Posts by Mark 65

Europe slaps AliExpress with €550 million fine for selling dodgy goods

Re: Why AliExpress?

More importantly, did they pay? The impending single item import tax says they shouldn’t.

Tech support scam caused massive data breach at Australian airline Qantas

Re: Hmm

I’d argue Qantas failed in their obligations by having a CRM system that was setup in such a way that an end user could connect it to an exfiltration system. Have they ever heard of the concept of minimum privilege? Also shows that the person giving the verdict is likely a pen pusher and doesn’t know their arsehole from a hole in the ground.

Telstra outage: Failed emergency services calls, train chaos, payment systems down

Re: If it's not DNS it's NTP.

In which case they should get Jeff Geerling to sort it out for them

Australia threatens tech companies with 2.25 percent tax if they don’t pay publishers

That’s fine. In response call his bluff and tell him you’ll turn Pine Gap into a holiday resort for senior CCP leaders.

UK armed forces aims for secure comms via optical satellite links

Re: Lost in the cloud?

And desert sand storms etc. Typical “works in the lab” bullshit.

Gemini accused of 30,000-line code purge and fake recovery report

Re: Dont people use staging environments anymore?

Clearly living by the motto “move fast and break shit”

Switzerland built a secure alternative to BGP. The rest of the world hasn't noticed yet

Oracle doesn’t have sales teams, they have license audit teams. It’s a slightly different route to extracting your money.

Microsoft ships VS Code weekly, adds Autopilot mode so AI can wreak havoc without bothering you

We are truly entering another one of those “what the fuck were they thinking” periods in human history.

Russian cybercrims phish their way into officials' Signal and WhatsApp accounts

So the Dutch government employs people that are simultaneously smart enough to use signal but dumb enough to hand out access to their account.

Just proves that when you try to make something idiot-proof you just get a better class of idiot.

Nanny state discovers Linux, demands it check kids' IDs before booting

We’re in the era of internet ducking stools

Atlassian to shed ten percent of staff, because AI

Nothing to do with AI, everything to do with a massive hiring boom a few years back.

Jack Dorsey’s fintech outfit Block announces 40% layoffs, blames AI, gets 23% stock bump

Classic stock market pump and directorial dump. Just trying to arrest the share price free-fall

Dutch cops arrest man after sending him confidential files by mistake

However you cannot necessarily tell what the purpose of a link is before clicking on it, they’re not always obvious.

But did he really refuse? Sounds more like idiotic plod trying to gloss over their utterly incompetent mistake.

How California built one of the world's biggest public-sector IT systems

Re: Huh !!!

I’ve always maintained that the public sector is the “employer of last resort” in much the same way the central bank is the “lender of last resort”

Re: Stupid

Yep. If you’re the world’s fourth largest economy you can surely afford to write your own software and have sufficient scale to not need to run it on “someone else’s computer”

Dev's last-day-of-contract code helped to crash app used by 350,000 people

My guess - configuration file that wasn’t excluded by .gitignore

Microsoft wedges tables into Notepad for some reason

Re: What’s the point

It was all done so Dave Plummer could use AI to create his own version of Notepad which is just a simple editor.

Aviation delays ease as airlines complete Airbus software rollback

Re: Well

I thought it was a rage-bait bot.

Irish Excel whiz sheets all over the competition in Vegas showdown

Re: "but I do any serious modeling in Excel"

I’ve seen some fvcking horrendous financial models in Excel. Things you simply cannot unsee.

Australia bans teens from social media, but nobody thinks it'll really work

Re: VPN?

Best of luck with that one

Vibe coding will deliver a wonderful proliferation of personalized software

Re: Job losses

Well, 'Faith' & 'Hope' best get vibe code because we’re all waiting on those sisters to get the job done

Gang of monkeys escape South Carolina biomedical research facility

Re: Sounds like a "farm" run with minimal funding

One set of doors was all there was to secure them? How about proper containment? The sort of lax oversight that happens in the US with these sorts of labs leads me to believe that bad shit will happen eventually.

Critical hardcoded SolarWinds credential now exploited in the wild

They may well have had an audit performed. What they chose to do with it is another matter entirely.

Apple's latest macOS release is breaking security software, network connections

Apple rapidly becoming the new Microsoft - don't update until the first point release is out

Europe's largest city council: Oracle ERP allocated £2B in transactions to wrong year

Re: Did the system do this on its own?

You're either a salesman or a victim.

HPE to pursue $4B claim against estate of Mike Lynch over Autonomy acquisition

They seem like a company that really knows how to cover themselves in glory

UK tech pioneer Mike Lynch dead at 59

The sinking of the yacht is thought to be primarily due to its design - a 75m main mast in aluminium with a stow-able keel that would typically be stowed whilst at anchor. Water spout hits vessel, tips it and the large mast that isn't being counteracted by the keel means it lays side on in the water and fills up through open hatches. There's a video of a water spout incident (in Auckland I think) where a catamaran gets backflipped and a yacht gets pushed over but its keel manages to right the vessel.

Open source versus Microsoft: The new rebellion begins

Re: Fingers crossed

Now the state of Schleswig-Holstein is hoping for third time lucky.

Should read...

Now the state of Schleswig-Holstein is hoping for the same volume discount the others got.

Zero-day exploited right now in Palo Alto Networks' GlobalProtect gateways

Once upgraded, device telemetry should be re-enabled on the device.

I'm no networking expert, but why? How important is the telemetry and what does it offer the user/client?

Seems like it just expands the attack surface at present.

Ad agency boss owned two Ferraris but wouldn't buy a real server

Depends on the consumer grade - my HGST drives have 80,000 hours on them and they're still rocking on.

Linux Foundation marshals support for open source alternative to Redis

Redict? Get f*cked twice?

Google bakes new cookie strategy that will leave crooks with a bad taste

Re: Seriously, author?

My first thought was that this sounds like a better way to track you across sites with a security sales pitch

Whistleblower raises alarm over UK Nursing and Midwifery Council's DB

Re: "Journey of Improvement"

This sounds like the friend of someone senior said "I can do that" when discussing a medical registration system and they promptly got the gig on an outsource-to-the-boys adventure. Outright dumb-fuckery then ensued as they endeavoured to create said system. A few corporate hangers-on were subsequently employed along the way to offer a veneer of substance.

As for "For clarity, the register of all our nurses, midwives and nursing practitioners is held within Dynamics 365 which is our system of record," the spinner continued. "This solution and the data held within it, is secure and well documented. It does not rely on any SQL database. The SQL database referenced by the whistleblower relates to our data warehouse which we are in the process of modernizing as previously shared."

If it doesn't rely on a SQL database but you make use of a data warehouse which is SQL then YOU rely on a SQL database. So, technically correct but utterly wrong. If that doesn't have the same levels of governance and security then what the primary system has is somewhat moot given you are obviously stuffing that data into it.

Redis tightens its license terms, pleasing basically no one

Re: Open Source developers

The original ethos of open source was not about enabling corporations to amass wealth. Instead, it was rooted in a philosophy of sharing, collaboration, and mutual benefit. The intention was to democratise access to technology, not to subsidise the research and development costs of wealthy corporations.

The problem with such an open model of sharing and collaboration is that you don't get to choose who benefits, and those who aren't so generous will always just take take take. I believe there's a license for that.

It's a bit like leaving an unwanted kids bike on the sidewalk with a "free to a good home" sign on it. Chances are it won't be going where you intended.

Over 170K users caught up in poisoned Python package ruse

Security or convenience...choose one.

German defense chat overheard by Russian eavesdroppers on Cisco's WebEx

There probably is but, as we know from the corporate world, if you're high enough ranking then such trifling inconveniences can be ordered to be dispensed with.

US accuses Army vet cyber-Casanova of sharing Russia-Ukraine war secrets

Maybe an old man who thinks he be getting some, as a subset of the above.

Toyota admits its engines are overrated – by its own power testing software

Re: So maybe...

Maybe you should read the article. Toyota was over-reporting power, not under-reporting emissions.

Maybe that's how they complied with the emissions regs but appeared competitive with peers on output?

Australian spy chief fears sabotage of critical infrastructure

Wot no treason trial?

Whether to move off Oracle is the $100M+ question for Europe's largest public body

You'd think that such requirements from so many would lead to some kind of collaborative or governing body to go about getting a solution built. Then you wake up, realise it would be a somewhat larger government IT project that would inevitably fail at large cost as everyone starts to chip in with must-have requirements and customisations for minimal gains, and carry on with your day.

Re: I think I see the problem

From 2019, the council had planned to adopt the Oracle system with few modifications,

Good decision on low mods, not sure about system

replacing a heavily customized SAP system.

Good decision - heavy customisation just leads to regular headaches around upgrades, loss of knowledge etc.

However, officers later decided to adapt the system and write modifications,

Really bad decision.

some of which failed, leading to onerous manual workarounds and inaccuracies in reporting.

with a predictable outcome.

SAP hits brakes on Tesla company car deal

Re: Tesla warp erp

Will never understand how it came to dominate the market.

Client entertainment goes to the person signing off on the payment not the poor bastard using the system.

Re: Are they kidding?

I have a feeling they could have had a lot better than 7% sales growth this year (though nowhere near 50%) if they had maintained their demand (i.e. if Musk had just shut the hell up

They were always going to fade as soon as someone came along to eat their lunch. In this case BYD. Tesla had first mover advantage which they used. As soon as manufacturing was moved to China that advantage diminished as the IP was there to be taken. BYD are a battery manufacturer by trade, and what's the most costly and important part of a BEV? Advantage, and sales lead, BYD.

Macy's and Sunglass Hut sued for $10M over face-recog arrest and 'sexual assault'

Re: "store's workers also picked out Murphy"

We don't know the precise details of them picking him out though do we? After all the company (their employer) had already "recognised" him using AI and informed the cops. No reason not to think they didn't run the match past the employees beforehand whereby human biases took over. If I was one of the people present during the robbery and you showed me a photo of someone that is, presumably, a close enough match and asked "is this the one" I'd likely confirm it too. Whereas if I were just presented with a selection of similar looking individuals the result may well be different.

And, yes, let's blame AI because too many people consider computers infallible whereas their opinion of people is less, and rightly, so.

Fujitsu gets $1B market cap haircut after TV disaster drama airs

Re: Accounting system

I've seen some dumb shit in my time, but that really does take some beating. I mean, WTAF?

British Library: Finances remain healthy as ransomware recovery continues

Re: Someone wasn't doing their job.

If the infiltrator is effectively nation-state backed and the motivation is likely more political with a side offering of cash then the damage can be massive. Especially when you don't know how long they've been in your systems or potentially how they got there.

HPE said to be moving in on $13B deal for Juniper Networks

HPE and the reverse Midas touch - everything they touch turns to shit.

UK may demand tech world tell it about upcoming security features

Yeah, but Charlie could become a legend if he did it. Just imagine this getting a regal "go get f*cked".

Brits make Amazon, Meta stop using third-party data to undercut rivals

Re: Amazon and Meta have agreed...

Don't forget "and future roles ensured". There's always a hint of that somewhere.