Posts by Enric Martinez

Word worm crawls into Copilot, spreads chaos

I created a project to resolve this type of issue permanently.

The project is called "install_Linux"

(Yeah, just joking, it's not that we aren't having to do extra hours due to CVE's and clueless students wreaking havoc with agents....)

America's top cyber-defense agency left a GitHub repo open with passwords, keys, tokens – and incredibly obvious filenames

Re: seemed too good to be true

Had it been a honeypot, the researcher who found it would have been made aware the first time he contacted the CISA people, and nobody besides the CISA and researcher would have been the wiser.

OR, it actually was a honeypot operated by a team that was fired.

If this was the case, it's still awful PR for CISA and an eventual signal to hackers that the current team is dysfunctional and an open invitation to hackers.

Re: "Managing to take the repository offline in a day is impressive work."

Open repo > Settings > scroll down :

a) Change Visibility > Private

OR

b) Delete this Repository > I want to delete this repository

Took me 1 minute to figure out without asking a chatbot or googling.

NOTE: I use Gitlab, my Github repo is only for my Kitty config files.

OR... pissed off CISA employees or ex-employees shortly before being fired.

Linus Torvalds says AI-powered bug hunters have made Linux security mailing list ‘almost entirely unmanageable’

Re: There's an easy solution

That's not what the discussion is about.

Hence, the downvotes.

HINT: It's about people posting to mailing lists.

I don't see the “contrast” here:

“Torvalds' remarks contrast with recent comments from fellow kernel maintainer Greg Kroah-Hartman, who recently told The Register that AI has become an increasingly useful tool for the FOSS community”

One is talking about the mailing list and its users' behaviour, and the other about whether AI is useful (or not).

Anthropic’s bug-hunting Mythos was greatest marketing stunt ever, says cURL creator

Not to mention the lads on the “other side” reverse-engineering the hell out of anything that moves.

It may prove a real Armageddon for closed-source software.

On the other hand: Big companies can throw money on the problem and contract a ton of developers to resolve issues, while small open-source projects will have to depend on the sysadmins of the systems that use them to address issues (literally what's being done now at our premises. Our admins deserve a freakin' medal).

The key takeaway is not that AI testing is not worth doing, but that Mythos is over-hyped.

SUSE's sovereignty pitch meets an inconvenient $6 billion question

Re: Pan-nationalisation

You mean by the EU or by an EU-based company?

I would see the benefits of something like an EU-curated distro, just like the French are doing with their police distro. I don't know why governmental distros are not a thing. And it wouldn't exclude private companies from providing the support, etc At the end of the day, no matter if they use Windows even for their toasters, but the servers and cloud infra will have to run Linux anyway, usually RHEL.

GitHub hits CTRL-Z, decides it will train its AI with user data after all

Re: Smell that?

I use it for my Kitty profiles.

But at work we have 2 gitlab instances, an internal for stuff that needs to run on our clusters and servers and an external one that we mostly use for personal projects.

I have nothing there, so that it will serve me well.

It also annoys me that they call the merge requests "Pull requests".

OpenClaw is the most fun I've had with a computer in 50 years

Re: Just say no

Let's run some self-replicating code and set it free on the Internet, what can possibly go wrong?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Morris_worm

Re: It's not a she.

Oh. Crap, I anthropomorphized Bash because the scripts start with a shebang :P

Matrix is quietly becoming the chat layer for governments chasing digital sovereignty

Re: I keep reading that...

We have been using it for at least the 7 years I am at my current company.

We roll our own servers and never had any problem.

Our servers are not connected to any other instances, BTW. They are strictly limited to our own network and the authentication works via our "own" SSO.

The reason I quote "own" is that we, like many other businesses, use Microsoft OAuth, which is another major issue. This is especially painful given that we are in the public sector and provide infrastructure and IT for academia and education.

Re: Worth picking up ?

Damn! I thought you were talking about the hottest hip-hop band in Poland!

France to replace US videoconferencing wares with unfortunately named sovereign alternative

I don't see anything wrong with that. Specially not if they are going to put the infrastructure behind it.

Where I work (a state-owned company) we have a few own Open-Source projects, like FileSender, yet we have our own version (also perfectly free an OSS) that's SURFfilesender, widely used among Dutch universities. The difference is that one is the software that you can build and deploy on a server and the other is the same codebase but with our own cloud infrastructure behind it.

I worked on a platform called "Digital Analytics"... Nobody had a similar name, but it had the terrible propensity to being shortened up in reports, omitting the "ytics".

The fun part is that nobody seemed to notice, besides me.

Re: Enough of the name, its the interface

As an everyday user of Teams, I really do not see the similarities, except for the obvious that it shows split screens and uses standard emojis and icons. Just like Zoom or any other video conferencing app.

O-la-la!! Ze Yankees can thuck our baguettes!

Good point. However, the EU's head is the Council of the EU, which is made up of our national Prime Ministers and Ministers.

Not to mention the Parliament.

If you can gather 1e6 signatures, you can form a lobby group and obtain legal representation in the EU Parliament. We did it back in 2003 with the infamous attempt from to include software patents in the EU patent law. The fight was against MS, which back then was way more influential in the sector than now, plus all the US tech giants, a few European companies and the European Patent Office (a private company, despite its name). We won, and we were a bunch of Open-Source enthusiasts and LUGs rallying around the German Chaos Computer Club with help of a handful of companies (Siemens among them if I recall correctly).

My point is that if a bunch of twenty-something in hoodies was able to do it, don't doubt for a second that the French government could drum up a few millions in no time, including powerful companies.

And given that this issue has a patriotic tint, I doubt that the rightwing of the EU would oppose it all too much. It's not a potential culture war topic, as it wouldn't earn them any votes.

UK's Ajax fighting vehicle arrives – years late and still sending crew to hospital

Ajax, too late, people injured...

I was already asking myself why El Reg included an article over Ajax FC

Leak suggests US government is fibbing over FEMA security failings

Re: Death sentences

Indeed.

Scam mail was a real source of comic relief for me until recently. Now when I get a scam mail, a job offer via Telegram, or even when I read some obvious troll comments on the internet, I feel terrible. I think that there is a high probability that these are written by forced labour in one of these scam factories.

Well, some are automated bots, but these usually write in good (enough) English. And the Lads from Lagos haven't exactly stopped practising their arts. They have actually become way more dangerous, extorting vulnerable and gullible people, causing such harm as to force some to commit suicide.

I'm not an advocate of the death penalty... but let's say that if there was a petition to commute the sentences of some of these fellows, I would certainly not sign it.

Re: "Deep state individuals"?

Ms Noem is a true conservative. And as such, she is a practitioner of the traditional methods of investigation such as haruspicy using the liver of recently sacrificed puppies.

Need to move 1.2 exabytes across the world every day? Just Effingo

Re: Updated for the modern era ...

You sound like our data preservation advisers :)

A cheap Chinese PC with odd components. What could go wrong?

Valid point.

Specially with all the refurbished and second hand stuff that you can find.

Plus, they are usually serviced by local companies, even the ones build in China.

The crime against humanity that is the modern OS desktop, and how to kill it

Re: It does suck

Gnome works in the same way since quite a lot of time ago (I use Fedora 36). And once you get used to it, it's pretty simple.

KDE went a bit into the background lately, but besides of ultra-weird stuff like workspaces, etc, it its operation is very basic and much like in Win95 : Start button in the left-hand corner a menu and that's it.

And it can get even more basic if you go to Mint or other distros. I have no idea why the author says that Linux desktops change that much. Even Ubuntu's older Unity desktops worked pretty much like Gnome. And you can's say that Gnome is difficult to use, specially when you have to watch an explainer just after installing it. And it's basically just: Space Bar, click. Done.

Actually, the same for Apple. For all the changes in icons, etc, you could start using any version of OS X if you were used to OS 9.

I haven't had the pleasure to work with Win11 yet, but I don't think it would take me more than 10 minutes to figure it out.

Goodbye, humans: Call centers 'could save $80b' switching to AI

Re: Knowledge?

I have interacted with a few AI chatbots, and they were quite well implemented. I can't recall what it was, but I think it was KPN or the NS (Dutch ISP or the Dutch railroads).

To start with, it was made clear that it was a chatbot, and you were told to state the question in simple terms.

After a few answers that did not resolve my problem, I was asked to wait and transferred to a human second liner, thus a CS agent with more knowledge and possibilities than a first liner and who was able to resolve my issue.

So, that I am not so sure that using AI, even very simplistic chatbots, will be a bad thing if what it will do is replacing a first line agent who's usual task is to filter out questions and reassign to the appropriate second line or do some simple tasks like resetting a password.

An AI chatbot would actually not be replacing a human agent, but just functioning as an obligatory and fancy interface to the FAQ or knowledge bases that almost everybody has, but users just refuse to use. And its real value would be to avoid that the second and third line support gets overwhelmed by useless queries and can spend more time answering and resolving complex questions.

I have, BTW, quite a few years of experience in the sector.

In a nutshell: Whether an AI chatbot is a good or a bad thing depends, as usual, on the company itself and how they use it.

Horizon Workrooms promises a virtual future of teal despair

Re: My experience is different

I feel your pain bro.

And it can get worse: Original speaker in a language you know (Spanish, for instance), German dubbing and English subtitles. Aaaargh!!!!

Re: My experience is different

And what is the exact point of not being able to zone out when that what is being showed or said is of null interest for you?

On the other hand: If the content is so important, why exactly would you want to zone out?

Usually, in civilized companies and institutions, you get a list of points before a meeting. And is understood that the during the exposition and discussion of the points that are of lesser interest to you, you will not be required to pay attention or even participate.

Also: If the point is important, you may want to do something else than staring like an owl. You may actually want to take notes. And some people need to scribble or fidget to actually pay attention to what is being said. That is actually a learning strategy taught in "How to learn" courses.

Sure, for you, particularly, it may be a good thing. But I seriously doubt that it would be good for general use. Specially because it forces a way of working that is not fit for the majority of us and restrict the flexibility of a real meeting, be it online, in RL or hybrid.

Add a burdensome set of VR Goggles to it.

And a good dose of "Hey, it's not working"

All of that to mimic exactly what you already have in RL: Keyboard and all ...

Oh, and don't forget extra power, CO2 emissions and cooling water for the data centres where this will run.

Europe's GDPR coincides with dramatic drop in Android apps

"If this goes on in the long run, and if the EU or the app market doesn't find a solution for this problem, then seven to ten years down the road, the app market will be a third less valuable,"

7 to 10 years from now the app market may not even exist anymore, as we know it.

So, what's the point?

Only Microsoft can give open source the gift of NTFS. Only Microsoft needs to

Re: Even if they did...

I use NTFS partitions for data I want to have available for both OSses in dual-boot PCs.

I would be pretty happy using NTFS as a Linux root partition, this would make it possible, for instance, to have one root with both kernels and put drive space to use that would otherwise just sit there inactive when you have booted into either OS.

Eggheads demo how to fool share-trading bots with carefully crafted retweets

Re: So much for all this "AI" shit then.

Sophisticated pattern matching is quite useful !!

Plans for Dutch datacenter to warm thousands of homes

We have been doing just that for 8 years; using the heat produced by the (late) Dutch national supercomputer Cartesius to warm the premises of the CWI during the winter with the warmed-up cooling water.

No idea if we are going to do the same with the new one, Snellius, as it's way cooler than it's predecessor.

Given the price of gas, we could as well just switch it on again only for the heating, LOL.

Putin reaches for nuclear option: Zuckerberg banned

Re: Meta.

That would be these FancyBear dudes, right?

Google Docs' AI-powered inclusive writing auto-correct now under fire

Re: Orwellian nightmare

The sum of anecdotes is NOT data.

Re: Orwellian nightmare

You CAN lose your job for insulting somebody, read your contract. Or not get a job because of too many pictures of you doing the Hitler salute.

this is so now, and was so when America was Still Great. Actually worse, for some things you could be put in jail or send to get an lobotomy.

It is not an Orwellian nightmare, it is just real and normal life.

Even offline: You can't just walk around and call people things, just to show how anti-PC and anti-Woke you are: You won't get apprehended by black helicopters or put into a Government Gulag, but you will have a hard time removing all the pubes of your mouth when somebody kicks your balls so hard that you look like blowing bubblegum.

;)

Re: unfix the unfixable

> This is one organisations view on what is "correct".

Rather the way of a few folks at management of justifying their inflated salaries.

Re: unfix the unfixable

> Using machines to do human's work

Worse: We use machine coded by individual humans and belonging to a particular company and culture to try to do the work of other humans from different cultures (even if English speaking).

And as you said alreadY: It is a moving target.

An utterly stupid way of wasting time and energy to bring null benefits while pumping CO2 into the atmosphere.

Nice! Another nifty feature to disable. What's not to love!

Someone's spreading an MBR-trashing copy of the Christchurch killer's 'manifesto' – and we're OK with this, maybe?

Re: Mixed feelings

True. But forbidding the document has already produced two positive outcomes:

Some of the potential copycats are now under control and a few have got their PC's thrashed. Poor lads won't be able to watch pedo porn for a while :_(

Re: Mixed feelings

"having a live subject to study may help learn more about what motivates and influences these nutjobs."

And he could be used for other experimentation as well! There is a great opportunity to test new things on a living "voluntary" individual! And for once PETA won't have a reason to complain.

Dozens of .gov HTTPS certs expire, webpages offline, FBI on ice, IT security slows... Yup, it's day 20 of Trump's govt shutdown

"Hackers may be rubbing their hands with glee"

Sure, Iranian, Turkish and North Koreans.

Not the Russians as they were already there.

Is this cuttlefish really all that cosmic? Ubuntu 18.10 arrives with extra spit, polish, 4.18 kernel

Re: "the system has a more modern and 'flatter' look"

I went directly for Budgie after trying it on a VM. It has a few flaws like not being able to spawn panels on a second monitor, but I don't really care. The looks is nice, it's very light weight and at the end of the day I do my work on the shell or a browser, what's underneath it is almost irrelevant, I could just start my stuff from a shell for that matter.

Brace yourself, Britain: Health minister shares 'vision' for NHS 'tech revolution'

Before anybody else says it:

It's all the fault of Junkers, Brussels and the EU Secret Army !! (And Merkel, don't forget her)

Japan finds long, deep tunnel on the Moon

Re: But what are they going to _do_ up there?

Like the Lunachicks ;)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=drffI6elzfc

Re: But what are they going to _do_ up there?

Not necessarily because in the moon you could use the regolith as base material and extrude it in the form of concrete using 3D printing methods. All could be automated and only a few crew would be needed to watch the process.

But of course, you could also do it in space and send the regolith from the moon using a mass accelerator.

Re: But what are they going to _do_ up there?

No too much to be messed up there, just rocks, regolith and dust... sorry, I meant _fines_

;)

Re: But what are they going to _do_ up there?

A mass accelerator to hurl stuff towards good ol' earth or to space (anything from material to spaceships).

And yes, I am also partial towards a weekend in Luna Hilton!!!

Re: That picture

You forget the dirtiest of it all: KIDS,

shoes full of everything imaginable, diapers filled to the brim with shit and pee and the lil' b*st*rds are also a mayor source of Hepatitis A infections.

Re: That picture

"The ones you were expected to use when they'd finished with them..."

Reusnig the dogs? Friggen Belgians. And they complain about us Dutch.