Posts by Pascal Monett

FBI: Cyber-scams cost victims $6.9b-plus worldwide in 2021

Remote Desktop Protocol

Top of the list of things I disable when dealing with a new machine.

I understand its use in a business environment, but installing that on Joe User machines is a crime in itself.

Shareholders turn the screws on IBM and its gag orders

"there was (and is) no systemic age discrimination at our company"

Mister LaMoreaux, the sheer number of lawsuits IBM has had on this subject is proof that your words are invalid.

F5, Cisco admins: Stop what you're doing and check if you need to install these patches

"abandoned IT assets"

I would think that the primary duty of a network admin is knowing exactly what is connected to the network and why.

Any router or switch should be accounted for, and any new connection (because a beancounter decided to bring in a new router without asking) should be logged and analyzed to find out where it is and why it's there.

All changes to the network should be documented and a clear overview of the global situation should always be available.

It's not rocket science.

Facebook deliberately took down Australian government pages during pay-for-news negotiations: report

"Facebook making sure its actions were so impactful"

It really is a pity that democratic countries cannot use jail as an impactful means of meaning business.

Because if you are dishonest enough to impede on government sites on purpose just to prove a point, well I think dragging the local CEO to jail until the problems get solved should be standard procedure.

In other words, FB is never going to try that in China.

Arm China CEO refuses to go despite SoftBank taking control

"kept physical possession of the Arm China's official seal and registration documents"

This, in itself, is a gigantic red light as to why Western companies should not have commercial dealings with China.

If it is my company, then I should be able to fire whomever I please, but no, not in China. China forces you to have one of their nationals at the head of the company, and if that guy doesn't want to step down, you're screwed.

Well that in itself tells me that I would never want to have a subsidiary in China. You can't trust it.

Biden orders new quantum push to ensure encryption isn't cracked by rivals

"In 2020, Chinese physicist Pan Jianwei claimed to have left the US in the dust"

Yeah, well Chinese scientists have form in making bold claims that do not pan out when a modicum of proof is requested.

Not saying that he definitely didn't do it, but I am waiting for confirmation that he did.

Google's FLoC flopped, boffins claim, because it failed to provide promised privacy

"That counts for something"

Yeah. Google will get a nice gold star for the effort.

Meanwhile, I will continue to avoid using Chrome for anything but my gmail, and using Firefox+NoScript+uBlock Origin for my general surfing needs.

Ads ? They're useless, privacy-invading AND a security menace.

Logitech's sales plunge 20% as demand for PCs slows

I dunno about that.

I bought a G502 wireless about two months ago and I'm happy with it. I've got a few niggles, but globally it's working fine and does what I need it to do.

Engineer gets Windows 11 working on a Surface Duo

Windows 7 works fine and there is no reason Borkzilla couldn't continue maintaining it - except that, as noted above, a new version does wonders to prod Joe Public into buying a new computer.

Re: Then we just hated you

Oh ho ! Look who never used Vista.

Or ME.

Communication around Heroku security incident dubbed 'train wreck'

The "Law of No Evidence"

"Law of No Evidence: Any claim that there is 'no evidence' of something is evidence of bullshit"

That seems to be pushing it a bit in my view. If I am suddenly convinced that the disappearance of my sunglasses means that my house has been broken into, but find no broken window, no scratch marks on my front/back door keyhole and no muddy footprints anywhere, then there is no evidence that my house was broken into.

So it's just me forgetting where I put the bloody things.

No evidence is evidence that either you have to look harder, or you have to look elsewhere.

Unity and Trinity: New releases for forks of abandoned Linux desktops

Re: never got that

Well how else is that supposed to work ? Do you want your keypresses sent to the in-focus app or not ?

Or am I getting this entirely wrong ?

Beijing-backed gang looted IP around the world for years, claims Cybereason

Wait, what ?

There are undocumented Windows logs ?

After all these years and hundreds of millions of users, Borkzilla still manages to create log files that nobody knows about ?

Qualcomm sampling Wi-Fi 7 silicon for next-gen access points

"allows a device to use more than one channel at the same time"

I am really impressed with Wi-Fi technology in general. It deals with radio signals and the fact that we have the technology to use multiple channels at a given frequency is mind-boggling when you think about it.

I mean, you're sending out radio waves. They can overlap. How on Earth do we know how to determine what is part of what signal ?

Any technology that is sufficiently advanced can be regarded as magic. Well, Wi-Fi is kinda magic to me.

Cisco says its AI crystal ball can predict network errors

"fix problems itself"

Oh yeah, just what the network admin needs - a tool that's going to screw things up by itself.

I'm sure admins all over the world are hopping with joy at the idea.

Outlook bombards Safari users with endless downloads

"Alternatively, use a different browser"

Oh come on, on a MAC ? There is no other browser, you know that.

TurboTax to pay $141m to settle claims it scammed millions of people

"we admitted no wrongdoing"

We don't care that you didn't admit any wrongdoing.

You're forking over $141 million - that is an admission of guilt. That and the fact that you are forced to stop advertising "free" and change your practices.

You were doing wrong and without this lawsuit you would not have changed.

I really hate this attitude of "well there is no judgement so we dinna do nuthin' wrong".

GitHub to require two-factor authentication for code contributors by late 2023

by the end of 2023

Well that's a cool 19 months away.

Couldn't they make it optional a wee bit sooner ?

Critical vulnerabilities found in 'millions of Aruba and Avaya switches'

Well there's your problem

You didn't use Cisco equipment, that can only be backdoored by the NSA.

Rocket Lab successfully catches falling rocket booster with a helicopter

"a supersonic ballet"

Somehow I doubt that recovering a rocket booster with a helicopter is going to prove economically viable.

There is no guarantee of recovery, and if the operation misses, the booster is gone and you have spent not insignificant amounts of money on a helicopter for nothing.

Given that there is no way of ensuring success, what is basically needed is to know how many failures they can sustain before going under.

Don't hate on cryptomining, hate the power stations, say Bitcoin super-fans

Re: Just ban it already

I agree, funny money should be banned, if only because of the sheer amount of criminal activity that happens because of it.

Re: My reasons for not investing are because I don't understand all my biases and levers

Well my reasons for not investing in funny money is because I am fully aware that the field is full of thieves and scammers and I don't want to give up my hard-earned to them.

Each to his own, I guess.

India seizes $725 million of Xiaomi's cash

"it licenses designs of the kit it sells and therefore owes royalties"

It licenses designs to an entity that is part of the global corporate structure - therefor it is an internal issue and not something that should avoid tax.

If tax laws were capable of dealing with that, then the loophole would be closed.

The fact that every multinational does it, everyone knows it and no country has done anything about it is a clear sign that there is something wrong with taxation laws.

Google starts testing fenced frames to guard its Privacy Sandbox

I don't need fenced frames

I use NoScript

Logging and monitoring can be a form of bullying, and make for lousy infosec

Re: there is clearly something wrong

There is.

There is a very small portion of all people holding a managerial position that are actually capable of managing.

Most of them are just capable of barking orders and complaining when results don't follow.

That is not managing.

Managing includes knowing what you are managing, understanding the constraints and being intelligent enough to imagine ways to improve the situation in a meaningful manner. Planning skills are a good bonus.

That is why there are so few actual Managers.

Theoretically, there is : they stop getting elected.

Vastly insufficient for me.

Surveillance and bullying

This is not a new tendancy.

A few decades ago, when I was a newbie accountant before freeing myself from that morass to become a programmer, I was called upon by an acquaintance to evaluate which accountage package would be interesting for said friend's gym club.

To make a long story short, we went to an official presentation of a well-known accounting package of the time, where we spent over 90 minutes listening to how the application could log down to the keystroke of the employees that were supposed to be working.

That was around Y2K.

I'm glad I'm in programming now, because if you come tell me I'm not hitting the keyboard enough in a given amount of time, I will tell you to fuck right off and do the job in my place if you think you can do better.

Such practices are odious and humiliating and leave no place for intelligent thought - they reduce the human being to a robot that is just supposed to peck the keys sufficiently per minute.

No wonder that beancounters are such soulless individuals - because don't tell me that today's accounting suites are not doing it when they have a million times the resources a PC had back in the day.

Privacy pathology: It's time for the users to gather a little data – evidence

I applaud the spirit of this article

I am totally in agreement with the idea that privacy protection needs to become a branch of Science and treated in the same open and sharing way.

As much as I like the idea, I will not, however, buy an Alexa, or stop using NoScript and uBlock Origin and thus, I will not participate in giving "the enemy" data just so I can find out how they use it.

I prefer the concept of castle walls and drawbridges. I just hope "the enemy" is not in the process of creating the cannon.

John Deere tractors 'bricked' after Russia steals machinery from Ukraine

I don't remember hearing about that. Citation, please ?

So, there's at least some fun to be had.

""German and Italian industry would will be in serious trouble if when supplies from Russia were to be are cut off""

FTFY

AI models still racist, even with more balanced training

There is a "white" brain template ?

That is a dangerous thing to say, even if it is exact. A brain is a brain. I can't see how black people would have a brain that is structurally different from white people.

Of course, I'm not a doctor in the field, but it's a hard pill to swallow, and it brings us two steps away from "Jewish" brains and "terrorist" brains and then it's eugenics all over again.

They say they have a "common understanding" of how these systems normally work. I say they don't, because they cannot justify the results. It's just "machine says this".

That is because they have no log of how the procedures behave. It's a black box and, when said box spits out results that we find acceptable, we say it's working.

When I am confronted with a piece of code that I don't understand the behavior, the first thing I do is set up a log of its functions. When the function starts, what are its entry parameters, what results it sends back. I do a couple of test runs on different data sets, and then I analyze the log results.

In that way, I can understand how the code gets to its results, then I know what it is I need to modify to obtain the desired output reliably.

They're not doing this for their wonderful AI, so they don't know anything about it except what they expect as a result.

That is no way to manage a project.

Nvidia starts laying groundwork for future open and parallel code

"piping has been laid"

So, the road will be covered up, then three weeks later it will be re-opened for another round of piping, and so on and so forth for the rest of the year ?

Because that has been going on for the past six months in front of my office . . .

BOFH: Something's consuming 40% of UPS capacity – and it's coming from the beancounters' office

There is a third thing to do : make sure that the cleaning personnel understands the Golden Rule : to not unplug anything in order to plug in the vacuum cleaner.

The first time the cleaner makes a mistake, report him to his superiors and forbid him access to company grounds. The second time the cleaner makes the mistake, sue the cleaning company and tear up all contracts with them.

That is a problem with the testing procedures, not with the equipment.

The one who wrote the procedures should be chastised. The one who approved the procedures should be fired. The manager who signed the procedures without looking them over and checking should be fired as well.

A discounting disaster averted at the expense of one's own employment

Management that makes those decisions deserve all the financial pain they're going to get.

Apple to bin apps that go three years without updates

Yeah, you'd expect them to, but they don't.

Why do the work yourself when can force your minions to do it ?

Re: So you wrote it, and it works

Because there have been security updates to apply ?

Quantum-tunneling memory could boost AI energy efficiency by 100x

Fowler-Nordheim Dynamic Analog Memory

So, basically they're creating circuits that, once punched, remain open.

Interesting idea, but isn't that kinda going to "calcify" the pseudo-AI ?

Worried about being replaced by a robot? Become a physicist

A load of bollocks

So, Computer Systems Analyst is 57% at risk of being automated ?

Bullshit.

There is no computer that is going to be able to sift through the contradictory declarations, backhanded dealings and outright boordroom dominance battles to produce an application that is in any way going to be able to be accepted and paid for (let's not mention work).

So, physicists create a list of jobs and their automation risk, and find that their profession cannot be automated ?

Color me surprised.

Facebook's Meta, tracking code, and the student financial aid website

"if the hashes are useless to the biz"

Wrong question.

The right question is : what the heck gives Zuckerberg the right to get this data at all when it was not entered on a Facebook website ?

The answer to that question is, obviously, nothing.

Zuckerberg and all of his managers should be flogged in public, then given a month to mend their ways.

If, 30 days later, the problems persist, another flogging, and so on and so forth until the problems have been solved.

Data-wiper malware strains surge as Ukraine battles ongoing invasion

Interesting argument, but I'm pretty sure that the countries buying F-35s are getting the same version that the US military is getting.

When France sells an Exocet to another country, it is selling the same version it has.

Arms dealers cannot sell if it becomes known that they degrade their export versions, their reputation would be trashed.

As far as software is concerned, Lotus Notes once had a degraded version specifically for France because the French government wanted to be sure that it wouldn't have too much trouble with a 128-bit encryption key, so (IIRC) it had it degraded to a 56-bit key (or something along those lines). That is now consigned to the dustbins of History, and every Notes customer has a full-fleged 256-bit AES encryption key for the ID file.

So, I don't think that there are that many "local" vs "export" versions any more.

What there might be is countries not selling a particular bit of kit (for National Security reasons, obviously).

US appeals court ruling could 'eliminate internet privacy'

"eliminate internet privacy"

Stop writing articles with the pretense that the USA defines the world. A US court took a decision that might have some consequences for the privacy of US citizens, maybe.

Come over here to the EU and GDPR would like to have a word with that attitude.

Autonomous Mayflower to attempt Atlantic crossing, again

Not the ultimate goal ?

So what is it you actually want this for, taking pics of penguins ?

Honestly, an unmanned ship is good for what if it is not transporting cargo ? It's not like you can task it with conducting scientific surveys on land.

Sure, you could tell it to go to a given "remote point", and then what ? It takes some samples of seawater and a video of the shore ? And ?

The only reason for automating a ship is to make cargo ships that don't need personnel on board. Anything else is just pie-in-the-sky wishful thinking.

Bumblebee malware loader emerges as Conti's BazarLoader fades

What drama

It's impressive how much drama is going on in these criminal groups. It's like watching Dallas all over again. Oh ! Sue Ellen's had an argument with Donna ! Will John Ross leak the details to Lucy ? Find out next week !

$10b National Security Agency contract re-awarded to AWS

The NSA awarded the contract to Amazon

Well of course.

The NSA has form in being hacked online.

60 countries sign declaration to keep future internet open

"respect user's right to privacy"

Okay, I'm ready to respect that - at the condition that the user does not take it as an excuse to assault, insult and harass another user.

Respect of privacy works both ways, and if you do not respect the individual you're talking to, you have no right to expect anonymity.

It is high time that policing of the Internet happens. I would actually accept a scheme where my posts could be anonymous to users, but targetted to law enforcement if that could cut down on the amount of assholes who think they can insult my mother in any way they see fit without consequence.

Free Speech is not an excuse for gratuitious insults.

Windows 10 still growing, but Win 11 had another bad month, says AdDuplex

"[Borkzilla] said this week that Windows 11 adoption is going well"

Oh, so it has exceeded +0.001% adoption ?

Well done Nadella, have yourself a pint.

At this rate, by 2100 you just might equal XP.

BT starts commercial trial of quantum secured London network

"a commercial quantum secured metro network in London"

Managed by Ernst & Young.

My God, the articles are going to write themselves . . .

Indian government hauls Infosys in to explain non-compete clause

"Infosys was threatening employees with unspecified legal repercussions"

Well yeah, they're unspecified because the non-compete clauses are illegal.

Remind me why this is a problem ?

If 25%/year of the workforce is going to work for competitors, there is no way Infosys has enough money to drag them all before a judge.