Posts by Pascal Monett

Facebook is abusive. It's time to divorce it

With the difference that this article is actually important.

My wife recently put an end to her FB page, which she had started against my counsel because she decided that she wanted a way to keep our friends informed while we were on our vacation to the US in 2014. It was useful for that, and the experiment should have ended there, but my wife continued using Facebook after that, despite my telling her that it was over.

She spent more and more time on it, until, in February this year, she told me that she had realized that FB was basically making her angry and annoyed with people. She had realized that she had started getting into the habit of angrily responding to stupid comments and that is when she decided that things had gone far enough and she closed down her profile.

Now she spends her time on Pinterest, where there is a wealth of interesting content. She's also taken the decision to never read the comments.

All in all, a useful experience. Now I am sure that FB will never enter our house again.

'A-Team'-style tactics: Legit tool welded to kitchen sink to make off-the-shelf snoop kit

Had to happen someday, right ?

Professionals need network investigation tools, and proper investigation tools are just like surgeon's scalpels : they can cut off the cancer cells just as easily as they can cut through an artery.

It has long been said that if your encryption scheme is correct, it doesn't matter if everyone knows how it works because that knowledge gives you no leverage in discovering what was encrypted without having the keys that were used.

It would be nice if network security could get up to that level, but I don't think it can ever manage that and remain usable, easily manageable and remain fast.

Cybercrook spared jail after copping to FIFA video game mega-hack

Not complete idiots then

"The group began running the scam through a modified video game console before graduating to use of a cloud computing-based system"

Well, at last someone has found a way to make money in The Cloud !

Male escort forgot pregnancy protection, scores data protection instead

Re: "as part of the service"

The issue is : we don't know what "service" was requested.

She rented services of one "entertainer" for "a three night sojourn". This is not a one-time mistake. You'd think that she'd realize if or not he had a condom during that time and would be capable of putting a stop to things if she did not agree.

Pen-tester gets past Microsoft VB macro barriers

Perfect Microsoft bloatware

And one of them allows you to bypass security restrictions

Net neutrality blowback: Cities say no. Court says whoa. Trumpster blames Canada for not going slow

"Do not expect much thought or effort to be given to any other perspectives"

I think this phrase totally characterizes the Trump administration.

Apache OpenOffice: Not dead yet, you'll just have to wait until mid-May for mystery security fixes

Re: Impressive doubletalk

And completely wrong. Altering posted records without justifying oneself openly is very much being secretive. It's also being dishonest.

We see a lot of that nowadays, so I guess it's normal then.

BOFH: This is your last chance. After this, there is no turning back

Re: More murders than...

While there is often only one murder, there are certain episodes where people are dropping like flies.

Admittedly, the impact of the 4th, then 5th cadaver is all the greater when it's generally one or two bodies per episode.

Have you seen the list of counties though ?

If this series goes on much longer, they're going to have to edit a special atlas just for Midsomer.

Need the toilet? Wanna watch a video ad about erectile dysfunction?

Judge of quality ?

Screw the marble floors. My only yardstick when it comes to judging a company's true quality is its toilet paper.

I cannot count the number of fancy office areas I have been in where it all looks expensive and upper-class, but they have rolls of sandpaper waiting for you in the single-access rooms.

I have, on occasion, been pleasantly surprised by soft tissue of obviously upper quality, but it would seem that most companies above a certain size are perfectly content to have their employees sit on a rash all day long.

Of course, I cannot judge the quality of the tissue in the Manager's section - as a consultant I never get access to those areas. Somehow I doubt they'll be wiping with the same sandpaper as their underlings. Can't imagine why, but I just don't see it.

Who needs fuel ? One block of C4 should be enough to expel everything from the room.

Facebook decides fake news isn't crazy after all. It's now a real problem

99% authentic ?

Really ?

So all those dog/cat profiles are real animals posting in English ?

Wow, who'd a thunk it ?

Re: "The web used to be about freedom of expression. Remember those days?"

And the USA used to be about Freedom and Justice (for all). Who remembers those days ?

The real issue, I think, is that we adopted the Internet and used it in the same way we used to go to village squares. Everyone talked, some people said outrageous things, some people said intelligent things (allegedly). Those people who said things that were offensive could only offend those within earshot and, by the end of the week, much was forgotten that was not truly despicable.

We do the same on the Internet, but we still cannot grasp the fact that, years later, our posts can still be searched for and found, analyzed in or out of context and reacted upon. The Internet Village Square is a hall of echoes, and everyone can get offended about something at any point in time, even when the poster is no longer around to defend his point of view.

I don't think we can change the Internet on that point - we're just going to have to learn to live with it.

And maybe stop reflex-posting by engaging brain a bit more before hitting that keyboard.

TalkTalk HackHack DuoDuo PleadPlead GuiltyGuiltyGuiltyGuilty

So he controls his local data but forgets to control his blabbing about it

Of course, as the seller he does have to make it known that he is selling, and therein lies the rub. Maybe he didn't use TOR, maybe he posted on the wrong site, or maybe he just forgot to use private sessions or wipe his browser history.

In any case, this just goes to show that the Internet is a dangerous place when you are being searched for by the law - there's no telling what tracks you leave that will lead back to you and bust your ass.

Netgear says sorry four weeks after losing customer backups

"the outage lost all of his photographs"

Slowly but surely, people will start to get the message : cloud is NOT backup, despite all the assurances to the contrary.

The ONLY backup you can be sure of is the one you can hold in your hand and have tested to be sure.

If you're not storing your backups offline yourself, you're just the next victim waiting to learn how it happened.

Victory! The smell of skunkworks in your office in the morning

"so long as management actually does their job"

Management always does their job.

It's only that, in some cases, sometimes, that job is not managing but back-stabbing, under-the-rug sweeping, and whatever else comes to their enlightened mind. Until they get fired for it, of course, which doesn't happen often enough in some cases (Uber, looking squarely at you).

TVs are now tablet computers without a touchscreen

Re: All I want is the screen

Totally agree. A TV should just be the screen. You want something more ? Buy a piece of kit to attach to it and you're done.

It is ridiculous to imagine that an enormous screen is obsolete in any way. In fact, it should be ridiculous to have to ditch a TV screen for anything else than pure hardware failure.

Now, I've heard that the reason for all this integration that is busting our collective nuts and will do so for the foreseeable future is that Joe Public doesn't like to have to choose, he wants everything in the box. Funny that cars have lists of options and TVs cannot, but fine then, put all the external kit in the box with the screen, just don't solder it to the frame and force me to dump the screen when one piece gets out of whack.

What should be done is the screen should have a plug-in board at the rear. Kit to attach could be modules that slot in at any available point on the board. Kit that fails gets its module taken out, to be or not replaced when the owner chooses to do so. When Joe Public comes to buy a new TV, all available modules are attached. If/when a module fails, Joe Public can replace it when he wants.

Sure, the screen itself will one day become obsolete, but come on. We had 4/3 TVs for decades before that fancy Widescreen came along. Now we have HDTV screens and you want me to think that they're going to change in 5 years ? Nope. The failure of 3D is a good indicator that we'll have HDTV screens in 2050 yet. And even if everything has 3D support by that time, HDTV will still be the standard for non-3D broadcasts (which will exist until we have holographic TV at least).

So get cracking on modular frames. Then I'm ready to bet that we'll find out that Joe Public is quite happy with the idea of buying a frame and choosing the modules he wants - especially when he can add more any time.

WD pulls cash-strapped Toshiba to one side, whispers: 'All right, pal, how much you want?'

$17bn here, $20bn there . . .

At what point does one sit back and ask oneself "hmm, can anyone else really put umpteen billion on the table ? Can we not wait a bit for the cost to go down ?"

Billions have flown and burned in the past decade, and Microsoft alone has written off more money than a small country's GDP.

Take a step back and calm down, Golden Boys. You're driving the entire world into a wall and this is one case where betting on failure will not pay off because there will be nothing left to pay with.

Ex-NSA techies launch data governance tool for future algorithm-slavery

"presenting manipulated data as correct"

Why do you mention politics ? Oh, right . . .

Uber sued by ex-Lyft driver tormented by app maker's 'Hell' spyware

Re: I wonder if the likes of Uber really care about retention

Well if they don't know, they will soon.

I think that a turnover of 97% means a lot of people that say negative things about the company. If one unhappy customer drives away 10 potential ones, this is a tsunami of dissatisfaction in the making.

And I can't wait for that tsunami to hit Uber's shores.

Lyrebird steals your voice to make you say things you didn't – and we hate this future

"Our technology questions the validity of such evidence"

Don't think so. You're tech may be able to fool Joe Public (not a really difficult task), but proper scientists will carve the inconsistencies and aberrations of your pathetic attempts to fool them before they've even finished their morning coffee.

I read somewhere (a good while ago) that scientists had determined that the human voice has some form of signal that can be recognized whether or not the person has a cold, is sick or not. I am quite sure that, if science is capable of determining that unique quality in a person's voice, no amount of computer trickery will be able to pass that check.

Wait and see, I guess.

Uber cloaked its spying and all it got from Apple was a slap on the wrist

Re: RICO act

Fine, but let's be honest here : if you have developed functionality to specifically lie to law enforcement agents, well I take that as an open invitation to a SWAT team and legal shutdown.

And if I were an Evil Overlord, I very much guarantee that your days, nay your minutes, would be numbered as soon as I learned that you are actively trying to avoid the scrutiny of my enforcers.

(You can't) buy one now! The flying car makes its perennial return

In France, you have to fly a dozen or so times (not hours) a year at a rate of over €100 (depending on your club, apparently) per flight in order to validate that you can renew you license. If you don't have sufficient recorded flights, you cannot renew the license.

Don't how how much renewal costs though. Still, the whole process is an order of magnitude above just £150. And you're certified to fly an actual plane that can cross all of France in just a few hours. This joke of PR stunt will do all of 200km in the air, if that, at the cost of half a million and a pilot's license.

Anyone with a pilot's license will not even consider putting money in that stupidity even if they have it, is what I'm saying.

"The first commercial flying car in the world is now a fact,"

And they haven't started pre-production. Can anyone say lawsuit for wrongful advertising ?

"The easiest way to become a pilot" says the web page. Easiest way to become a smear on a wall, cliffside or tree trunk, I say - and that's when you manage to avoid embedding yourself in someone else's vehicle. At least you have to have a license to pilot - tends to keep things under control, what with annual pilot license fees in the thousands of euros and dozens of hours of actual flight time. At that expense level the dumbbells tend to drop out naturally.

Honestly, if I have an actual pilot license I wouldn't want to bother with this hybrid monstrosity. As a car its aerodynamics must be ridiculous, as a plane its range is ridiculous. You get the worst of both worlds and you pay large annual fees for the privilege.

I don't see this ever taking off. Real pilots will want a real plane to go places with, and rent a real car when they get there. Half a million bucks will get them plenty of travel destinations without the hassle this monstrosity must be.

We're spying on you for your own protection, says NSA, FBI

Government witnesses do not need to lie - they can just follow Sir Humphrey's example.

Script kiddies pwn 1000s of Windows boxes using leaked NSA hack tools

Yup. Looks like it's time to airgap. Permanently.

Q. Why is Baidu sharing its secret self-driving sauce? A. To help China corner the market

"exploiting cloud services as much as possible"

Well that's not a surprise these days, everyone is doing that and customer convenience comes second in the list of reasons why.

On the other hand, in this particular arena it is rather justified. It makes sense to have a central server be aware of where everyone is and what direction they are going - makes for better traffic flow regulation if nothing else. We'll just have to find out the hard way what other data they are skimming at the same time.

Drunk user blow-dried laptop after dog lifted its leg over the keyboard

Good on Jim

He was perfectly right to dump the whole sorry mess. Being a manager does not entitle you to making a godawful mess and then expecting everyone else to clean up after you - except that, obviously, that does tend to happen quite a lot.

In any case, a melted keyboard is certainly to be interpreted as a dead laptop. Even without the aroma and hygiene issue, it was most likely dead as a doorknob anyway.

Once I had a work laptop (a Thinkpad) which, due to a mistaken movement which I very much regretted, some Coke spilled onto the keyboard. I immediately turned over the laptop and tried to shake all the liquid out, finishing the job with tissues to dry everything as best I could. The laptop continued working for the rest of the evening, seemingly without trouble. I backed up everything important before shutting down, just in case. Turns out in case was the case, and the laptop never started up again. I got a replacement with an admonishment to keep the Coke away from the keyboard and that was that.

So yeah, dog pee all over, no attempt to dry it up with paper towels and applying hair dryer until the keyboard melts ? That thing was completely dead. No use wasting time on it and so much for that moron's budget and "important files".

Google's 'adblocker' is all about taking back control

Firefox, NoScript and uBlock Origin.

FTFY

What a To-Do! Microsoft snuffs out Wunderlist

"You have to wonder how a company like MS, that really did produce some of the best (and certainly popular) software around has turned into the total insane asylum it appears to be nowadays"

Easy : mountains and mountains of money that insulate MS from the cost of failure.

Any normal company that pours $200 million into something does so with the firm intent of recovering the cost and making money from the investment because its survival is at stake. Microsoft, on the other hand, has money coming in whatever happens, so the fact that it can afford to lose $200 million basically means it has no clear incentive to monetize said $200 million to survive.

Oh, of course, high-level managers are around implying that the investment had better bear fruit, but then they run off to pay attention to the next billion-dollar investment and everything is lost in the maelstrom of day-to-day business. Then, at some point later on, somebody stumbles on the file and takes a look, brings it to some high-level manglement's attention and gets told "eh, that thing ? Didn't you follow last week's management session ? It's out-of-date, no longer part of our new outlook. Get rid of it."

Because Microsoft can still afford to change outlook every week. Companies that fight for survival cannot - they have to stick to their guns because they can't afford new ones. Not until the investment has paid for itself, that is.

Mastercard launches card that replaces PIN with fingerprint sensor

@ patrickstar

In all of my bank history, I had one brush with fraud. I had gone on holiday to the US (back when it was still the Home of the Brave) and one small shop had tried to skim me by presenting the same bill twice, but the second date was days after the first.

As soon as I found that on my statement I went straight to my BNP representative and showed him the issue. The refund was immediate and without fuss.

As far as I'm concerned, the EU environment of Chip & Pin is very efficient for me and I largely prefer it to the totally insecure magnetic strips still used in the US.

That said, I'd prefer my VISA to not have any mag strip at all. I guess it's to remain compatible with the US and other countries that have not yet migrated or are still in the process of doing so.

Flaws found in Linksys routers that could be used to create a botnet

"11 per cent of the active devices exposed were using default credentials"

That is a user issue. I doubt there's anything any company can do to thwart that kind of problem - unless the password is by default the serial number of the kit. Don't think that's very easy to set up, but it should be doable - for a certain sum, obviously.

EU plans for blockchain 'observatory' raise concerns, says expert

Indeed. The only question is : who's going to do the stealing ?

Trump's lips sealed on surveillance, complains EU privacy chief

"We've given them time"

In the mean time, without any assurances and all, I hope that the data transfers have stopped, right ?

Oh, silly me, I forgot. The US has everyone's balls in jars in the Ready Room on level -4 of the White House - if you do something they don't like, they squeeze until you get the message.

The fact that EU citizens have singed up en masse to Facebook et al without a moment's thought to the privacy they have heard for years they are giving up does not bode well for EU governments having any nous to try and actually protect our data.

At this point, Hell and handbaskets come to mind.

Infinidat puts array to the test, says it 'wrecks' Pure and EMC systems

"virtually no IOs came direct from or go directly to disk"

I sincerely hope, in case of power failure, that they have a very capable battery back-up system with proven failover and generators that kick in to immediately supplement the batteries because otherwise I think there'll be a hell of clean-up job when the power comes back on again.

I'm sure they have that in mind, though. Just wonder what the figures are on power consumption and time-to-shutdown in case of outage.

Apple's zippy silicon leaves Android rivals choking on dust

The ol' PC performance race has shifted to mobile phones

And that is logical since the majority of computer users now use their phones (or a tablet) to do all the stuff they used to have to need a PC for.

Personally, I prefer watching YouTube or general surfing on a platform that has at least a 19" screen and a keyboard/mouse combo, along with a comfy chair to enjoy the experience in - but apparently I'm a rabid old curmudgeon. And I'm perfectly fine with that.

Re: What's so wrong with a Ferrari engine in a metro?

Let's see, maybe it's the fact that the tires are not up to the task, the brakes are certainly not either, and I'd rather not see the result of a Ferrari-engined Metro having skidded into a wall after failing to brake in time.

A car is not just a chassis where you drop an engine in. Cars are designed in every aspect to conform to the performance they are supposed to give. That is why you don't have any small cars with 8 or 6-cylinder engines either. They're not made for that kind of power and it would be dangerous to try.

Startup remotely 'bricks' grumpy bloke's IoT car garage door – then hits reverse gear

"users (Sheeple) are lapping up this connected IOT requiring external servers"

Yes, they are, but I'm not so sure that it is unfortunate. I think it is an excellent exercise in education.

When enough stories like this, or cloud brownouts making it just as impossible to operate the frakkin' IoT POS, have been published, the sheeple will intimately know that cloud-enabled IoT is nothing but a risk with little reward.

Cowbow outfits like Garadget who give themselves the right to cut off a paying customer simlpy because some thin-skinned support guy got brushed the wrong way will be a marvelous force in this direction, not the least because people are more intolerant than ever and the confusion between what I can do and what I have the right to do is constant these days.

In any case, Garadget is one more company that I have filed on my personal blacklist for abuse of power. I don't care about excuses here - the fact remains that a simple support bloke has the power to cut off a customer. Since the power remains, it will be abused.

Just like I have blacklisted Amazon's Kindle because Amazon has the power to remove a book that customer's paid for without the customer's consent.

It is urgent to realign tech companies with reality : having the means does not imply having the right.

McAfee is McAfee again, promises security with kum ba yah

Can't - he locked himself in his nuclear bunker and is on high alert for aliens.

WWW daddy Sir Tim Berners-Lee stands up for end-to-end crypto

Brilliant plan - which is already in place and progressing nicely

Just check the continued rants concerning STEM problems, the total absence of critical thinking in the educational curriculum and the rise and multiplication of "reality shows" and "social media" that suck out the collective IQ like leeches.

We're on the right path, nay - the path of righteousness. Amen, brother!

Hundreds of millions 'wasted' on UK court digitisation scheme

I take it you work for the Government ?

Yeah, but Moodle is not the solution that was pushed by the golf-buddy of the high-ranking official who awarded the contract, then waited for his new Mercedes to be delivered.

Re: "we have come to value ... Working software over comprehensive documentation"

Seems that, at this point in time, the UK Courts have neither.

Personally I think Agile or Waterfall make no difference if the project is not clearly defined and the steps to realizing said project not perfectly understood by everyone, from top managers to the underpaid code monkeys that hammer their keyboards.

It's time to stop thinking that we can implement country-wide IT projects without a year or two of high-level, expert study and preparation, followed by ruthless implementation of said project.

I'll always remember the best project manager I ever met - it was in an industrial tire-making plant. When we went to progress meetings, there was an agenda he had sent to the participants. Anything outside the agenda was mercilessly swatted aside with an imperious remark to the effect that that was not on the agenda. Any suggestion for additional functionality or unplanned functionality improvement was automatically put on the list for v1.1. And nobody dared complain.

End result ? Project delivered on spec, on cost and on time, with discussions for that famous v1.1 to happen later.

Greatest project I ever worked on.

Android beats Windows as most popular OS for interwebz – by 0.02%

"It marks the end of Microsoft's leadership worldwide..."

I wonder how much of a grudge the guy who wrote that had against MS.

Feels like he's been waiting a while before a chance to publish that sentence.

Not that it is any less true, of course. MS failures have been many, and their combined weight has finally dragged the behemoth down. It will still wallow in the mud for while, bleating loudly before silenced by sheer exhaustion.

Then we'll dress up the bones in a museum, and Life will go on.

D'oh! Amber Rudd meant 'understand hashing', not 'hashtags'

Re: "Banning end-to-end encryption"

A great idea, obviously. Here's something we cannot comprehend . . let's ban it ! Yea !

Go ahead, ban encryption. Apart from the obvious fact that, as soon as you have actually passed that into law every single UK-based website with personal details will be seeing their customer lists pilfered like there's no tomorrow, you are - again, obviously - overlooking the fact that banning encryption will only ban it in your little country. The rest of the world will still be using it.

That means you will be depriving your economy from an essential tool that everyone else will still be using. Does that sound like a good idea ? Only if you're a member of HM's Government, apparently.

Might as well bin the guns and arm your troops with swords & crossbows while you're at it. At least they'll look rad and the LARP fans will go wild with joy.

Reg now behind invisible HTML5 Bitcoin paywall

Re: Nice one

Indeed. I'm actually hoping El Reg does implement something like that !

Facebook, Google, etc: Yeah, yeah, we'll work on the nasty stuff about bombs – but we ain't doing no backdoors

Re: "that fruity company"

Remind me exactly which social media thingy Apple is responsible for ?

Europe to push new laws to access encrypted apps data

Re: "not be much of a challenge for an intermediate programmer"

Encryption is NOT EASY, and implementing it properly is NOT the domain of an "intermediate programmer".

In order to properly implement encryption into a home-grown product, you have to have a programmer that is bloody good. Not Torvalds-level good, I agree, but better than "intermediate" for sure.

Financial fraud losses in the UK last year topped £20m a day – report

"every organisation with a role to play unites to tackle it"

Meanwhile, CryptoLocker criminals get (traceable) BitCoin payments every day and that just sails under the radar.

Fighting crime is not easy, I'm sure, but dammit all, when most transactions take place electronically in a world where a single government organization can listen to and record every single mobile phone conversation, you still try to make me think that you can't trace a frikkin' bank transfer and find a criminal ?

Sorry, not buying it.

New plastic banknote plans now upsetting environmental campaigners

"300 football fields of rainforest per hour is cleared"

Okay, that is a statement that demands verification.

The total land surface of the Earth is apparently 148.3 million square kilometers.

Of that, rainforests cover allegedly 6%, which means 8.898 million square kilometers.

From this wiki entry, I find that a football field is 7140 square meters which, with the magic of the metric system, means 7.14 square kilometers.

300 football fields is therefor 2142 square kilometers, which is supposedly cleared per hour.

So in a day, 51408 square kilometers are "cleared", and at that rhythm it takes a mere 14.67 years to remove all the rainforests on the surface of the planet.

Given that I've been hearing about this issue for the past 20 years, we've already finished clearing rainforest and have started clearing, what - savanna ? Desert ? Dirt ?

If I'm not mistaken, the rainforest still exists, if only because there are still people trying to save it. I do not dispute that logging companies and, apparently, local farmers are indeed clearing out land, nor will I dispute that some oversight must be put in place to control that and ensure that we are not, in fact, burning the Earth's lungs to provide yet another effing snack, but claims like that do not incite me to think that the issue is as serious as it undoubtedly is.

BDSM sex rocks Drupal world: Top dev banished for sci-fi hanky-panky

Many people have wrong, preconceived notions concerning BDSM. I am not personally into that sort of thing, pain - or inflicting pain - goes full contrary to what I believe sexual pleasure should be. But BDSM is not just about sex, nor is it just about pain.

I have read about BDSM and people who practice it. I think a good starting point is this article.

Read it and think about it. Make a decision if you want, or don't. But do not remain willfully ignorant about it if you intend to decry other people's practice of it.