Posts by Jim Whitaker

IT sent the intern to sort out the nasty VP who was too important to bother with backups

So this was an important ($$$$) company who thought that backups were something you left end-users to do? I presume they are bust or selling vegetables now.

Rhysida ransomware gang: We attacked the British Library

They get kept for as long as is necessary. The method of having a "trusted" person in your organisation have sight of the relevant documents and for them then to record "conditions met" is attractive. Attractive, that is, until the relevant law enforcement bodies rock up on your doorstep and start asking difficult questions.

Control Altman delete: OpenAI fires CEO, chairman quits

Shortly afterwards:

And about ten minutes later, he was hired by Microsoft.

It's perfectly legal for cars to harvest your texts, call logs

UK legal position

I wonder what the Information Commissioner would make of this issue?

Vanishing power feeds, UPS batteries, failover fails... Cloudflare explains that two-day outage

That's brave, at least the first time.

Millions of smart meters will brick it when 2G and 3G turns off

Content

Every so often it is nice to have a gentle warm feeling. Usually I get this from ignoring messages to install a "smart" meter. Now I get double reward from this announcement.

Royal College considers no confidence move after Excel recruitment debacle

Data Protection breach?

I would have thought that anyone of the trainees who felt that they had been disadvantaged by this shambles might have a case to bring under the Data Protection legislation. Mind you given how NHS management (especially clinicians in management roles) treat those who point out errors, perhaps trainees eventually with a job will judge it better to keep schtum.

UK procurement is too glacial to bring AI into defense, MPs told

Old story

Where have these people been for the last 50+ years? (I can only speak for my experience; I suspect the problem goes back much further.) I worked (as a Naval officer) in a part of the MoD Procurement outfit in 1973-ish. The headline message of this article was crystal clear even then. I suspect that part of this is inherent in the nature of the activity. On the other hand, think of those activities which have been created or driven as a result of military needs (and funding). Also bear in mind how quickly some things can move when and "Urgent Operational Requirement" arises.

95% of NFTs now totally worthless, say researchers

Oh dear, so sad, too bad

I am so surprised and very disappointed.

BT confirms it's switching off 3G in UK from Jan next year

Re: So.......2G will be here for while and 3G will disappear almost immediately...

But they will, of course, be monitoring bounced messages and using other channels to update the contact details. Won't they?

If anyone finds an $80M F-35 stealth fighter, please call the Pentagon

Found it!

https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2023/09/18/f-35-stealth-jet-lost-charleston/

Google Chrome pushes ahead with targeted ads based on your browser history

What's an advertisement?

Do I understand from this that there are still people who see ads? Please do introduce them to an AdBlocker.

Southern Water to drink up tech deals worth up to £358M

Re: Sewer spills

And it is a reflection of the short (nine day?) attention span of the media. No wait, perhaps it is us who have the short attention span and the media are just doing what we want?

Silicon Valley billionaires secretly buy up land for new California city

Think of it as evolution in action

Read Oath of Fealty by Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle to see how Todos Santos gets on.

Two teens were among those behind the Lapsus$ cyber-crime spree, jury finds

Pretty tough comments but what about the companies?

Most of the comments so far are pretty tough on the perpetrators and I get that. I too am not comfortable with a mental condition leaving someone free to re-offend. However, I think the elephant in the room is the lack of condemnation of the various companies for the incompetence shown by their IT teams. If they had not made it possible for these two to roam through their systems, then there would have been no (serious) crime committed. Pretty unimpressive.

ICANN warns UN may sideline tech community from future internet governance

"The technical community is not part of civil society and it has never been,"

Of course technicians should have an input to the governance and discussions but do we really want anyone who will say that they are not part of "civil society" to have any conclusive hold over something as important as the Internet?

So much for CAPTCHA then – bots can complete them quicker than humans

Re: Task failed successfully.

What do you mean "muttered"? Shouted, more like.

Boffins say they can turn typing sounds into text with 95% accuracy

Old news

Back in another life in about 1973, the IBM golf ball typewriter (aka Selectric) was known to be a target (I could not say whether a successful target or not) of this sort of attack. Ditto teleprinters.

Re: Adding keyboard sounds to Zoom audio

Just as irritating when they are using a pencil.

UK's dream of fusion power by 2040s will need GPUs

Fusion power - Coming to a socket near you - Real soon now.

Just like the last 50 years.

Five billion phones are dead in drawers – carriers want to mine them

Batteries

I'm surprised that so little of the comments are about battery replacement. I have two redundant phones, one of which would still be in use if it was possible to simply replace the battery. Android OS still new enough to not be a security concern, works OK on 4G. The phone I had about 12 years ago had an easily replaceable battery and would still be in use if the technology had not moved on. Hence I support the EU drive to force all similar small electronic devices to have easily replaceable batteries. (Ditto common USB connections.)

Comms watchdog to probe errors that left Brits unable to make emergency calls

Re: Dry Run

Rather similar to what happened round here. The Parish had been told to collect pledges of funding (~£1k for each household) to co-fund fibre rollout. Then one day I saw a guy climbing the poles at the foot of the garden and was told that we would all be FTTP in a few weeks. No explanation, no further information, just BT planning at its best. Still it works just fine so I'm grateful for that.

Missing Titan sub likely destroyed in implosion, no survivors

Too many hobby horses being ridden - too little compassion being shown.

Amazon confirms it locked Microsoft engineer out of his Echo gear over false claim

Every so often, being proved right is so comforting.

My immediate response as Alexa (and others) was announced was "NOT IN MY HOUSE".

Australia to phase out checks by 2030

Re: They still exist?

Not many people know that. Every day is a school day.

Amazon Ring, Alexa accused of every nightmare IoT security fail you can imagine

Wow, that's a surprise.

Fahrenheit to take over Celsius

Seriously!

Another of these reports where you spend time checking the date.

Britain's largest private pension scheme reveals scale of Capita break-in

There is an "S" missing.

Datacenter fire suppression system wasn't tested for years, then BOOM

It is a P7 rule.

Online Safety Bill age checks? We won't do 'em, says Wikipedia

Balance is the key.

Of course age verification is a sensible and proportionate course of action for some services. Of course Wikipedia is not remotely one of those.

But then a VPN will probably defeat all restrictions. So only the non-savvy child will be excluded.

Oracle's examplar win over SAP for Birmingham City Council is 3 years late

Well that's a surprise.

"complex customisations which are failing, and proving hard to fix" Well who would have thought that this would be a problem. Shakes head.

SpaceX's second attempt at orbital Starship launch ends in fireball

Re: Starship hasn't had the most successful history?

So was it Mercury you missed because of this?

UK's Emergency Services Network unlikely to start operating until 2029

Gosh I'm surprised said no one ever.

Defunct comms link connected to nothing at a fire station – for 15 years

Re: Money for nothing, it's the best

Privacy dot com was interesting until I got to the "USA only" bit. :-(

Interestingly Googling for "On-demand credit card numbers" produces Silicon Valley Bank as the third entry. Haven't I heard of them recently?

Why ChatGPT should be considered a malevolent AI – and be destroyed

I wonder whether it has taken this article into account?

No more free API access, says Twitter: You pay for that data

Who cares?

The sooner Twitter goes bust, the better.

It's been 230 years since British pirates robbed the US of the metric system

Re: Hooray for Avoirdupois and pounds, shillings and pence

Beer serving sizes? Read Brave New World to see what you are up against.

Microsoft said to be thinking of sinking $10m into self-driving truck startup

10 Million $? That would hardly pay for the design of the paintwork.

NHS England Palantir contract extension could result in further legal threats

Re: "Data is king"

And your problem with this is what?

UK's Guardian newspaper breaks news of ransomware attack on itself

The political/social standpoint of the Grauniad rarely lines up with my approach but it is a decent newspaper and we need decent media to thrive.

Voice assistants failed because they serve their makers more than they help users

Sorcerer's assistants

"save us from this data harvesting nightmare". If the problem bothers you, then don't buy one. (Full disclosure - I don't have one.)

Watchdog warns UK health data platform could damage patients' trust

Re: "This store of confidential data is a national treasure"

Not quite. These records belong to the Secretary of State for Health (or whatever they are called today). The patient's rights are essentially to be able to see them, to seek to have errors corrected and ultimately if there is no agreement about an "error", to have a note setting out the patient view added.

Xcel smart thermostat users lose their cool after power company locks them out

Control issues

And some people want to have "smart" electricity meters!

Businesses should dump Windows for the Linux desktop

Watching OS wars is such fun.

Google postpones Chrome's third-party cookie bonfire yet again

Re: the web can continue to thrive, without relying on covert techniques

Yes, but in the old days, killing bakers who did this usually brought matters under control. My up to date version is to use an adblocker.

I find it difficult to believe that there is any reader of this site who has not turned off third party cookies about 20 years ago.

Yodel becomes the latest victim of a cyber 'incident'

Broken?

Yodel broken? - How on Earth could they tell?

Teeth marks yield clue to widespread internet outage in Canada

Re: Emergency credit?

No longer correct, I think. My replacement credit card arrived yesterday - no embossed numbers and no numbers at all on the front, all on the "rear".

Re: That part of Canada

Redundant path for rural/isolated areas is surely satellite? Starlink?

Makers of ad blockers and browser privacy extensions fear the end is near

Chrome developments

I suspect that Chrome has forgotten the rule: "There are more, better minds outside your organisation than there are inside." If the developers try and block a particular method (e.g. advertisement blocking), then I rely on extension developers to bypass that restriction.