Posts by Pascal Monett

US elections have never been more secure, says CISA chief

"convincing people not to buy into the propaganda"

That might be easier if US politicians didn't treat elections like their own personal propaganda platform . . .

You set yourselves up for this. You deal with the consequences.

UK Royal Mint mining PCBs for precious metals in e-waste recovery effort

Welcome to the Living Language, where your language is defined by the vast majority of people who don't know how to speak it properly . . .

Entrust faces years of groveling to regain browsers' trust, say rival chiefs

Um, what ?

"we are actively and vigorously implementing an improvement plan to return to full browser acceptance"

Well all you need to do is follow the CA guidelines. If that has been so difficult for you in the past, then you need to actively and vigorously get your finger out and start working properly.

Why is it that compliance with recognized international stardards are so difficult for some companies ? Are they in league with criminal elements that prevent them from doing the job properly ?

Because, apart from sheer incompetence, what other excuse is there ?

Rickety Raptor Lake CPUs won't lose Turbo-boosted speeds after microcode medicine, Intel claims

What about security ?

I seem to remember hearing about how predictive branching was a security issue.

What's happened to that ?

Devices with insecure SSH services are everywhere, say infosec duo

"You don't find what you don't look for,"

I take it that King has no children's room and has never decided to go vaccum it when they were in their teens . . .

ICANN reserves .internal for private use at the DNS level

"it is not certain setting aside .internal will improve anything"

Maybe it won't, but given that it is, apparently, already widely used, might as well recognize it.

That said, apparently companies can create internal domains as they wish, so ICANN doesn't really have any say over that.

Would you rather buy space broadband from a billionaire, or Communist China?

15,000 satellites into low Earth orbit

I'm starting to think that sales of amateur telescopes are going to dwindle in the next decade . . .

Small CSS tweaks can help nasty emails slip through Outlook's anti-phishing net

So, anti-phishing measures are a simple HTML thing

I realize that this is way easier than coding an analysis into the Outlook client that measures what already exists and pops up a non-hackable alert when a new email address is discovered.

Now tell me why Redmond decided not to do that.

I mean, I'm an average developer and I'm pretty sure I could do that, so ?

CrowdStrike hires outside security outfits to review troubled Falcon code

Re: since they have full control of the input anyway

They have full control until some hacker finds a way to make a malformed file input and inject it in the system.

And since CrowdStrike has demontrated that that is a valid entry point to madness, . . .

Police take just 2 days to recover $40M stolen in business email scam

As usual, improper accounting procedures are to blame

"asked that the next payment made to it was sent to a new account"

In a word, no. Not until we have a written letter signed by the CEO defining the new account, and then only when we have made a test transfer and validated that it worked.

What is it with these new account scams ? I will transfer the money to the account I know. You can transfer it to another account if you so wish.

Honestly, by now accountants should know that, if the transfer is urgent and the account is unknown, it's a scam. Period.

Study backer: Catastrophic takes on Agile overemphasize new features

I would love to see a bridge built following Agile methodology.

I wouldn't use it, but I would love to see it fail, then listen to the "move fast and break things" excuse.

Intel: Our balance sheet is a smoking ruin, but we think our new chips work

"rivers of profit on which shareholders will sail into early retirement"

Shareholders can easily also have shares in AMD, thus playing the two big (only?) horses.

Not to mention that, said shareholders are that cash flush, they should have shares in TSMC as well, giving them revenue across the board.

Users call on Microsoft to update Outlook's friendly name feature

"more than 100 votes"

That's all ?

And they expect Redmond to act on that pitifully small amount of user pressure ?

Gosh, with the millions upon millions of people who use Outlook, not to mention the tens of millions in a business environment, you'd think that, if there were a problem all those users were all uppity about, there'd be a smidgen more than 100 votes to make a change.

No wonder nothing changes . . .

Nvidia's subscription software empire is taking shape

Re: Financial dick waving

Shareholders.

EVs continue to grow but private buyers are steering clear, say motor trade figures

"cost and lack of charging infrastructure"

Not to mention that no country has the power generation required to replace all ICE cars with EVs.

But hey, not to worry, we'll all do like Germany and build new coal-powered energy stations to power all those wonderful climate-respecting EVs, right ?

WordStar 7, the last ever DOS version, is re-released for free

WordStar

An absolute pleasure to use when you memorized the keyboard shortcuts.

I honestly regret it. MS Word has become (of course) an absolute abomination next to it.

I think I will be taking this version for a spin.

Chrome Web Store warns end is nigh for uBlock Origin

Re: Firefox anyone?

Anyone ?

Anyone who minds their privacy, you mean.

Firefox + NoScript + uBlock Origin is absolutely my trifecta when it comes to surfing the web on my home PC.

I would accept nothing less.

Chrome ?

I use that only to access my professional GMail, Google Maps or Google Translate. Anything else means Google can go forth and multiply.

Billion-dollar bust as international op shutters Cryptonator wallet

"Users of Cryptonator [..] received an unpleasant surprise"

No. They received a wake-up call to reality.

It is high time that funny money got the comeuppance it deserves : world-wide banishment.

There are no crypto exchanges that are reliable. None of them respect anything near banking charters, and all of them are staffed with incompetent idiots who are either waiting for a chance to skip with the money or are waiting for some hacker (or even a normal user) to empty their so-called "vaults" and leave them high and dry.

Funny money is an immense waste of resources and time, and everyone taking part in it is just a potential luser.

Illinois relaxes biometric privacy law so snafus won't cost businesses billions

Congrats, money wins again

But people still can't replace their faces or their fingertips when those biometrics go wrong.

I am now at the stage of seriously hoping that one of those biometric databases gets hacked and sold on the dark web so that politicians can no longer avoid dealing with the consequences of individual privacy.

Michigan probes Musk-backed PAC website that weirdly tried and failed to help register people to vote

"It was brought to our attention"

Because we couldn't be arsed to actually test our website before putting it online.

Hey, don't blame us - Microsoft doesn't do any testing either so why should we ?

Infineon announces layoffs as Q3 results disappoint

"weaker-than-expected economic performance"

Oh, so, because you were incapable of properly forecasting your own business, the peons must suffer ?

It would be a smidgen easier to accept that bullshit if the Board had to shave off a member for every 1000 people it laid off.

Sneaky SnakeKeylogger slithers into Windows inboxes to steal sensitive secrets

Re: Malware.NET?

Yeah, but we're talking about malware writers, not Windows coders. Malware writers are still intent on minimal footprint.

That's something Redmond has forgotten about ages ago.

Punkt MC02: As private, and pricey, as a Swiss bank account

Oooh, sounds like something I might accept having when I retire

Given that, when I retire in around a decade, I won't be needing my Gmail connection, maybe this kind of thing could fit my personal bill.

Not to mention : a week on a single battery charge ? That sounds like music to my ears.

By then, I suppose the kinks will have been ironed out . . .

The cybersecurity QA trifecta of fail that may burn down the world

Great article

It is essential to be able to summarize a situation and point out the inconvenient truth of it. This article does exactly that concerning AI/ML and the timing couldn't be better.

Thank you for this piece of reference. I hope the message will be heard far and wide.

Atlassian softens its cloud-first approach for remaining on-prem customers

Almost $4 billion a year selling software and they're still losing money ?

Okay, I know Jira is crapware, but it's crapware that's selling.

How is it that Atlassian is losing money selling software ? How bad do you have to manage things to lose money when you're selling the same code over and over again ?

Fortune 50 biz coughed up record-breaking $75M ransom to halt leak of stolen data

"they may feel it's cheaper in the long run to pay up"

No, you blithering idiots, if you pay, they'll keep coming back and it definitely won't be cheaper in the long run.

But you morons are not capable of thinking in the long run, so . . .

Tesla that killed motorcyclist was in Full Self-Driving mode

The manual ?

Who ever reads the manual these days ?

Re: Throw the book at him!

Unfortunately, the him who's going to get it is not the him we're all thinking about. The driver confessed he was looking at his phone, ergo he's going to take the fall and His Muskiness will blithely continue to spew his bullshit without consequence.

Microsoft whiz dishes the dirt on the Blue Screen Of Death's colorful past

BSOD has been rare since Windows 7

It's time a new generation got introduced to it.

Yes, I am being intolerably smug – because I ignored you and saved the project

Re: Every office has one.

Um, I think that, these days, there are less and less offices who have anyone who even knows what CLI means.

And I suspect that, the further in time we advance, the more that will be true, even in IT offices.

Japan mandates app to ensure national ID cards aren't forged

Re: the sign of hubris

I would disagree. ID cards are useful and are not necessarily a sign that your government is veering Big Brother (it is, but not for that reason).

The problem in Japan, as I see it, is that the team drawing up the specifications apparently didn't bother to check with countries that already had ID cards to find out what problems those countries had found and think about how their scheme might be impacted. On top of the other problem that is this is the first time anyone has tried to implement a digital ID scheme based on numbers.

No, wait, Social Security has been based on numbers since forever. Maybe they should have looked into that.

Oh well, I'm sure the Agile team is on it. After all, move fast and break things, right ?

Oh, right. It's already broken.

India contemplates compulsory dynamic 2FA for digital payments

So OTP is fine, but biometrics is better ?

This is clearly a push to get to using biometrics. The issue remaining the same : I can't change my face if the database gets hacked, and we all know that it will.

Leave my face alone.

Too late now for canary test updates, says pension fund suing CrowdStrike

"We believe this case lacks merit"

Boilerplate response. Of course you do. Unfortunately for you, just about everybody else probably thinks is has merit, and I'm guessing the judge will too.

That said, I think there should be a law stopping shareholders from sueing their own company. You're not happy with the company's performance ? Then sell your shares, take the loss and go invest in a better company.

Firefox's Mozilla follows Google in losing trust in Entrust's TLS certificates

"not meaningfully different from the previous commitments [..] given in 2020"

Wow. So mindlessly repeating the same promises after having failed to uphold said promises doesn't work anymore ?

Someone warn Trump . . . oh wait, in politics it's still fine.

Carry on !

NASA pops repair kit in the mail so astronauts can fix leaky ISS telescope

"keep doing groundbreaking science"

And THAT is the mission goal for all of NASA, ESA, JAXA et al.

And God damn politics that get in the way.

UK court rules in Intel's favor in R2 Semi power patent case

So, the patents are invalid in the UK

But are, apparently, valid in Germany.

So basically, patents are a nightmare everywhere. Until there is one, international patent court, that is. But then, given the farce that is the United Nations, it's pretty clear that we humans are totally incapable of managing anything on a large scale that cannot be corrupted or influenced outside the established rules.

In other words, as a species, we need a benevolent dictator to ruthlessly enforce the rules we have ourselves chosen, because we can't be arsed to do that in the long run.

More than 83K certs from nearly 7K DigiCert customers must be swapped out now

"We will not be able to delay revocation beyond that date and time."

Um, why ? You're the certificate authority, are you not ? It seems to me that you have the ability to do whatever with your certs, including having a bit of patience while thousands of admins and thousands more IT staff have their schedule thrown into the blender to satisfy you.

Infosys denies it owes $4B in taxes to India

"a fine worth around one year's profit"

You can bet that Infosys is going to fight this one tooth and nail.

I wonder who it was that Infosys was offshoring to, tu the tune of $4 billion in taxes alone. That's one hell of an offshore service contract.

Ransomware infection cuts off blood supply to 250+ hospitals

Re: When in Rome...

Gladiators is too much of an honor for those scum.

Chuck them in the arena with a keyboard and release the lions on them.

Five months after takedown, LockBit is a shadow of its former self

"its best earners have fled for crews with better opportunities"

In other words, the disease has spread.

Like dandilions.

Shutting down the servers is all well and good, but until you jail the miscreants, you've only disrupted them, you haven't stopped them.

Two senior board execs leave SAP as restructuring hits the fan

Two top-level execs

Okay, so one of two things : either top-level execs are not important, or their departure is embarassing.

Given how much they are paid, I'm inclined to believe the first.

Because if they are so useless, then stop paying them so much.

Amazon, you will do a total recall of bad stuff sold through your site, watchdog barks

"it is not obligated under American law to protect shoppers from hazardous products"

And that is the perfect demonstration of the so-called auto-regulation of capitalism. It doesn't.

You shouldn't need a law to remove hazardous products from your listings, Amazon. Defending your right to not do so just demonstrates (as if that was needed) how little you care about the consumer and how much you care about your profits.

We knew that anyway, so go for the law. It's the only thing that will curb your capitalist enthusiasm.

Can't get Minecraft, MongoDB Cloud, others to work today? Blame that Azure outage

Ain't that fun ?

You paid for a game, but because some bigwig decided it, you can't play your game if said bigwig's network is down.

Well I don't like that.

Not that that is going to make Redmond change its mind on anything . . .

Rising costs biggest issue for datacenter operators as demand grows

"the unrelenting quest for power"

Don't worry. There's just a massive governmental push to replace all ICE vehicles with electric ones.

Can't have anything to do with your own power supply, now can it ?

I mean, it's not because we already don't have the necessary power generation (forget sustainable) to support that change that you should worry at all, now should you ?

Microsoft's Azure networking takes a worldwide tumble

"access issues and degraded performance"

What, again ?

So, where are we at, Office 300 ?

Because it has never been Office 365.

The port of the Windows 95 Start Menu was not all it seemed

Hardly difficult. I have Plummer's Youtube channel bookmarked on my Firefox bar.

Obviously, he doesn't.

Proofpoint phishing palaver plagues millions with 'perfectly spoofed' emails from IBM, Nike, Disney, others

"The root cause is [..] Microsoft 365"

The root cause is a company who wants everyone to get on board with its services without bothering to secure its services.

What could possibly go wrong ?

Re: Insecure by default

Yeah, but that would require that the customer do a bit of work, which would mean support questions and annoying phone time.

Much better to just open to everything and remain blissfully ignorant of any issues until they actually crop up.

Latest update for 'extremely fast' compression algorithm LZ4 sprints past old versions

"only very smart humans can do that"

"writing efficient code to exploit the parallelism of multiple processor cores is very hard"

Fuck yeah.

And there is no amount of pseudo-AI bullshit that is going to change that any time soon.

That said, if and when it does, that will be one hell of an accomplishment.

Car makers sold people's driving habits, location data for pennies, say US senators

"attempted break-ins and vehicle component health"

In other words, things you would be logically interested in knowing are things that car manufacturers and insurance companies load up with personal data exfiltration.

Let's not pussy-foot around the obvious here : some asshole thought this was acceptable. He thought that it was perfectly normal to saddle legitimate requests with data exfiltration.

That asshole is a sociopath, and every manager above him who signed off on this as well.

They should all be fired and sent to McDonalds for remedial education.