view the machine, there is no need to wire the machine. Install a CCTV to monitor it. If hackers take that over, big deal.

But of course, one does not just want to monitor, one wants control. Convenience is what will be the downfall of the IT industry. Because security is most definitely not convenient, we have the basic human tendency to get fed up with security instead of scrapping the convenience.

DevOps: Bloody hell, we've got to think about security too! Sigh. Who wants coffee?

Re: you're peddling cheap, low quality, high street tat

And that is the direction programming has taken since Day 1. As the old saying goes, there's never enough money to do it right, but there's always money to do it over.

Once upon a time programmers were engineers. With a degree. From a proper university. Nowadays, programmers are anyone with a keyboard. That might be good from a diversity point of view, but the downside is that those who can properly analyze a project and write good code are drowned in the masses of rent-a-suit shops and shipped-in-from-overseas keyboard mashers who may or may not have the chops but whose main quality is being cheap.

Let me put this another way : my wife is fanatical about shoes. She has upwards of sixty pairs and, every time we stroll the streets of a new town or city we've never been to before, she can't help but be magnetically attracted to any store front that has pairs on display. After 15 years of marriage (that was already a good while back), she surprised me one day when, out of the blue, she declared that she was fed up with buying cheap shoes. She stated, and I quote : "I'd rather have one or two good pairs a year than buy a pair every month that won't last more than 8 months". I lit a candle that day.

There is a market for cheap shoes, throwaway items that won't last, and that's fine. There is also a market for quality items that people need, items that will endure and give pride and pleasure to their owners for a long time.

DevOps is the cheap throwaway market. Everything is described to make everyone believe that whatever issues exist will be solved by the next iteration, so they are not important.

Sorry, but programming is not cheap. Programming is the very lifeblood of companies today, and there are some unavoidable medical practices and costs when it comes to dealing with lifeblood. The slew of hacking issues of last year demonstrate clearly that security is not something you just pay lip service to.

I would like the industry to take a step back and realize that nothing that has ever been made in a rush has ever lasted or performed as expected.

I would also like to win the lottery.

I know which has a better chance of happening.

Disengage, disengage! Cali DMV reports show how often human drivers override robot cars

My cruise control can brake if the speed goes over the set limit. That means that, if I'm on a down slope and there is no one around and no radars, I disengage the CC to benefit from the energy that gravity gives me, and I re-engage it when I'm on the upward slope before going below the set speed again, so my CC keeps me at the proper speed.

So yes, I exceed the speed limit every now and again. When no one is there to be harmed.

I am, of course, talking about driving outside inhabited areas.

To take the devil's side

We are at the dawn of autonomous vehicles. I do believe that we need all the data now in order to be able to properly program the damn things for later.

So yeah, Big Brother it may be, but that should help needing less of the Red Cross later on.

Besides the XPoint: Persistent memory tech is cool, but the price tag... OUCH

9.9 seconds + 0.1 seconds = 10 seconds

So your example turns out at 3MB/s.

Yes, they are related.

They are not interchangeable.

Tech bad-boy Uber crafts tool to make staff follow the rules in future (er, coding rules, that is)

No, not really. What Uber has done is ensure that the code it writes to screw over its competition is properly written, maybe even optimized, and that it respects coding standards.

But it will still screw over the competition every chance it gets.

New York lobs $210m at telcos to hook up 120k homes, businesses with bumpkin broadband

"Cuomo did not say when the build-out will be completed"

Of course not. No promises before getting the money. Then there will be excuses and "unforeseen complications". The fact is simply that Verizon is coming aboard because the competition is getting a slice of new pie and Verizon cannot let than happen without moving in.

The fact that there's pork at hand might not even be the major factor in Verizon's sudden new interest, although it certainly sweetens the deal.

Crim-checker IT system update fail has cost UK taxpayer 'MEEELLIONS'

"MPs have slammed..."

While it's good to see higher-ups expressing their discontent, I have to wonder what impact is this actually going to have.

It seems that UK Government IT projects are undying zombies, forever feasting on more and more money and nobody can stop them.

I guess, if enough pressure is maintained, maybe somebody will get early retirement ?

Suspicion of villainy leads Facebook to ban cryptocoin ads

Somehow I doubt that anti-discrimination legislation is going to have any place in this particular picture, but I grant you that Facebook likely cannot prevent minorities (in the US) from creating a profile and using the site. Nor does it, AFAIK.

I maintain that Facebook is not obliged to support freedom of speech, nor is it required to apply court process to any issue it might face with respect to users of its platform - within the law, of course. So Facebook Stormtroopers bursting into a scammers' house and hauling him and his equipment off to a dark, dank dungeon are off the table - however satisfying that may be for some.

Allegedly.

In America, tech support conmen get a mild slap. In Blighty, scammers get the book thrown at them

I've always thought that criminals should first and foremost be made to pay damages to their victims, meaning at least 100% of what their victims lost, whenever possible. Then, of course, they pay the cost of their court case, whatever that may be.

They get out of jail when they've paid up. If they can't pay (because they killed the victim), they never get out.

Seems to me that would simplify things greatly. Judge and jury must only find guilt. If guilty, definition of the amount to pay with the previous guidelines. No mucking about with how many years for a murder vs how many for purse-snatching. You're in until you've cleared your debt to society and that's all.

And, since you clear your debt on prison terms, son of rich daddy gets to stay in as long as son of cobbler for the same amount of debt. No external funding allowed.

Re: "they would get you on federal crimes"

Um, I don't think the FBI has jurisdiction on UK territory.

Yet.