Posts by ZenCoder

AI-designed drug to treat deadly disease now tested on humans

Re: Proof reading

Relax, how many articles have you read recently that have had typos or grammar errors or worse.

IBM cannot kill this age-discrimination lawsuit linked to CEO

Re: Seems a coincidence that the terminators have different names than the terminees.

Did you miss the part where they "emphatically" denied everything? I mean that's almost as good as a lawyer "categorically" denying everything.

Won't somebody please think of the children!!! UK to mount fresh assault on end-to-end encryption in Facebook

Weak encryption will be used to illegally spy on innocent citizens..

Multiple governments have proven multiple times they can't be trusted not to break the law to spy on innocent citizens.

At least if they have to install spyware to spy, there is a remote chance they might be held accountable if caught doing so illegally.

US Supreme Court Justice flames lower courts for giving 'sweeping immunity' to Facebook, YouTube, etc when it comes to harmful content

Re: Publishers?

The publisher vs platform thing is 100% a myth. Techdirt has a good article debunking common 230 related myths.

https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20200531/23325444617/hello-youve-been-referred-here-because-youre-wrong-about-section-230-communications-decency-act.shtml

Apple hits back at Epic, says Fortnite crew wants a 'free ride' on fees: Let the app store death match commence

Android has multiple app stores.

see title ...

Before IBM started axing staff, it told them Q3 2020 would be super-busy with post-lockdown catch-up jobs

Sadly people that I love and care about work for companies irresponsibly acquired by IBM

Let's do a poll if you feel the IBM respects and values it's employees down vote me .

eBay users spot the online auction house port-scanning their PCs. Um... is that OK?

There is a proper way to do this ... and an improper way to do this ...

The proper way to do this is to have a click through notification! Also why would any web browser allow this without asking for permission first?

I switched operating systems and stop using corporate owned social media, I can definitely walk away from eBay without looking back.

Oracle tells Supremes: Fair use? Pah! There's nothing fair about 'Google's copying'

FYI Android OS is Open Source

Android OS is covered by the Apache License 2.0, except for the linux kernel which is GPLv2, and there are plenty of custom roms https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_custom_Android_distributions

The apps that run on top of Android written by Google are another matter. I am not asserting anything other than the kernel and core OS are open source in a real, meaningful, practical way. If you already knew then then I am sorry I wasted your time.

If you're running Windows, I feel bad for you, son. Microsoft's got 99 problems, better fix each one

I didn't know it was built in!

Since I looked it up I might as well cut and paste it.

1. Click the menu button in Edge. It's the three dots in the upper right corner.

2. Select Settings from the menu.

3. Click the "View advanced settings" button. You'll have to scroll down a little bit to find it.

4. Toggle "Use Adobe Flash Player" to offI jut

BOFH: Darn Windows 7. It's totally why we need a £1k graphics card for a business computer

Re: "And given that the Y2K thing was a big fat zero,"

In college maybe 96 or 97, I bought my first suit and went to a job fair looking for a summer internship, and this guy recruiter is really pushing doing COBOL programming at financial institutions ... I wanted to be an academic and do research.

And the Engineers used to make fun of the Business majors.

Deus ex hackina: It took just 10 minutes to find data-divulging demons corrupting Pope's Click to Pray eRosary app

A reasonable reaction?

It is like they just listened to the concerns and immediately fixed the problem. Maybe their fixes created three times as many vulnerabilities, because otherwise I'm going to start questioning everything I thought I knew about how IT works?

Here we go again: US govt tells Facebook to kill end-to-end encryption for the sake of the children

Police states are not know for protecting the rights of children.

Surveillance States become police states. Police states create classes of people who are above the law. Things can get vary dangerous for children when they are under the authority of people who are above the law.

Surprise! Copying crummy code from Stack Overflow leads to vulnerable GitHub jobs

It is wise to learn from the examples of others, but LEARN is the key word here.

I study examples, learn from them, and then use what I learned in writing my own code. I believe that in many cases to do otherwise is both lazy and dangerous.

Microsoft has made an Android phone. Repeat, Microsoft has made an Android phone. A dual-screen foldable mobe not due until late 2020

Please let the attention correction AI suffer from comically bad glitches.

IT workers: Speaking truth to douchebags since 1977

My tale is too complicated for there to be a short version. So here is 5 minutes of your life back. Enjoy.

The '$4.4m a year' bug: Chipotle online orders swallowed by JavaScript credit-card form blunder

Re: Why the 'tude my dude ?

Yeah if I need to struggle to order something ... I often won't. Plus as a programmer I know how ridiculously easy it is to accept input in a variety of formats. There is really no excuse for inconveniencing a customer.

Boffins build AI that can detect cyber-abuse – and if you don't believe us, YOU CAN *%**#* *&**%* #** OFF

Re: What did you call me?

Very interesting commentary, I'll bare in in mind.

Wall Street analyst slashes HP Inc's share rating amid mounting worries over printer supplies declines

Re: You think?

$100 B&W laser purchased for $50 8 years ago.

Eco-activists arrested by Brit cops after threatening to close Heathrow with drones

Re: Good work MET Police

That sounds like a good idea. Assuming this serves as a wake up call, I'd be happy with a 5 years suspended sentence and community service replanting forests or something.

They are childish idiots ... but at least they showed concern for public safety.

See title.

From pen-test to penitentiary: Infosec duo cuffed after physically breaking into courthouse during IT security assessment

Re: I can't help thinking

Their bond was set at $50,000.

"Authorities later found out the state court administration did, in fact, hire the men to attempt "unauthorized access" to court records "through various means" in order to check for potential security vulnerabilities of Iowa's electronic court records, according to Iowa Judicial Branch officials."

"The state court administration issued an apology Wednesday to Dallas County officials, who are continuing to investigate the break-in."

I assume this is about the local officials vs state officials and these two are just caught in the middle.

Re: Naivety...

Security should have been more understanding when they explained that they were under contract to officially document any alleged incompetence.

Re: Pen Testing to Penitentiary Testing

"The state court administration issued an apology Wednesday to Dallas County officials, who are continuing to investigate the break-in." (from the linked article).

It can be unclear who does and does not have the authority to authorize said activity.

I'd want a signed brief document by some official that clearly states that they both have the authority and give permission.

UK ISPs must block access to Nintendo Switch piracy sites, High Court rules

This won't hold up in the USA.

iPhone Dev Team came out with the first jailbreak. I used it to install games on my 1st gen iPod touch. There was zero piracy. There was no app store, nor public plans to one day have an app store, there was only native features and web apps.

Their initial efforts were in large part why jailbreaking was granted a DMCA anti-circumvention exemption.

If you read the article the court found almost 300 non pirated games created for Jailbroke Nintendo switches.

Allowing side loading while checking adding anti-piracy fingerprint checks in the firmware you will get rid of 95% of the resources developed toward circumvention.

Or you can try to make proxies, VPN and github banned as well. Good luck with that.

Incoming... Trump! Notebook makers ramp production to avoid next tidal wave of US trade tariffs

Re: I hope they impeach his ass.

People like that are easy to manage.

Praise them, ask them for help, hand them a proposal with an obvious flaw that appeals to them, give public credit for their input, offer to handle all the fine details. Thank them profusely for their wise leadership.

PS it also works for any insecure people who are unqualified for the management position they hold.

Psst. Wanna brush up your supervillain creds? Get a load of this mini submarine

Re: No Das Boot here

You secretly launch it from your super villain yacht.

I just love your accent – please, have a new password

Re: Caller ID = Your routines suck!

<quote>It's the 777 rule of security, if you make a system secure but difficult to use, then the users will make it insecure and useable.</quote>

"for 15 years during the Cold War, the code meant to prevent unauthorized launching of the United States’ arsenal of Minuteman nuclear missiles was apparently 00000000.”

OK that wouldn't have armed the warhead but it could have still triggered a retaliatory repose from the USSR.

Bloke who claimed he invented Bitcoin must hand over $5bn of e-dosh in court case. He can't. He's waiting for a time traveler to arrive

"Dear Sir, SEEKING YOUR IMMEDIATE ASSISTANCE. Please permit me to make your acquaintance in so informal a manner. This is necessitated by my urgent need to reach a dependable and trust wordy foreign partner. This request may seem strange and unsolicited but I will crave your indulgence and pray that you view it seriously. My name is. CRAIG WRIGHT ..."

When customers see red, sometimes the obvious solution will only fan the flames

Just video chat with them and ask them to point the camera at the screen.

If for any reason I can't share their screen via Team Viewer or similar ... I just ask people to take a picture, video or just put me on some sort of video chat and point the camera at the screen while reproducing the problem. Seeing what they see rarely requires a walk unless your workplace bans cell phones.

US may have by far the world's biggest military budget but it's not showing in security

Choose the nuclear options and don't pay for defective goods.

Just make is to that it is impossible not to stay in business unless every programmer is trained in security and constantly has security in mind while working and the final product isn't a complete embarrassment after a Red Team gets a month or so to attack it.

As long as you can get paid once to half ass something, then paid to again and again to fix it over and over, and still remain in business this problem is not going away.

Linux kernel's Torvalds: 'I am truly sorry' for my 'unprofessional' rants, I need a break to get help

Good for him.

The man has taken a good hard look at the toxic way he sometimes communicates and plans on taking a break so that he can come back with a more positive and productive attitude.

I agree with him on his technical points but I'm sure over time he can learn to communicate those in a respectful and professional way.

Official: Google Chrome 69 kills off the World Wide Web (in URLs)

https://forums.theregister.co.uk vs https://www.theregister.co.uk

Title says it all but still I'll say more ...

Last time I functioned as server admin

/www. = live website

/dev. = clone of live website to test security updates before applying them to /www.

/test. = clone of live website to test new features

/m.= mobile friendly version of website.

/ftp. = file repository

/forums. = forums

OK there are other options other than using subdomains ... said options either require that I create either register domainnamedeve.com or domainname.com/dev Neither saves significant amounts of space.

If they wanted to simply hide www, but display any other subdomain ... that would be acceptable. Anything else and well ... I've heard nice things about Firefox lately.

HTTPS crypto-shame: TV Licensing website pulled offline

Re: redirecting HTTP to HTTPS

Well, from my observation many of the university types do certainly think that once they completed their degree, that the learning is done and finished, and they can then start looking down their noses at us other self-educated types

My Computer Science and Engineering Degree taught zero practical skills ... instead I learned the scientific and theoretical knowledge that would prepare me for a lifetime of self-learning.

Also here is at least one "University Type" that respects anyone who has the skills necessary for the job no matter how they acquired them.

Regrettably I also worked with far too few people with skills and no degree and far too many with degrees with no skills, not to mention the 3rd year transfer students with 3.5+ GPA who literally could not complete a single lab assignment without cheating.

So instead of a downvote ... you get a beer.

C'mon, if you say your device is 'unhackable', you're just asking for it: Bitfi retracts edgy claim

Original Bug Bounty Rules ... short version

"Then, when you have found the shrubbery, you must cut down the mightiest tree in the forest... with... a herring!"

ZX Spectrum Vega+ blows a FUSE: It runs open-source emulator

Re: The Gnome Underpants have arrived!

"To me it looks like a bunch of clueless amateur retro gaming enthusiasts secured capital without anything even remotely resembling any forward planning, then sat on it for ages whilst doing essentially nothing."

As a clueless amateur retro gaming enthusiast ... I find the comparison insulting.

To me this looks like what happens when you hand secured capital to someone lacking in character, emotional maturity, and or interpersonal skills ... an explosion of greed, ego's, blame, resignation, lies and lawsuits.

Seems like if they have been honest with themselves and everyone else, they had more than enough money to hire/outsource the necessary talent and skills.

Apple grounds AirPort once and for all. It has departed. Not gonna fly any more. The baggage is dropped off...

I miss the old Apple.

In 2009 I worked with 3 high end arm mounted screens, 2 from my self built Windows desktop, 1 holding an aluminum MacBook, with software allowing me to cut and paste and share a mouse and keyboard doing iOS and LAMP programming and light administration of a dedicated Linux server.

The MacBook make the easy things easy, and the windows desktop did the gaming and the heavy lifting.

When my Mac got slow I doubled the memory and put in an SSD with only a few screws, when the battery went I bought a 3rd party replacement ... no screws required. But one one of the best things was everything Time Machine Related. I've yet to find an equivalent set it and forget it ... free with the OS solution to both file level and partition level restores.

I'm still someone at heat a hardware tinkerer and you are now an seller of gear that is out of my price range for something essentially a disposable non upgrade-able, non disposable appliance ... we've grown apart.

Still you will be missed. Time Machine in related hardware most of all.

Patch Drupal now: Yet another critical website bug found – a sequel to 'Drupalgeddon2'

Why I stopped supporting Drupal.

https://www.theregister.co.uk/2017/04/13/drupal_gor_protest/

I find their apparent obsession about each other's private sex lives inappropriately invasive, just plain creepy and weird.

US cops can't keep license plate data scans secret without reason

It should be illegal.

The system should immediately purge any and all license plates that are not part of a current investigation. Otherwise they are placing millions of people under illegal surveillance.

If they want to make it legal to spy on everyone all the time just in case it proves useful 5 years latter then they need to do so by passing legislation that clearly and explicitly authorizes them to do that.

If that fails on constitutional grounds push for a constitutional amendment.

Although good luck trying to do that without committing political suicide.

I'm surprised frankly I'm surprised that there isn't widespread use of State Ballot Measure as a backlash against this kind of thing.

Prejudiced humans = prejudiced algorithms, and it's not an easy fix

Re: Software is now giving sentence recommendations in the USA.

"Unless the people who approved it are dumber than dirt. which is possible..." not just possible but a proven fact in multiple states.

However other States are being sensible and disclosing to the public exactly how their risk assesment algorithms work.

Software is now giving sentence recommendations in the USA.

Research Compas from a company called Northpointe. Based undisclosed methods it spits out a pie chart that allegedly represents a convicted criminals likelihood of reoffending and is used to determine the severity of sentencing. The convict has no ability to examine or refuse any part of the system as it involves secret algorithms and proprietary data.

It is allegedly it tends to give too little weight to an individual's actual offenses and instead focuses heavily on the neighborhood they are from and their education. So you are literally being punished for the crimes of your neighbors or rewarded for growing up in an affluent area.

True or not there should be no place "for profit" agencies or activities or secret evidence and procedures in criminal justice.

CrashPlan crashes out of cloudy consumer backup caper

I'm only on their free plan.

My laptop syncs specific folders once a day to my desktop and vice versa. And that's in addition to important files being stored in dropbox, and photo's being synced automatically to google photo's and amazon photo's.

All of which is really just a fail safe in case fails before I connect and sync changes to an external hard drive.

Yeah I got hardware/software trust issues. I want at least 3 things to go very wrong before I lose anything I care about.

I guess I'll have to revisit software that will let me backup files between two computers for free. Any suggestions?

No, the cops can't get a search warrant to just seize all devices in sight – US appeals court

The blame lies with the judge who signed the warrant.

Surely it is the judge who signed the warrant who was responsible for assuring that it was proper? It's only the blame of the law enforcement officer when they lie about the facts to get a warrant.

Hackers could exploit solar power equipment flaws to cripple green grids, claims researcher

Nonexistent penalties for gross negligence.

Quick analogy ... imagine if all building codes, regulations and liability for bridges were abolished overnight.

The free market would eliminate all bridge builders that didn't immediately perform a race to the bottom in terms of quality.

That's basically how IT infrastructure works. Security is a business/regulatory problem not a technical one.

If everyone providing vital IT infrastructure were required to adhere to strict quality control and quality assurance (testing) guidelines, all products subjected to random code quality spot checks, and held financially liable both before and after product delivery for any failure to meet these standards .... then all software projects would cost a lot more and take a lot longer ... but there would be a lot more security and reliability.

Anyway given my analogy, if bridges were collapsing every day, would you blame the construction workers, the engineers, the businessmen, the shareholders or the government for not providing and properly enforcing the proper regulatory framework?

Google tracks what you spend offline to prove its online ads work. And privacy folks are furious

It's quite simple don't blame the player, vote to change the game.

Government regulation sets the rules and game theory does the rest.

If it's either unpopular but legal or the cost of breaking the law < the profit then a for profit company must do it to maximize shareholder value or they risk a minority shareholder lawsuit.

Any citizen complaining against Google is complaining to the wrong entity, if you want privacy to be a right you need to let your politicians know that not protecting your privacy via legislation and regulation will cost them your votes.

Any company complaining without avodovating real consumer protection should simply be ignored as they have zero desire to stop your privacy being violated, they just wish it was them that was doing it.

The Italian Jobs: Bloke thrown in the cooler for touting Apple knockoffs

Re: I hope...

"law abiding people aren't worried about the feds knowing, or even aware of the $10,000 line."

Law abiding businesses that handle cash have every reason to worry, because if the IRS decides your cash deposits look suspicious they can and will seize your assets without any warning or due process and they can and will maintain a death grip on those assets without filing legal charges.

Here is one of the more recent cases, but you could easily identify hundreds more.

http://www.foxbusiness.com/politics/2017/07/10/irs-shuts-down-mom-and-pop-dress-shop-sells-entire-inventory-within-hours.html

Forgotten your Myspace password? Just a name, username, DoB will get you in – and into anyone else's, too

Schrödinger's Account ...

I never deleted mine, just logged in with decreasing frequency. Now after 7 years I guess my account is both alive and dead at the same time until I actually attempt to log in.

'Nobody's got to use the internet,' argues idiot congressman in row over ISP privacy rules

You can same the same thing about toilet paper.

You don't NEED internet privacy and you don't NEED toilet paper but when you are deprived of either eventually things tend to get real nasty real quick.

How many years has it been since a president used national security as an excuse to unjustly persecute detractors?

Your answer may vary based on confirmation bias and political leanings but can we at least agree that it's not been long enough?

One in five mobile phones shipped abroad are phoney – report

Try searching on youtube for fake phone reviews.

Some of the video's comparing real to fake phones are rather dull, but they do show that a level of sophistication that indicates that somewhere out there there is an actual market for these things. I also spotted an actual fake iPhone in the wild. At the time I found it to be surprising, but that was before I learned about the counterfeit egg industry.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0US7JEfhsrA

Germany to Facebook, Twitter: We are *this* close to fining you €50m unless you delete fake news within 24 hours

Hasn't history taught us to think twice before appeases the Germans?

Seriously?

If Germany demands the right to censor the internet due to German law ... then there are 190+ countries ready to line up to follow suit. You know how many crazy censorship laws there are out there?

Second point, define obvious. I'd like to see someone try to give a simple but accurate definition of what does and does not constitute obvious "defamation, slander, public prosecution, crimes, and threats" under German law. Shouldn't take more than a few pages to define, nor more than a few seconds for a support center drone to determine.

So who is next? China, Turkey, Thailand?

Dell kills off standalone DSSD D5, scatters remains into other gear

Doublespeak and Euphemisms in Business English?

Is it me or does the phrase "Any DSSD people leaving EMC will be treated respectfully" need additional translation?

Is this communication of pending synergy-related headcount adjustment goal?