Posts by Neoc

IBM’s Cloud just ruined a perfectly good lunchtime by losing power to a few racks in Australia

If the users are taken out by a simple power outage, then what you are (badly) running is a data-centre, not cloud provisioning.

Surprise! Voting app maker roasted by computer boffins for poor security now begs US courts to limit flaw finding

In other news...

...law proposed which makes it illegal for "Choice!" magazine to test products without first gaining approval, in case they find faults with it.

FCC: Remember that confidential paperwork you gave us, China Telecom? Yeah, well, we're handing it over to the Feds

Re: SS7

They'd never do that. And the number of times internet traffic was accidentally re-routed through China was not test-runs in any way.

"...the FCC has warned the Chinese giant, in a written notice [PDF] this week, that it will give that supposedly private information to Uncle Sam's prosecutors."

Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't that the sort of thing US.gov is accusing the various chinese telecom/manufacturers of potentially doing? A confidential piece of information given to one agency (or company) being demanded by the government. Chinese or US, I see the same over-bearing pattern.

Ex-Apple engineer lifts lid on Uncle Sam's top-secret plan to turn customized iPod into 'Geiger counter'

Meh - these days all you need to do is put some dark sticky tape over your camera lens and watch for the sensors on your camera to react to the radioactive decay.

Not as much around my town as I though there would be. But then again, I never go to try it next to an actual radioactive source (X-Ray, etc).

Apple's at it again: Things go pear-shaped for meal planner app after iGiant opposes logo

Do the USA have the concept of Letigious Pests? Where the judge deems one company (or lawyer) to be so ridiculous in the suits they bring to court that they are barred from doing so again?

I would love for Apple to receive a judgement which basically stated "Yep, you've gone overboard one time too many. You are no longer allowed to bring logo-infringement lawsuits to court".

Q: What’s big, red and pulses UV light into the cosmos three times a night? A: Mars

Three flashes a night? That has got to be the SLOWEST bandwidth I've ever experienced.

<yorkshireman>Three flashes a night? Luxury.</yorkshireman>

Chinese tat bazaar Xiaomi to light a fire under Amazon's Kindle with new e-book reader

For the record, I use to love my various KOBO readers... except for having to side-load any books not from Kobo. I am currently using a Samsung tablet simply so I can have my various reading apps (and a simple USB file-copy transfer of books).

What I want is an eInk reader that is little more than an android tablet with an eInk screen on which I can load the 3 or 4 reading apps I use. No bloatware, no "preferred app", no tied-in bookseller.

Mysterious supernova is blasting far-flung galaxy with flashes of UV light – and astroboffins don't know why

Yeah, yeah, let's be obvious: this massive explosion happened a log time ago in a galaxy far, far away.

Right. Itch scratched. <ahhh>

CEO of motherboard maker MSI dies after plunging from headquarters' seventh-floor

Speaking as someone who almost went through with it, it is not always obvious even to those who are contemplating suicide. If it wasn't for one single "WTF?" moment I would have kept on going without even questioning what I was contemplating.

All I can say is; I am glad I had that (brief) spark of insight, as well as the support of my wife and friends. And 8 months' worth's of anti-depressants to keep me in check until my brain chemistry re-aligned itself. I still have the odd bouts of depression, but now I recognise them as they start and can do something about it before they get too far.

You've accused Apple of patent infringement. You want to probe the iOS source in a closed-room environment. What to do in a pandemic?

I've often wondered...

"...receive laptops from Apple containing the source code of Apple's iOS mobile operating system..."

How do Lawyers (or the Techs whose shoulder the Lawyers are looking over) know that what they are getting reflects what actually exists? Lawyers request paperwork and are given boxfulls of the stuff: how do they know the defendant hasn't "misplaced" the incriminating evidence? Same with software: how do the Techs know that what they are reviewing is the actual source-code used by Apple? Are they allowed to compile it and compare the resulting executable with what is downloaded by iOS users?

Once again, racial biases show up in AI image databases, this time turning Barack Obama white

Not seeing it.

Literally.

I am short-sighted, so I did a very simple experiment - I removed my glasses and looked at the Twitter images. And for the life of me, if I didn't know they weren't the same person, I would have said they were two differently-pixelated pictures of the same person.

Microsoft 365 and Azure outage struck Australia and New Zealand just as business rocked up for a new week

"Cloud" isn't just processing; "Cloud" also includes data. And you can't load-balance data overseas, especially when there are laws that state "You shall locate our data within our border".

So unless these Cloud Providers (and I'm not singling ANYONE - they're all guilty) have proper redundancy within geographical/legal areas, this is going to keep happening.

Office supplies biz owned by UK council shrugs off ransomware demand for 102 Bitcoin

Re: This current and malicious 'malware' managed to avoid 3 levels of professional IT security.

Pedant alert: Actually, the line is "never mind the quality, feel the width" and was a sarcastic rejoinder about some fabric stores trying to get you to ignore the fact that the roll of fabric was a ridiculously small width by hyping up the quality of the cloth ("never mind the width, feel the quality").

My wife is a sewing addict.

Bionic eyes to be a thing in the next decade? Possibly. Boffins mark sensor-density breakthrough

Re: Wonderful development in tech

Surely it'd be "wetware"...

I think you mean "Pedantry".

We really doing this again? Rumour has it that Apple is nearly finished developing augmented-reality glasses

Re: Name?

Googled it: too many companies around the world including an Australian mob which markets "Intelligent Glass" (a.k.a. iGlass). Apple would need to spend too much money (i.e. *any* money) buying out the rights for the name around the world. And suing would take too long. Much easier to name it something else. iSight is nice, if Apple ever decides to re-purpose it.

Wanna be a developer? Your coworkers want to learn Go and like to watch, er, Friends and Big Bang Theory

"The happiest developers turned out to be those working the longest hours. Some 70 per cent of those working less than 40 hours per week were unhappy and unhappiness declined with more demanding jobs. Fourteen per cent of workers putting in 40-50 hours reported unhappiness; thirteen percent of those working 50-60 hours were unhappy. And only three per cent of those working more than 60 hours a week were unhappy"

And you just *know* someone in HR is going to go "let's increase the amount of hours they need to work - that'll make them happy". No, you resource-counting morons, it's the other way around: they work longer hours because they are happy in their job.

UK COVID-19 contact-tracing app data may be kept for 'research' after crisis ends, MPs told

"...random-looking..." <sweatdrop> that's kinda telling, right there...

Caltech to Apple, Broadcom: You know that $1.1bn you owe for ripping off Wi-Fi patents? Double it, hotshots

Unsurprisingly.... while I am unfamiliar with this particular case, I have no problem believing Apple capable of these delay and frustration tactics. I also love the fact they back-handed the courts and the judge by qualifying the case's result as "ill-founded".

Yep, typical Apple-in-court behaviour. Bad-mouth everyone, delay as much as possible, hope they opposition goes away or runs out of money for their lawyer.

Bye, Russia: NASA wheels out astronauts, describes plan for first all-American manned launch into orbit since 2011

"SpaceX's reusable Dragon ball..." I see what you did there! Now we just need to find the other 6.

Google is a 'publisher' says Aussie court as it hands £20k damages to gangland lawyer

I am not a lawyer, obviously, but from what I gather this kicked off after Google failed to remove the link to the article when requested back in 2016.

Also, as far as I am concerned Google - and Facebook, to name another - are publishers. I have no control of how they massage their results, and they present me data that THEY judge is relevant to what I want (and, I assume, what companies/politicos/etc are willing to pay to be highly placed in the feed). By doing so, they no longer simply display posts by users, they are inserting editorial judgement into the loop... and that makes them publishers.

Assange should be furloughed from Belmarsh prison, says human rights org. Here's a thought: He could stay with friends!

Why?

Why should *he* get furloughed? What makes Assange so different from all the other detainees who swear that they are wrongfully detained?

"Because he's Assange" is not a good enough reason.

Australia's contact-tracing app regulation avoids 'woolly' principles in comparable cyber-laws, say lawyers

Bottom Line

Never use version 1.0 of any product unless you have a dire need.

We're in a timeline where Dettol maker has to beg folks not to inject cleaning fluid into their veins. Thanks, Trump

"I'm not a doctor. But I'm, like, a person that has a good you-know-what"

...Toupée?

Royal Navy nuclear submarine captain rapped for letting crew throw shoreside BBQ party

I don't get it. Technically, the submarine crew is covered by "members of the same household" rules. So long as they didn't invite any outsiders, they were still obeying the Social Distancing guidelines.

It's official! Space travel increases the brain size of astronauts, even when they're back on Mother Earth

Are we seeing the emergence of the Newtype? Bring on the Universal Century (but without the UC0079 crap).

All that Samsung users found on UK website after weird Find my Mobile push notification was... other people's details

And Australia. Twice, so far. I assumed it was a fishing attempt and ignored them.

Parks and recreation escalate efforts to take back control of field terrorised by thug geese

"Now they're rolling out the big guns: real coyotes"

Yes, because that concept worked so well in Oz with rabbits and cane toads...

Dual screens, fast updates, no registry cruft and security in mind: Microsoft gives devs the lowdown on Windows 10X

"... in 10why" FTFY

My brain kept on inserting "...except for microsoft products" after all these announcements. For example: "in Windows 10X, no startup applications are allowed... except for Microsoft products."

SF tech biz forks out $146m in fines, settlements after painkiller makers bribed it to design medical software that pushed opioids to patients

Someone explain to me why the Pharma people involved in this have not yet been indicted under drug-traficking charges? Correct me if I'm wrong, but what we have here are people trying to sell opioids to the public while bypassing the drug-control laws. Sounds like a typical pusher to me, so why hasn't the FBI charged them as such?

SLS goes vertical at Stennis while NASA practises SRB stacking

<bounds in with a racket in his hand> Anyone for Stennis?

Chrome suddenly using Bing after installing Office 365 Pro Plus... Yeah, that might have been us, mumbles Microsoft

Cue the German Government asking their courts to bring Microsoft to heel for GDPR (and multiple other) violations in 3... 2...

Judge snubs IT outsourcers' plea to Alt-F4 tougher H-1B visa rules: Bosses told to fill out the extra paperwork

Re: s/specific skills that are in limited supply/willing to work for peanuts/g

The lack of "enough U.S. Citizens" might also have something to do with the fact that the last decade or so has seen a rise in the denigrating of skilled non-manual worker (e.g. engineers or scientists). Add that to the current "my uninformed opinion is better than your years of learning and experience", and is it any wonder that white-collar workers are in short(ish) supply?

Oi, Queenslander who downloaded 26.8TB in June alone – we see you

Re: Kittens

You're thinking of New Zealand.

Den Automation raised millions to 'reinvent' the light switch. Now it's lights out for startup

Re: What?

If it wasn't for the fact that they use proprietary protocols, there are a number of pi-based home-hubs which quite happily control your Hues, Zigbys, etc...

If my Samsung Hub ever dies, I have a spare Raspberry Pi ready to be converted to a home-automation hub. ^_^

Huawexit means Huawexit! Uncle Sam gets 300 applications to dodge ban on supplying Chinese comms beast

All those extensions...

Sounds like Huawei-gate is the USA's Brexit.

Orange is the new green: Nigeria scammer bags $1m while operating behind bars

I guess "Olusegun" was more of "Olusecannon".

HP scores $176m win in CD-ROM drive price-fix case – after one biz emailed rival with 'Price Fixing' as the subject

So let me see if I've got this right.

HP get charged high(er) prices for their ODDs.

HP passes on these higher costs to the consumers via high(er) PC/laptop prices.

HP finds out it could have gotten the ODDs cheaper.

HP sues the ODD manufacturers.

HP pockets millions in dollars.

Consumers (who ended up paying the premium in the first place) get nothing.

Yep, that makes perfect sense.

GitLab reset --hard bad1dea: Biz U-turns, unbans office political chat, will vet customers

I don't understand people

Really I don't. While I can get behind the workers who voiced their opinion on the changes to their work conditions, I don't get those who objected to the "no moral/ethics value judgement" clause.

A bakery in the USA refused to cater to a gay wedding because it went against their religious morals. People got angry.

GitLab says it won't discriminate based on morals or ethics. People got angry. And as far as I can tell, these were the same people.

You can't have it both ways. Where do you draw the line? *WHO* gets to draw the line?

Father of Unix Ken Thompson checkmated: Old eight-char password is finally cracked

Re: They'll never guess this one.

Obligatory: https://xkcd.com/936/

Black holes are like buses: You wait for one – and three turn up at once in galaxy merger

When single shines the triple- Oh, wait, never mind.

If you have enough of this type of gut microbe, you can get drunk for free after eating carbs

Does that make Klebsiella pneumoniae a BACteria?

Facebook campus death plunge: Cops say man jumped from 4th floor in apparent suicide

"Defenestrated".

And no, I am not trying to be funny. I was once put on suicide watch and then declared clinically depressed. I was one of the lucky one - I caught myself before it was too late.

Remember that security probe that ended with a sheriff cuffing the pen testers? The contract is now public so you can decide who screwed up

Actually, he's in a minute-and-a-huff.

<guess what I've been watching on the weekend>

None of this is helped by the USA's (in)famous Federal vs State vs County vs City legal system. For all I know, there may be even more competing legal groups.

Call-center scammer loses $9m appeal in stunning moment of poetic justice

Re: Federal Prison

Not really - simply another bunch of scum (the lawyers) stealing money, really.