Posts by Pascal Monett

How TV ads silently ping commands to phones: Sneaky SilverPush code reverse-engineered

A different kind of change is required

Yes.

It is time to set up the Bureau of Sabotage.

How much has ICANN spent on lobbying US govt this year? $2.5m

"engagement and education" programs

I swear to God I have a very special "education" program for ICANN that covers all aspects of managing with transparency. It is seconded by key therapeutic sessions of a new technique I am reviewing called percussive chanting. It goes like this : the board members get tied to a log, then the galley drummers start a slow rythm while the personnel impress the notion of transparency on their bare backs with leathery implements.

With a good tempo, the board will be chanting transparency in no time.

Repeat the session when motivation is no longer sufficient.

Apple's Watch charging pad proves Cupertino still screwing buyers

Battery ?

I had a BMW 330d for several years. I do remember changing the battery once. I don't remember having to go to BMW to get a special one, I'm pretty sure I bought it on a shelf in a supermarket, like all the others I've had to buy in my life.

There may be some special battery requirement for hybrid vehicles, but I can vouch that the bog-standard BMW diesel engine will accomodate your supermarket battery of the proper voltage without issue.

Veblen goods

Thank you for teaching me the name of something I intuitively knew but could never express clearly. I will be delighted to spread the knowledge around.

Apple – it's true: iPad Pro slabs freeze when plugged in to charge

A special keypad

If you're talking about software running on a PC, there is zero reason for a special keypad and there is no software for which a bog-standard, 100+ key keyboard cannot suffice. You could replace the keyboard with only a number pad, but there is no reason to require a keyboard and another input device with keys.

This reeks of snake oil and it would seem that their autolaunch tasks prove it.

Personally, I would never accept being told that software running on a PC need any input deevice beyond mouse + keyboard. Not for my needs anyway.

From $6bn to $4.2bn to $2.9bn: Square's ever shrinking unicorn horn

Every company has founders, each founder has shares in the company. As long as the company is private, each founder can decide what he wants to do with his own shares and, unless the statutes of the company demand a specific process, nobody has the right to call him on it.

For example, I am in business with an associate. Together we head a small company. I have a certain amount of shares, he has the rest (the majority actually, I joined his company). We are not and never will be publicly traded, but I still have a share of the company. If we are very successful, when I retire I will be able to sell those shares at the best price I can get, and there is no law that says otherwise.

Tech firms fight anti-encryption demands after Paris murders

Hmm. Hadn't thought of that.

Pff. Pesky Reality. Always in the way of a nice, easy solution !

"encryption blocks justice"

Which kind of justice exactly ?

The kind that bursts through the door, trashes your appartment/house in search of weapons/drugs/illegal-substance-of-the-day then gives you a full cavity search to be sure they missed nothing, leaving empty-handed with nary an excuse for having violated your life, your body and your privacy under the pretense of "securing the Nation" ?

Or the kind that gathers intel, checks it out, asks for warrant to place under surveillance, gathers direct observational data and, when all indications are you do actually have a bomb lab in your basement, then comes crashing into your life at 6 A.M. sharp to ruin your evil plans ?

Once again encryption is being paraded as the tool terrorists use. Terrorists may indeed use it, but in Paris they did not. As a French national, I am particularly looking forward to the explanations of how these nutjobs got through on plaintext SMS. But in any case, I feel that we, as a society, must absolutely stop relying on computers to discover and gather information on suspects. SigInt has its limits, and they appear to be rather drastic.

I would much rather have all entryways to major cities equipped with metal detectors able to sniff out weapons-grade metals and sending an automated alert and license plate pic to Police HQ(*). I think that would honestly be a lot more efficient because, however long the scum takes to plan, whatever the encryption they use (or don't, as the case may be), they still have to show up physically, all geared up, to accomplish their despicable mission.

If you can catch them while they're still in their car, you can very much limit the damage they can do - contrary to the situation today where we have a few officers sifting through petabytes of useless data and not getting the intel they could actually use.

Alert from the Porte d'Auteuil ? It's a black Seat with four bearded guys dressed in black ? Time for the rapid intervention RAID team. Start the roadblocks and we'll get them !

* - of course, maybe a better alternative would be an automated 80cm-thick steel plate that pops up in front of said vehicle. Vehicle crashes into it, everyone inside seriously injured, cops and medical services just need to mop up. YMMV.

UK joins US financial institutions for industry resilience tests

It obviously can't hurt. Personally, even if the exercise is a shambles, it still will result in better awareness for all involved.

Fire drills are an accepted nuisance for a risk that is actually not all that common. This should become a regular occurence because, if I am not mistaken, the risk is far larger.

DS5: Vive la différence ... oh, and throw away the Citroën badge

The traditional French place ? I think not.

My company car is a Peugeot 207. The window buttons are on the door, in front of the handle.

I had a Laguna 2 a few years ago, window buttons were on the door handle as well. Renault Scenic models are the same. The Renault 5 my mother had decades ago was the same. So I would say that the traditional window button position in France is on the interior door handle.

On the other hand, I had a BMW 330d, it had all window button controls behind the gearshift on the central column. I found that quite practical. Curiously, the Audi A5 I have now has the buttons . . on the door handle.

Concerning the DS5, I am quite happy to know that they have removed the Citroën name from it. A Citroën car has hydropneumatic suspension. It is the defining characteristic of Citroën, and the main reason that all Citroën lovers have stuck with the brand.

A car that does not have hydropneumatic suspension does not deserve the Citroën moniker.

Amazon: Just to let you know, Oracle's cloud is so 2011. That's all

Looks to me as if Oracle is rolling on the business as usual train

The Internet is not what Oracle is used to. Oracle gets you to its platform then proceeds to bleed you dry with every option and doodad as a surplus.

On the Internet you can't do that. The Internet is a world of fixed budget. People are generally not going to pay more for more functionality, but they will drop you if a competitor comes along with a better product. So everyone is putting more functionality just to stay relevant or get ahead of the competition.

That means that Oracle is simply going to price itself out of the market.

Edgy online shoppers face Dyre Christmas as malware mutates

Re: What kind of mental midgetry ...

So something you cannot find locally is not worth it ?

I take it you live smack dab in the middle of Manhatten Island, and the rest of the world can just crawl under a rock and die, right ?

Criminal are mostly hacking-by-numbers with exploit kits

$80K for a $5K investment ? Per month ?

In other words, securing one's server, site and PC is costing the crims $85K every month.

That's a target I like to achieve.

Astronomers catch first sighting of a planet's birth pangs

"the difference between a firefly and a lighthouse"

Yes, as viewed from the other side of the ocean.

Science is just awesome.

But yes, there is zero chance for us to detect a planet of any size in another galaxy. Cut off the million and recheck those distance figures.

eBay scammer steals identity of special agent investigating him

Re: The line between chutzpah and reckless

Absolutely. This is the case of a bottom feeder to whome Fate appears to deliver an opportunity, but it was actually a test of character.

He'll have a few years to rethink his life now.

Mixing ERP and production systems: Oil industry at risk, say infosec bods

"up to field devices and smart meters"

Smart meters, hmm. Where have I heard about those things already ?

Ah, right : the UK energy meters that have been rolled out almost by force in the UK.

Well, looking forward to hearing about how some blackhats turned SAP around on that. Should be an interesting read.

If it ever happens, that is.

Uber Australia is broke: 'We don't pay tax because we don't generate revenue'

"We don’t think that it is appropriate"

Don't you just love it when a company tries to tell the government how the law should work ?

In any case, I'm almost into encouraging Uber to go on with such shenanigans. Keep it up and you'll be the landmark case to describe why the creation of an Internet Tax Board was necessary.

And honestly, I think we'll get there. With the Internet, you can sell anywhere. Well anywhere's government is going to want their share of tax, because that sale happened in their country. It is useless to try and say that you base your revenue in another country when the issue is VAT or suchlike.

Foreign goods arrive in port and are subject to local VAT rates. Heck, even inside the USA sales are subject to each State's sales tax.

Uber is going to bite the bullet on this big time, because there is no government on this planet that is going to think they are exempt from sales tax. Not gonna happen.

It's come to this for IBM: Watson is now a gimmick app on the iPhone

That depends : what game are you going to play with your Stephens ?

Microsoft gets Edge on blocking ad injectors

"Web browsers are an attractive target, because in-browser [ads can bring] revenue,"

That's like saying cars are useful because you can put up billboards and the drivers will see them.

No. Web browsers are an attractive target because that's the one platform everyone is using for a majority of their Internet interactions. The fact that you can spaff ads on them is a side effect, not a purpose.

Car radars gain sharper vision after ITU assigns special spectrum slice

Interesting link

Clear explanation on why the higher frequency is important : "A low-resolution system will have a higher rate of false alarms and will miss a small object that is in front of a big one".

That is kind of important if you wish to avoid crashing into the kid crossing behind the SUV in front of you.

Good things all around.

Nano-NAS market dives into the cloud

@goldcd & Anonymous

goldcd: I agree entirely with your point on remote access. I was in no way referring to that, only commenting on the LAN side of the equation. My upstream bandwidth is currently sitting at less than 1mpbs, so I would even dream of going via VPN to watch anything on my DiskStation.

AnonC : I understand your point and that your use case is different from mine. I have no use for files that over 10GB let alone 1TB, so 16TB is the Moon for me. But I agree that XFS might have been a better choice. That said, Synology apparently bases its hard drive format on EXT4, not EXT3. Not nerd enough to know if that's better.

"sharing files is arguably easier in a cloud service than on the LAN"

Sure, because everyone has a full-duplex gigabyte link to the Internet, meaning that downloading the same data again and again is not a problem. Really ?

Sorry, but no. If I'm on a LAN, then I want my data to be accessible at GB speed, not at 10Mbps. And I don't want to burden my Internet bandwidth with the data.

I just bought a Synology 414DS this year, and I'm very happy with it. You are not going to convince me that I should instead upload all my DVD rips (store-bought) to some unicorn service and use my Internet connection to watch them.

And as for security, please. My Synology is firewalled from the web. Not visible, period. How is Dropbox more secure than that ?

Microsoft chief Satya drops an S bomb in Windows 10, cloud talk

Security, privacy and authentication through biometrics

Ah, you mean to ensure me that any judge will have access to all my data because biometric data is "out in the open" ?

And that is supposed to enhance my privacy how again ?

Actually, color me impressed. In just one year, Nadella has convinced me that he is just as much a jerk as Ballmer was.

Belling that cat: Oz boffins pass entanglement test

So we're one step closer

One step closer to the NSA's wet dream of an insta-decryptor for all conventional encyption.

Forget 4096 normal bits, we're going to need 1024 qbit encryption. Stat !

ISIS operates a crypto help desk – report

Re: "university education"

Going to uni does not make you more intelligent, just more knowledgeable.

I've heard that there are Creationists who went to uni in geology in order to debunk the scientific basis of study concerning the Grand Canyon. Now they act as tour guides in the Grand Canyon, saying things like "this valley might have been created by water erosion over millions of years" and other such sentences designed to hint to the fact that it could also have been created a mere 6 thousand years ago.

Now that may be an urban myth, I don't know, but given that there are people who are ready to kill nurses and doctors in abortion clinics to uphold the "right to life", it is not beyond the realm of the possible.

'Shut down the parts of internet used by Islamic State masterminds'

You've clearly forgotten about the nails, the cross and the crown of thorns.

Hey Cortana, how about you hide my app from the user?

This is going to be a whole new Helldesk paradigm

The possibilities for mayhem are absolutely stupendous.

Didn't get the memo ? Cortana didn't send it to the right person, or at all. Wrong figures in the spreadsheet ? Cortana didn't use the latest version. Used the latest figures on a report concerning last year ? Cortana made the mistake. Powerpoint slide looks ugly ? Cortana made the choices.

I really look forward to the Helpdesk receiving a call in the lines of "Cortana didn't send my mail, you need to fix it."

Yep, that'll be fun to watch.

Google, didn't you get the memo? Stop trying to make Google+ happen

Re: They did their dash with me

Indeed, that plus the invasion of privacy makes Google a no-show on my desktop.

I am not a fan of having my privacy rectally examined by an nebulous, all-encompassing ad-slinging organization.

And I really, really do not appreciate the malware-level approach Google has in installing itself in every single nook and cranny of a PC as soon as it gets a foothold, making it very bothersome to actually permanently remove all Google-related services and products.

Game of Photons: Boffins make ICE with FIRE

They will

Beware the terawatt shark attack ! They freeze the water around the screws, then nobody can move !

Coffee fixes the damage booze did to your liver, study finds

Okay, got it

One whisky, one coffee.

I'm off to start my training.

Microsoft quietly slips out patched patch for Outlook – in camouflage

MS was good enough until Vista. Vista got the slapdown, and MS did a 180 real quick and birthed 7, then promptly proceeded to indulge in deep amnesia and has now lost the plot entirely.

Win 7 is the last Windows that attempted to preserve the user experience and a semblance of sanity. Everything after that resembles drug withdrawal symptoms : first you get the shakes and fever (TIFKAM), then cramps, pain and impaired motor functions (Win 1 0), finally ending with incoherence and unconsciousness (WU patch mayhem).

And there is no clinic for MS. It's going to be overdose, or cold turkey. That'll depend purely on what the level of resistance is going to be.

I will probably still be running Win7 in 2020 for gaming.

If I change OS, it will be for a Linux variant. Win7 is the last MS OS I will ever use at home.

All the shenanigans with the bloody TIFKAM and forced push of Win10 without consent and botched patches that we no longer can know what they do has spelled the end for Microsoft in my house. MS is no longer a trustworthy, reliable OS maker. It has become a schizophrenic nutjob wrecking everything we have all become accustomed to. That is not acceptable, period.

Hold on, France and Russia. Anonymous is here to kick ISIS butt

Another commonality : they all breathe oxygen.

Death to oxygen breathers !

IBM bets POWER8 processor farm on hardware acceleration

Accelerated computing is already available to the general public

It's called a high-end graphics card, and many programs can take advantage of them - notably in gaming.

Now, if you are not gaming, or editing video, where exactly can accelerated computing help ? With an Excel spreadsheet ? Doubtful.

The types of workload determine the computing needs. Apart from the two domains I already outlined, most, if not all, other domains Joe User can be dabbling in hardly need any accelerated grunt to get through.

Next-gen killer hurricane hunter to be armed with Nvidia graphics chips

If the model is flawed, better precision will not help

I'm all for exploring different avenues in science. Many things have been discovered by making a mistake, or doing the "wrong" thing.

But if the model used by NOAA is really flawed (and one wrong result does not necessarily mean it is), then adding more precision and computing power might not be the answer.

I think we might need to treat this as a flight computer issue. Have three centers compute an estimate using three different model, and use the two that best agree to determine the final forecast. The models used must, of course, have a record of accuracy to be taken into account.

Such an approach might not have helped here if the wrong models had been chosen (beware of Not-Invented-Here syndrome), but over time, such an approach could only help.

US Presidential race becomes Wi-Fi password snark battle

Gotta love politics

In programming, the easiest way to find a bug is to debug the code, which starts by launching it.

In politics, to "to complete a comprehensive investigation and audit of pervasive allegations of abuse of the program", i.e. to debug it, you suspend it. Because stopping all activity is obviously going to bring to light all the ways the program is not being properly used, yeah, sure.

Instead of auditing the live process to find out who phones who instead of doing what the process says should be done. But I know, that's complicated.

3ROS exploit wins plaudits for the prettiest Mal-GUI ever

All your spells are belong to them.

Impressive

But what happens when the targeted user is sitting behind router/firewall ?

Does the malware also do NAT insertion into said router ? Because if not, remote commands are going to be difficult, no ?

MetroPCS patches hole that opened 10 million user creds to plunder

"A script could have been easily written"

What's to guarantee that it hasn't ?

More POS malware, just in time for Christmas

What is the attack vector ?

How can a point-of-sales teminal get infected without the miscreant going behind the counter and faffing about with the equipment for a very visible few minutes ?

If I brazenly go to the cashier's chair in a supermarket anywhere and get busy with the equipment, I give it all of 20 seconds before some employee is standing next to me asking me wtf I'm doing. If it's in a major store, he'll be accompanied by at least one security guy. And I'll be looking at some embarrassing minutes before the cops are called.

So this has to be done under the guise of some sort of maintenance, right ? Guy in coveralls from the proper company doing regular maintenance and slipping in a bit more unnoticed. Or possibly one of the employees in cahoots with the scum.

Is there another way ?

Google wants to add 'not encrypted' warnings to Gmail

I don't see that that can happen. HTTPS depends on the server and client supporting it - which is basically baked in by server admins and browser makers without user input. PGP depends on every user exchanging excryption keys with everyone they contact.

Until we get an Internet-wide public key database for every mailbox available, it will never be as easy as HTTP.

Microsoft boffins build better crypto for secure medical data crunching

Working on encrypted data without decrypting it

First reaction : bollocks. Computers are stupid, in order to modify a given data, they have to read it first.

The I check out the paper itself. Ouch. Way too much math in there, not enough air. Looks solid though, and specifically states that it makes it possible to work on encrypted data without decrypting it.

Now it may well be that I did not find the chink in the process, and it is certain that I didn't understand everything (though I do find amusing that the actual encyption library is written in C++ with a wrapper in C#), but still, that is one serious mathematical paper.

Count my mind boggled.

UN fight for internet control lined up in Brazil

Politics at their finest

The spirit of Minister Jim Hacker is still powerful, I see.

Merseyside DDoS daddy given eight months behind bars

If I read the article correctly

They didn't actually find the guy who coordinated the DDOS attacks. They investigated a guy who was stupid enough to shout on the rooftops that he was coordinating the attacks, and found him to be guilty.

So, if he'd shut up about it, what's the chance he would have been found ?

That's what I wonder.

Aircraft laser strikes hit new record with 20 incidents in one night

Can't say I don't like idea, but fighter pilots generally do have a bit of a problem with releasing military ordnance on a civilian population in their own country.

Amazon vendors flog thousands of rooted, malware-laden tablets

Crap is crap

Cheap means that all corners were cut, minimal quality assurance was done and the only thing they might have checked before shipping is that the thing can actually start.

So yes, people should be wary of cheap electronics that can connect to the Internet. By paying a proper price, you can at least go back to the store and raise an almighty stink on some poor sales schlub if the kit you buy is malware-ridden.

The Edward Snowden guide to practical privacy

Did they at least ask you for the existing sim card before giving you a new one ?

Because if they did, then it's rather okay since you are replacing an existing item with an identical one in a different size. They don't really need to know who you are, the sim card is an appropriate passkey.

But if they didn't even need that, then yes, one wonders exactly what the word "security" means today if one can go to a store and ask for a sim card for any phone number with a blanket excuse like size.

Re: Other tips....

Posting everything you do, everywhere you go, when and for how long you're going to be away on Facebook without any restrictions at all ?

I'm pretty sure that'll get you into trouble right quick.

The shame is not getting his profile wiped

The shame is that he didn't have a backup of the data.

Boo.

Drug-smuggling granny's vagina holds Kinder surprise

Ah !

A man of experience, I see !