Posts by Evil Auditor

Keeping yesterday's computers ticking takes more than nostalgia

Cover the mains

....and do not attempt to take the aluminium cover off the mains while it's plugged in. I've learnt the hard shock way.

College prof hides prompt to catch AI cheaters, finds human nature is pretty much as we thought

I'm going to use the same method with my trainees. I do not mind if they use GAI to get to the results. But I do mind if they are too damn lazy to properly verify the AI's output before I get to review their work.

Comment in code read 'Dear future me, sorry I wrote this'

Many moons ago I fiddled with, if memory serves me right, Assembler for Z380 to drive an LCD and some, replacing the Z80 in an appliance of some sort. At one point I was taken of that unfinished project and Tom took it over. One day, at pub'o'clock, he told me that he had flushed all my code and started from scratch. At first, of course, that tickled my ego, but after a moment or two considering what I had done so far, I could only think: good riddance! Thank you, Tom.

Airbus takes flight from AWS. What happens next is critical

Re: 1980s joke...

«..would you even want your aircraft running code by Claude?»

I wouldn't even want the clock display on my phone running code by Claude. I want it reliable, any time, all time.

It's in its name. After all, it is neither called Text, nor Document, and definitely not Book.

Using AI makes people less likely to admit they don't know something

LMMs are not even trying to provide a positive statement. All they know is the probability of the next word appearing in a series of words. And the expressions 'I don't know' or 'sod off, that's bloody stupid!' have been hugely underrepresented in their training data.

Re: AI is like alcohol!

'awww...feckohhfff...' followed by even less intelligible ranting

Re: "because adults have learned critical thinking."

Jeremy Kyle show? If you take part in a freak show, you act like a freak. And more decent human beings probably wouldn't appear there in the first place.

AI spam filters are getting suckered by old-school text salting

More spam? I wouldn't know. Ever since I stopped distinguishing between legitimate e-mails and others - treating all the same, as spam - I have far less crap to deal with. And I figured, the once sending important, legimiate e-mails always find ways to make me aware of them.

Tech support chap told angry customer to think inside the box – and solved the problem

Re: "when many phones still had removable batteries"

...and shoild the ol' Nokia brick ever run out of juice (> 2 weeks) or network connection (5th floor below ground), you could still use it as a hammer or club. Mine was a 6210.

User crippled a network while trying to learn Nmap

What worries me, more than Roger not confessing (something that hardly ever did me any harm), is that after not finding the alleged Chinese malware, they didn't properly purge Roger's laptop, possibly involving a partial physical destruction. My math might be off, but I believe this happened in the 2010s and not the 90s or so. Even in the naughties we were given burner laptops when visiting certain countries (which may or may not have included China); although, that was a bank, but the threats had been well understood for quite some time.

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

Time to make it mandatory viewing I think

1984 was meant as a warning, too, not a bloody manual! What makes you believe Terminator will be treated differently?

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

Re: Relativity in action?

That should have never ever been a problem if no fuckwit came up with writing a date as mm-dd-yyyy, and, crucially, said fuckwit found countless followers who thought: yeah, that's a brilliant idea. Let's go with it!

AI slop writing has taken over the internet, particularly LinkedIn and X

Post after post of absolute total dross.

This exactly.

I once pondered the idea of writing parody comments on linkedin. "Look at me, sipping coffee after lunch. What an Achievement!" "When the alarm clock woke me at 1 p.m. I due diligenced the crap out of deciding whether to snooze it for ten more minutes. I'm THE decision taker!" But I gave up before starting when I realised that linkedin posts are parody. Mostly involuntary but parody non the less.

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

Re: How do you draw a German Shepherd?

With a pencil...

...you tickle it's buttocks to ease the sphincter. Then carefully and fully insert your hand and arm, strongly grab the mutt's tongue and draw back your hand until the dog's turned inside out.

_{My coat, please. It's the one with the Bad Jokes for Dummies in its pocket.}

...toy guns, water guns, and BB guns all pose real dangers, especially to an untrained eye...

"I've been training my eyes very hard and now they can bounce BBs all day long without taking any damage."

_{Goggles, which my fully trained eye doesn't need.}

GitHub AI agent leaks private repos when asked nicely

Re: AI thieving

Their definition of private...

...is: all your code are belong to us.

Brit supermarket giant triples down on facial recog to nab shoplifters

Re: GDPR

I agree but with little hope. GDPR request costs are covered from a different pocket and they will not (do not want to) make the connection between the two. Realistically, they'll just find new ways to optimise their bottom line.

Zombie ‘who owns Unix?’ lawsuit comes alive again

Re: I'm confused

Definitely some "A", not sure if "I" was involved.

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

Re: Old Advice

Hi-vis vest and a step ladder. And you don't even need to ask - they'll open and hold the doors for you.

"winter2023!"

Darn! Why have I never thought of that. Forced password change every 90 days and I will never again forget a password.

British Home Office seeks techie to herd nearly 1,000 engineers looking after 600 systems

Re: Bah, humbug

I was about to ask which South Beach. But it doesn't matter - each South Beach is better!

Re: Compensation seems a little light

Croydon, Milton Keynes, whatever. It's in the UK, so I'm out.

And yes, if that wasn't enough a deterrent to me, the compensation's laughable.

Not everyone gets a £5m "donation"...

AI coding agents could soon cost more than the developers using them

Too greedy...

...too soon?

Shouldn't they wait with ferociously raising token costs until companies no longer have the skills to do without AI? Or, did we reach that point already?!

Re: An excellent tool

What will happen is that companies hire meat-based drones whose job it is to optimise the usage of overly expensive AI tokens.

_{Joke? I can only hope.}

Germany went off the rails as wireless outage saw all trains cancelled

...and advised passengers they’ll need to check that their connections will run on time

That has been highly advised when travelling with DB for quite some time...

Microsoft Access finally breaks free of its 22-inch form limit

...is "one of the most highly requested enhancements from the Access community and a top-voted request on the Access feedback forum."

With the single most requested enhancement being to cull Access for good.

_{If you disagree, bear in mind, I've been traumatised by this tool and its abuse and hate it with irrational passion.}

How dare you stop data loss – that's not your job!

Re: Same kind of experience

Pro tip from an experienced auditor: if you want to run backups efficiently and don't have any RTO and RPO defined, direct them to /dev/null. As one of my former clients - incidentally, a financial institution, too - did in the early 2000s. They did find out before running into problems though after I asked them to do a restore test.

It's difficult to suppress my MS-bashing reflex but moving from a wonky on-prem (Microsoft) solution to Azure Cloud and M365 was a considerable security improvement indeed. (The highly questionable, possible interference from US jurisdiction is another issue though...)

Has going above and beyond the call of duty landed you in trouble?

Not exactly in trouble. My background is mildly in IT, information security. And I'm being paid for using those skills on clients. One day, a colleague and I got ourselves into a discussion with our CIO and CISO. We had to learn that both the CIO and the CISO knew shit all about information security besides the very very basics (like pre-www basics). I brought this up with my boss and he only smiled and replied that he had had the same, futile discussion before. My conclusion was: my employer's information security is not my problem.

_{The situation improved since then, mainly due to Microsoft's products (not something I admit easily).}

Why Amazon hates 'human-in-the-loop' AI governance

Re: VP Eric Brandwine explains people aren't all that great, actually

jake, I have to ask, whom did you use those portable units on?

Hi-pot test is one thing, vengefully frying a computer another...

_{Sometimes I'm under the impression that you are my older, long-lost and forgotten, less sinister, Californian brother ;-)}

Re: VP Eric Brandwine explains people aren't all that great, actually

I have and I did. I'm not very proud of torturing a machine and with hindsight it may have been a bit of an overreaction - to a cause I cannot recall. It wasn't a taser either but some "slightly" more potent high-voltage device we had in the lab.

Python dev saved from disaster by intuition... and AI

Re: Stop!

Simply telling people to learn from mistakes doesn't seem to work, maybe there's a lesson to learn there... ;)

Unfortunately, some people need to feel their mistakes painfully before learning proceeds. And sometimes I'm all too keen on helping with that...

Re: Stop!

This exactly.

Last time I just ran something from an untrusted source* was indeed around 30 years ago. Since then: always sandboxed.

_{* the totally untrustworthy source was a colleague who wrote a program which did something funny (can't remember) but then also simulated the new Windows 95 logon screen, grabbed the user credentials and then threw a "wrong username or password" before going to the real logon.}

AI and brain-computer interface allow speechless ALS patient to work a full-time job

That is indeed a brilliant application of AI. (My personal cynical/critical opinion on AI focuses on LLMs and their misuse.)

Scientists pour cold water on claims phones are rewiring kids' brains

Did we read the same article or do I need new glasses? Anyhow, the analogy with aliens on Saturn fails because a research study typically starts with a hypothesis. And that hypothesis is typically built around some form evidence. If the research then confirms the hypothesis, it is being developed into a theory. And that theory then holds until some other study disproves or correct/refines it.

The problem with Saturn is, there is not the slightest evidence for aliens dwelling there to begin with. (And nowhere in the scientific process appears a claim.)

...how old a child should be before they're allowed onto social media...

I'm no real scientist but my anecdotal evidence shows the age of a child for using antisocial media should be no less than 60 years.

Next stop, C:\ ... Paris Metro screen goes off the tracks

Re: the can-can dance, in which participants perform high kicks that reveal their underwear

I once sat in a cab with a colleague in this 50s. We passed by a school, apparently during break, with lots of teenage girls gathering outside.

I'm not going to quote the rather disturbing/disgusting thing my colleague uttered regarding these girls, but like to mention that he had a daughter of his own of similar age. Now, if my self-restraint had been as good as his, he would have ended up with a bloody nose or something - and I with some other unpleasant sanctions, possibly a law suit.

AC, take your hormone-driven stupidity, crawl back to where you came from, and please stay there, will you? Thank you.

_{Where's the sick icon when you need it?}

LLMs are closer to religion than they appear. Watch out for those who like it that way

...AIs don't give religious answers to questions...

With that many gullible acquaintances believing in (AI) hallucinations, I'd say: AI very much gives religious answers to any question. Often these answers are not, or not completely, wrong. Just like religious answers from clerics.

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

Re: BTDTGTTS

Still remember from about three lifetimes ago when I was in helldesk and pretended to know how to fix issues. That guy, whose name I long forgot, calls and tells me: "look, I did this and that and fscked it up. But I can't fix it. Thank you." And fixing it is what I did, done within a couple of minutes.

_{The issue, IIRC, had to do with the infernal chaos of integrating Macs in a Novell network.}

Disgruntled 0-day hunter 'humiliated' by Microsoft pledges 'bone shattering drop' as Redmond calls cops

I do not agree with publishing 0-days. But the "real-world consequences" first and foremost stem from spreading crap code.

AIs don't like religion – particularly Jehovah's Witnesses, study claims

Re: And they're Surprised?

free as in stolen.

Re: Tainted sources

Isn’t it heart warming...

It is. My only issue with the down voting is, that it doesn't distinguish between a) I disagree with the opinion, b) comment is factually wrong, c) comment is utter bollocks, or d) all of the aforementioned.

BOFH: Vibe-coded solutions arrive for problems nobody has

Re: Ahh

... the highest risk by far was staff retention...

Must be a terrible hiring process if the risk is that staff retains. SCNR

Re: Another boss defenestrated

Although, I'd argue a more ferocious exit was more than justified.

Zuck defends monitoring employees to win AI race in purported leaked audio

This is a parody, isn't it? ISN'T IT?!

Minecraft-streaming gran swatted while raising cash for grandson's cancer care

Much like the man's clothes.

Much like the man's intelligence?

Zombie user account let hackers control the city’s water

“Greg from Auditing" with extensive privileges? Sounds familiar. Not too long ago, I inspected a client's SAP* users, focusing on highly-privileged accounts. I found a user named "Audit" with SAP_ALL**. Upon enquiry, the client told me that they give this account to the financial audit engagement team when they come around.

_{* For those lucky enough to not know, that's an ERP system.}

_{** And that's practically god mode.}