Posts by Anonymous Coward

BOFH: How our Covid ransomware protocol's Y2K blockchain lowered uptime

Re: PFY didn't pay attention in Physics class.

Where does your data come from? Did you read about it on the internet back in the 90s? Yeah, notorious for that. Also, hamsterdance.

Passwords stored in public Google Doc then showed up in search results

Re: In an ideal world ...

My most recent example, from my own life: mandatory safeguarding training detailing what is and is not allowed when working with children. Funnily enough, I never work with children.

Re: In an ideal world ...

Not really. They started off with blood, but eventually ran out of real issues so had to start making up crap procedures so they could justify their job. Also to give the company an excuse if something happens - "they weren't following procedure 89130431 subsection 17"

Smooth-talking fraudsters clone contactless cards, authorize payments in just 13 minutes

> "So, people answer a phone call and mindlessly install an app because someone told on the other side them so..."

Yes. Yes they do. It may only be a fraction of the population, but that's enough to make it worthwhile. Especially the older generation, who coincidentally stand a better chance of having some savings etc that the crooks would be interested in.

Malicious SIMs can shut down phones, steal files, and drag 5G back to 2G

From the article: The IoT world still has some hanging up to do.

Surely the IoT world needs to AT+H

(Yes, many mental scars)

Wetherspoons bars smart glasses from filming customers

Re: This should be a Legal Issue

So dashcams are illegal as well. No wonder the police regularly ask the public to send in footage from them!

Demoralized developer's desperate hack came back to haunt him on LinkedIn

Re: Once again ....

ln -s monday friday

Surely that's the wrong way around? I certainly don't want to hit Friday and suddenly find I'm back at Monday.

Keeping yesterday's computers ticking takes more than nostalgia

Re: More

"cutting edge"... I see what you did there. Bravo sir.

New Boeing finally gets going, 15 years after debut

Re: "New"

We also don't know how much that approval cost Boeing. I imagine a few brown envelopes were exchanged (or possibly these days it's all done with cryptocurrency?)

Techie lured out of retirement to support software only he remembered

Born in the 80s... so you're about half way to retirement then. Just another 40ish years to go.

(No, I'm not joking)

Headteacher had the most guessable username-password combo you could imagine

> "one colleague was always talking about her horse, Oliver"

Did Oliver have extensive knowledge of battery staples?

Airbus keeps an A350 flying for 24 hours

Re: "airports have not made it a priority to update screening hardware"

Do you really think a suicide bomber would be concerned of the negative effects of drinking some of their liquid explosive?

DEF CON bans Meta-style 'pervert glasses'

Re: In the UK, benefit fraud on health grounds is rampant, a lifestyle better than working

I despise such people besmirching my good name.

Openreach nudges another 112 exchange areas toward full fiber

If the fibre is from someone other than openreach, they may have a 1-year exclusivity deal with the marketing company. Or they might not wholesale it via any other providers at all.

In the future they may or may not expand the ISPs available, but if your plan is to sit back and wait for your chosen provider to become available it's possible that you'll be waiting forever.

Microsoft Defender for Endpoint leaves some Linux boxes defenseless after update

all-in???

> "where an organization has gone all-in with Microsoft, the unified management offered by Defender for Endpoint on Linux"

I would've thought that if you'd gone all-in with Microsoft, you'd have no need for any Linux product

Microsoft fiber foul-up cut off Azure California for almost five hours

Re: Behind the Scenes

The mention of AT&T sets the scene as within the USA. Therefore 'first floor' is the floor at ground level, as opposed to the UK where 'first floor' is the first one that you reach when ascending from the ground floor (which would be floor 0).

Classic off-by-one error.

Latest Musk merch drop runs entirely on child labor

Re: Not what I expect

See, this is why we need the Moderatrix back. Sarah would've simply replied with "ODFO"

Law firm insisted on one password to rule them all

Re: "In the end, the boss will have the final word"

If you're experienced and the upper echelons are treating you like that, I'd recommend moving to a firm that actually respects your knowledge and experience. Remind them that they're only at the top because of people like you, but if they don't want you supporting them, you'd be prepared to see them fall.

(my experience is UK based. USA "employment at will" laws probably make it a more tenuous scenario)

Linus Torvalds tells AI haters to fork off

Re: I'll believe it when I see it

How many of these "average" people are benefitting from the ludicrous increase in hardware costs? (RAM especially)

Or benefitting from the increase in energy costs through so much wastage?

Or benefitting from the extreme weather that energy use is contributing to?

I definitely see more negative than positive at this point in time.

Welsh Doxbin admin jailed for egging on swatters from behind a screen

Mental Health

"suffered from mental health difficulties including ADHD, autism, and low borderline IQ"

When was the last time anyone was arrested for computer based crimes who didn't try to use the autism defence? It seems ADHD is jumping on that bandwagon now as well.

Genuine autism, especially is it's reasonably severe, I can sympathise with. Claims of "I did something wrong, but didn't know it was wrong because I have the 'tism" I find offensive.

Lucky 13: SpaceX aims for July 16 Starship flight test

SpaceX stock will be as volatile as rocket fuel Elon

Suspected Chinese snoops caught breaking into universities' Roundcube mailservers

Re: A second ingedient is required: M$ Outlook!

I don't see anything on that page that contradicts my statement.

I do see: "Roundcube webmail... ...is a browser-based multilingual IMAP client"

There are bundle packages which include the mailserver (and other things), but roundcube itself is not that.

Re: A second ingedient is required: M$ Outlook!

roundcube is a webmail implementation, so it is the MUA itself. Outlook not involved (this time)

Yes, it bugs me that a tech site has posted this under the title of "roundcube mailservers" - roundcube is not the server, it is actually a client.

BOFH: Cross-department AI pitches are easier to swallow with a pint in hand

Re: PFY has even heard of Rod Steiger ?

No, the log scale is how the building PA system knows how exuberantly to congratulate you.

> [Fanfare] New record recorded in first floor gents, cubicle 3. Congratulations Barry.

Cameras everywhere, linked to AI??? Have these people not seen the Terminator films? Time to make it mandatory viewing I think.

Police intercept tipsy teens after Waymo snitches for shooting Orbeez out of the car

Re: How do you draw a German Shepherd?

Drawing a German Shepherd would be fairly straightforward (presumably the stereotypes: lederhosen and a crook)

Drawing ON a German Shepherd would be more difficult.

New Horizons Pluto probe just woke itself up after 321 days of hibernation

Has anyone worked out when it might overtake the voyagers? (Yes, I know the data is available but I have real work to do can't be bothered)

Broadly it's covered more than half the distance in less than half the time so must be going faster.

Apprentice developer defied orders – then got a job supporting her weird code

Re: Sensor characterisation

> "I was not required to validate the input"

Yes, you were. Always validate your inputs. Trust no-one. If they've said to you "this will only ever get values between 7 and 53" you're entitled to throw an exception if you receive a 6.

Hackers shoveled snow for company, were rewarded with network admin access

Re: Old Advice

Don't forget the hi-vis vest. Nothing screams "authorised" as much as hi-vis.

O2 joins UK 2G switch-off with summer 2029 start date

Re: The wrong metric

I expect that 2G voice traffic is virtually zero - voice implies phones and phones get replaced.

Given the bandwidth differences, I'm amazed that it's even in the scale of 0.5% of all data: 1 in every 200 bytes. When so many people are constantly streaming music or videos, or scrolling social media, etc - none of that works on 2G due to the bandwidth available.

If the householder can swap it, they can remove it and you lose all "benefits" of smart meters

If smart meters connected to your wifi, how many consumers would think about configuring it for their new credentials when they change ISP (the consumers I'm talking about just use the router's default details)

The utilities don't want their monitoring to be dependant on anything outside of their control.

Having said that, they do have a wifi communications hub available but will only use it in exceptional circumstances.

Alarm panels have supported ethernet connections for years (why use wifi if you can use wires - you don't want your alarm monitoring to drop when crooks use wifi jammers)

NASA management wants a word and won't say why

Despite all the talk of equality, the public still perceive women dying as worse than men. This is a high-risk mission, so I can understand playing it a bit safe on the publicity front.

[as an aside, we have several male icons to choose from, but no female ones. Bring back Paris!]

BOFH: For one ambitious security type, chaos is a ladder

Re: Beware of BOFHs bearing "gifts"

BOFH... putting the "flight" into "flight of stairs"

Plymouth council exposes hundreds in latest local government email gaffe

Telling us that '"worthless AI agent" is redundant' is redundant

Trump phone has HTC guts. Tremendous guts. The best guts

Re: next week's production ????

I read it as next week's production of HTC phones might use micron memory.

Microsoft's worst 'Nightmare' unleashes BitLocker bypass 0-day

Re: Unwarranted use

I've had the same, dealing with companies in liquidation. It's a simple "if it's unlocked, or we have the account details to unlock it, it's worth £this much. If it's locked it's worthless."

Some (former) employees/IT are quite amenable to unlocking them, others feel betrayed and want to punish the defunct company. Others just haven't got a clue.

Angry bug hunter with Microsoft beef drops new Windows 0-day

I think you'll find that Microsoft have pretty much screwed everyone over, so your assertion that they've screwed this particular person (guy/gal/whatever) is virtually guaranteed.

Council in UK's City of York outs hundreds of disabled residents with a single email blunder

Re: “Didn’t know how many individuals were affected”

But there could be several individuals who have multiple email addresses that've all been exposed. They can't immediately see how many individuals are affected because it's not necessarily a 1-to-1 relationship between email address and individual.

(Or they ran out of fingers to count on)

Serious ISS air leak forces NASA astronauts to temporarily take shelter in Dragon capsule

Re: why don't they have doors?

If the repair ends up damaging the cracked module (I mean we've all worked on rusty cars where the moment you touch it, it starts disintegrating) - that could lead to a Byford Dolphin type incident and could compromise the integrity of the rest of the station.

Also it sounds like you want them to have emergency refuge stations strategically placed with whatever supplies they'll need for that scenario. If that's the case, you might as well put those in sections which can be detached from the station and survive independently for a while. You could even describe it as a lifeboat. If you've gone that far, you might as well put some propulsion system on and have it controllable.

Brit maritime agency heralds fresh global rules for crewless cargo ships

Re: What's the point of automating massive cargo ships?

The usual approach to cost-cutting: eliminate the small costs as they're seen to be the easy targets and lots of small costs add up to a big cost. If you have a crew of 20 at £30000 each, that's £600000/year. You can buy a decent amount of automation hardware for that, or several bottles of champagne. Think of the shareholders and bonuses.

Rocket exhibit at National Space Centre pulls off unintentional NASA SLS impression

Re: I'm 60...

Name checks out

FAA grounds SpaceX’s Starship after another launch mishap

Re: Expected

I expect there's different ways of measuring IQ as well, especially if you have any desire to work in Washington DC

Re: Expected

But because there's different ways to calculate percentages, NG failure rate is also about 600%

Russian oligarch's financial network crashed thanks to a crank and a cleaner

Alternative

They should've got Trotters Independent Traders in to clean the chandelier.

Swift thinking buys NASA observatory a little more time before re-entry

Re: American English.

Qn can refer to all sorts of periods. Calendar year, fiscal year, company tax reporting, etc.

Q1 would generally (but not exclusively) mean either January-March or April-June.

MySQL faithful launch OurSQL Foundation to keep Oracle honest

Re: I still don't understand...

> "I think, just from anecdotal inferences, that MariaDB *was* compatible with MySQL in the past. But then it diverged enough to not be a drop in replacement. That is on the MariaDB developers, nobody else."

MySQL was sold to Oracle and forked to MariaDB. Both were identical at that point. So to fix up your comment...

MySQL *was* compatible with MariaDB in the past. But it diverged enough (from the open, public MariaDB source) to not be a drop in replacement. That is on the Oracle developers, nobody else.

MariaDB has become the one true implementation. (Or PostgreSQL if you're in that camp)

Or we could all just run everything from MS Access

NASA to pull an IKEA by dropping tons of plastic, metal, and glass on the Moon

Re: 3...2....1....

Dirty Donny has messed up the war part of making a name for himself in history, so pioneering a lunar colony may well be on his list of things that he'll actually support.

Now, if only we can get him to build a golf course up there and give him a one-way ticket....

Logitech unveils a cushioned mouse for all-day use

I find a vertical mouse far more ergonomic than anything that requires my hand to be horizontal. If you're making a handed mouse, you might as well go the whole hog and make it fit properly.

(other animal references are available)

BOFH: Vibe-coded solutions arrive for problems nobody has

Re: Ahh

and should it be fitted nasally?