Posts by BillG

Twitter admits 130 A-lister accounts compromised to promote Bitcoin scam after 'social engineering' attack

Re: A foolish move

This reminds me of a line from the TV show Law & Order, "Never attack people with virtually unlimited money, for they can afford to be vindictive and indulge their whims."

SoftBank: Oi, we paid $32bn for you, when are you going to strong-Arm some more money out of your customers?

Re: SoftBank bought a goose that lays golden eggs...

When investment firms that don't understand semiconductor companies buy a semiconductor company, it never works out well for the semiconductor company.

I'm thinking of multiple examples here, including a company that had a batwings symbol.

Lawsuit klaxon: HP, HPE accused of coordinated plan to oust older staff in favor of cheaper, compliant youngsters

Re: This Is About As Shocking As The News That Bears Shit In The Woods.

Young people with limited experience don't understand that modern business consists mostly of 1) Fixing projects that go wrong, and 2) Preventing things that potentially go wrong. They end up doing lots of (1) because they don't have the experience to see (2).

Their main weakness is not understanding unintended consequences of their actions. That leads to mistakes which the experienced competition can gleefully take advantage of.

Das reboot: That's the only thing to do when the screenshot, er, freezes

Re: Funny that

Nothing matches the lazy manager and his sheer panic and desperation trying to coax support out of a company tech because I deleted all the games (solitaire, minesweeper, etc) off his computer - games he spent more time playing than clearing his backlog.

The longest card game in the world: Microsoft Solitaire is 30

Microsoft Solitaire has done more to reduce worker productivity than any virus or hack.

What do you call megabucks Microsoft? No really, it's not a joke. El Reg needs you

Re: I'll give it a go...

Microslurp.

Any name for MS should have some passing reference to the data slurping of Windows 10.

Atlassian to offensively price itself through the post-pandemic patch

Re: I wanted to adopt their Hip chat server a few years back...

It's bad enough we have to endure COVID19, but it is morally wrong to force anyone to have to endure the horror that is Jira.

Florida man might just stick it to HP for injecting sneaky DRM update into his printers that rejected non-HP ink

HP Printers are a Virus

My first and only experience with an HP printer is a familiar one. Back in the days of Windows XP I installed an HP printer "driver" that had a 65M installation file. Of course it slowed the entire computer.

And of course the HP uninstall programs were incomplete (remember?). It took me days to remove all the additional files, hooks into the system, and registry entries. The entire time I repeated in my head the invocation "I will never buy another HP printer again." I was pretty good at IT back then but no expert. The computer ran better but still had glitches. It eventually took an OS reinstall to finally restore it to it's pre-HP glory. I also learned the value of system & registry backup programs and installed one on every computer I was responsible for.

I kept my promise - I never bought another HP printer - or HP anything - again.

CFOs are crossing fingers and hoping a second wave of COVID-19 does not appear, says Gartner

Re: Gartner Goop

Yeah, Gartner - these are the people that used to double- and triple-count their survey responses. I didn't think anyone believed them anymore.

The Adobe Flash Farewell Tour 2020: LibreOffice to axe export support for .SWF in version 7

Export to HTML5?

How about an option to export Impress to HTML5, including animations?

Stop worrying – Larry Ellison and Prez Trump will have this whole coronavirus thing licked shortly with the power of data

Re: Salvation from Commentards

Most people recover. So anecdotal reports don't prove anything.

Most people recover. Is that anecdotal?

Or is it, you don't like the reality of what I wrote so you INSIST it must be anecdotal, right?

It's like the story of the patient who insisted he was a corpse. Doctor asks him "Do corpses bleed?" Patient replies "No, of course not." So the doctor pricks his finger & the patient bleeds. Patient looks at his finger & says "Well I'll be damned - corpses DO bleed!" ¹

.

.

¹ This story is anecdotal.

Re: Salvation from Commentards

When I wrote "hydroxychloroquine saved my cousin's life", that is based on what he texted me from the hospital, which is directly based on what his doctor told him. I trust that the doctors knew what they were doing when they gave it to him. I'm not going to post the his text word for word & I don't really care what you think - what matters is what the doctor thinks when examining you based on experience. If God forbid you end up like my cousin I don't think you will give a flying frack about the doctor's politics, or that you will tell the doctor "don't save my life with hydroxychloroquine because orange man likes it".

Hydroxychloroquine is a bad choice for people with some heart troubles, so they thoroughly checked out his heart & did blood work before approving the drug for him.

OTOH if your attitude is "hydroxychloroquine is bad because orange man likes it", then you are a very cold person & you should re-examine your life. The very same people here that are quick to attack ignorant people's computer decisions, are now quick to make ignorant medical decisions.

Salvation from Commentards

Only the science on chloroquine isn't so good. You don't want the cure being worse than the disease after all?

I wasn't going to say anything but I need to jump in. My cousin & uncle tested positive for the virus. Five days on hydroxychloroquine saved my cousin's life and got him out of the hospital after he was weaned off the respirator. But due to his age my uncle probably won't last the week & to make matters worse I can't hop on a plane to be there. They described the NY hospitals as overcrowded and understaffed and yet got excellent care from heroic staff. El Reg can contact me to verify this.

Screw you. Screw you all that don't have family in the hospital and are terrified whenever the phone rings. Enjoy your spittle-filled political "orange man bad" rants while you did nothing. The thing about doing nothing is that you can do it perfectly, then with perfect 20/20 hindsight you can attack with a smile those that did something & were right 90% of the time - while you gleefully savage the 10% of the effort that wasn't.

Paul 195 wrote: The problem with the much touted Hydroxychloroquine treatment is that no-one really knows whether it works

I'll be sure to tell that to my cousin.

Call for netizens to demand scraped pics from Clearview, ML weather forecasts, and Star Trek goes high def with AI

Re: Can't trust them

He had to provide Clearview with a picture of himself along with a copy of his driver’s license

Which Clearview will conveniently keep on file. "If we didn't have you on file before, we do now" is Clearview's motto.

Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella talks hardware supply chains and elasticity: 'Bigger issue' is what happens around US and Europe's 'demand side'

Re: Supply Chains

Are you smoking crack, or do you live somewhere with a huge propaganda engine?

To put in politely AC, you don't know what you are talking about. I'm in distribution, I know the numbers.

Supply Chains

Distribution hardware supply chains are booming in the USA. Since the Chinese supply chains have fallen apart due to the Wuhan Coronavirus, Chinese manufacturers are ordering from U.S. distributors for shipment to China.

In the USA electronic distribution have also been designated 'essential services', components are needed for medical equipment so Avnet, Arrow etc. are all open.

Self-driving truck boss: 'Supervised machine learning doesn’t live up to the hype. It isn’t C-3PO, it’s sophisticated pattern matching'

Re: Finally, a proper description of what the media dubs "AI" actually is

Trying to model every scenario is not only impossible but expensive. “In fact, the better your model, the harder it is to find robust data sets of novel [new] edge cases. Additionally, the better your model, the more accurate the data you need to improve it,” Seltz-Axmacher said.

In other words, AI is really G.I.G.O., proving once again you are only as good as your data set.

Boots on Moon? Well, the boot part is right: Audit of NASA's Space Launch System reveals more delays, cost overruns

@Peter2 wrote:

I'd like to disagree here. The Space Shuttle (while iconic) cost over $1 billion per launch.

According to NASA an average shuttle launch cost $450 Million. A straight resupply mission to the ISS would have cost less.

The currently used Soyuz rocket costs something like $20-40 million per launch

The exact cost of the launch is unknown as the Russians do not publish official figures but a guesstimate is $120 Million. According to El Reg the cost to a nation or individual that wants a seat is currently $86 Million. [ref]

In November 2019 a report from NASA’s Office of Inspector General estimated NASA will pay $90 million a seat to fly with Boeing and $55 million a seat to fly with SpaceX.

I'm Shocked, Shocked!

Audit of NASA's Space Launch System reveals more delays, cost overruns

What?!?!? A government program that is behind schedule and over-budget?!??

That's NEVER happened before!!!!

Check Point chap: Small firms don't invest in infosec then hope they won't get hacked. Spoiler alert: They get hacked

Email

"Email's been around for 50 years," he said, cheerfully cursing as he continued: "But it's been around 50 years and we're talking about the same attack vectors: phishing; malware; manipulations; and all other delivery mechanisms. Email makes it so easy to deliver. And we still haven't dealt with it."

Working on my own I can afford the time to look at each incoming email. But when I was a Product Manager at a large company I received over 200 emails a day & I was expected to clear each of them before EOD.

The most common attack today is probably the phishing email, sent to an overworked middle-manager, at the end of the month, with body text containing enough insider language to seem legit at a glance.

Clearview said to be chasing every mugshot taken in the US over the last 15 years to paste into its facial-recog system

Re: We know where this is going

Although a few US cities in California and Massachusetts have banned local government agencies, including law enforcement, from using the technology,

Hahaha.... Massachusetts freely uses facial-recognition technology live on the streets, including Boston, in defiance of local laws. They are "testing" the technology - get it?

More than a billion hopelessly vulnerable Android gizmos in the wild that no longer receive security updates – research

Re: And in comparison...

A smart privacy-aware user using a KitKat phone, is more secure than a dumb user that will install any cool app on the latest and greatest version of Android.

My phone is running KitKat, it's rooted with a firewall & privacy manager. The only game is chess. It's a utility phone for work and communications. I don't walk the streets with my head deep inside the screen. I install a new app maybe twice a year & only after checking the permissions. It can run for three or more days without needing a charge. I'm more secure than any "user" that cheerfully installs an 8MB flashlight app with full phone permissions,

Drones must be constantly connected to the internet to give Feds real-time location data – new US govt proposal

LTE Data Plans

Those that did buy new drones would need to buy a monthly data plan for their flying machines: something that would likely cost $35 or more a month, given extortionate US mobile rates.

I'm paying $10/month for a 1GB 4G LTE data plan (no voice). You can buy a 10MB data plan for only $5/month which should be more than enough for GPS data polled every five seconds.

If you're writing code in Python, JavaScript, Java and PHP, relax. The hot trendy languages are still miles behind, this survey says

Bah. I once had to program an 8-bit 4KByte OTP MCU without a compiler. I wrote out the assembly, translated it into binary according to the user manual, then to a hex file to burn into the OTP.

Months later a young programmer decided to write the same application using a C compiler after ragging on me for writing code using "bear skins & stone knives". He got code 20x larger than my assembly that was also too big to fit in the available OTP memory.

Cyber-wrath of Iran for top general's assassination hasn't progressed beyond snooping and nicking logins... yet

Crocodile Tears

General Qasem Soleimani was a real threat to the political power of Iran's leaders. They weren't exactly sorry to see Soleimani go, but they at least have to put on a good show of it.

Spider-eyed Lite version of Huawei flagship flies out before actual P40 launch event

Re: Target market

I'm not sure where you are getting your figures from, but IDC say that Huawei have a much bigger market share than you imply.

Much of Huawei's sales are in their captive market of China. A captive market is not as subject to competitive market forces as other suppliers.

In the USA Apple+Samsung = 80% of the market. In Europe that equation is 60%.

Pope tells his followers to log off for Lent

Internet Free Weekends

I've tried the occasional internet-free weekend and I found it so very relaxing and stress-free.

Apple drops a bomb on long-life HTTPS certificates: Safari to snub new security certs valid for more than 13 months

Re: I understand

Just wait until users start complaining Safari is rejecting certificates of popular sites. Then we'll see if Apple sticks to this plan.

The self-disconnecting switch: Ghost in the machine or just a desire to save some cash?

Re: I don't remember though if it was 2.40 or 1.40

You've got a hell of a lot to learn about Rock n' Roll.

Appy days? Microsoft's Word, Excel and PowerPoint now live under one roof on mobile – but look out for Office 365 popups

Re: Not compliant

Regardless of the app what I always want to know is this:

Will the app work properly on a rooted Android phone - AND - will it work if a firewall blocks all the app's network access?

Huawei to the danger zone: Now Uncle Sam slaps it with 16 charges of racketeering, fraud, money laundering, theft of robot arm and source code

Re: Since the 1990s...

I have the same direct experience. I've worked with representatives of Chinese companies that are working inside a client company. They tend to ask a LOT of detailed questions only partially related to the business at hand. I've had them demand inside confidential technical information that was only thinly related to the work we were doing. Once the Chinese rep demanded the internal schematics for a leading-edge digital chip we were supplying, something we give to no one. In one case employees started locking their desks even when away at meetings because they found items in drawers rearranged.

Their favorite response when denied the information was the same: they would look shocked and surprised (in a fake way) and tell us everyone else gave them this information. This was their stock answer.

The thing is, they were so brazen and open about it we laughed about it later. Only the naive and inexperienced would fall for it.

Crypto-upstart subpoenas Glassdoor to unmask ex-staff believed to be behind negative reviews. EFF joins the fray

Re: Business Model

they're suing because the people who left the reviews are ex-employees who signed a non-disparagement contract

Kraken does not know if the people that left the reviews are ex-employees who signed a non-disparagement contract taking away their legal right to speech. The reviews could have been written by ex-employees who resigned or existing employees, neither of which signed that horrible contract, in which case their suit would dox innocent people.

Once after a layoff, to get my termination payout I was TOLD (not asked) to sign a similar termination agreement that also prohibited any contact with the company's former or existing employees. I refused, they went batsh*t insane - fun to watch!

Xerox ups bid in hostile takeover of HP Ink to more than $36.5bn

FIFY

HP has so far rejected multiple advances, saying the price undervalued its business...

...because it did not include enough bribes "executive compen$ation" to HP's board.

Facebook loses control of its own Twitter account in hacker attack – and more news

Health Share of Oregon confirmed it lost 654,362 patient records

...health care provider Health Share of Oregon confirmed it lost 654,362 patient records when one of its 'ride to care' providers left a laptop in a vehicle that was broken into. Exposed details included name, address, phone number, date of birth, Social Security number, and Medicaid ID number. So just about everything needed for identity theft.

Any punishment? Anyone going to jail? ANY incentive at all to see that this doesn't happen again? Anything?

Will Asimov fix my doorbell? There should be a law about this

Re: Nice Asimov.

Now, how’s about a good Zelazny?

Not necessary. As we all know, All Roads Lead to Amber.

Tech outfits sue Uncle Sam over 'unlawful' H-1B admission charges totaling $350m over six years

Avoiding Fees?

If they come into the USA with an H1-B Visa status, the Schumer amendment states the company must pay $4,000.

So instead, these companies are having the immigrants come to the U.S.A. under a different visa, then once in the USA changing the status to H1-B to avoid the $4,000 fee.

Petition asking Microsoft to open-source Windows 7 sails past 7,777-signature goal

Re: And in other news

"Petition asking Microsoft to open-source Windows 7 sails past 7,777-signature goal..."

"... of which 6,666 signatures are hackers."

Spanking the pirates of corporate security? Try a Plimsoll

Regulatory Capture

Regulatory capture – where an industry gains control of its own police force – is one of the primary structural problems of liberal democracy.

Absolutely true. I used to argue until I was blue in the face with idealists that believed a Democracy (and its extreme form, Socialism) is the perfect representational government. The issue is that representation must be balanced with resistance to corruption.

A Republic is structured to protect rights, and so seeks to represent the people as best it can while being as immune as possible to corruption. However a pure Democracy grants and rejects rights making it is so vulnerable to corruption that regulators always end up being owned and controlled by those it regulates.

Reminds me of a phrase "You must be a modern Socialist because if - you believe the reason why Socialism has always failed is because people like *you* have not been in charge of it!"

Ring of fired: Amazon axes multiple workers who secretly snooped on netizens' surveillance camera footage

Re: Source of complaints

Ring Wrote: "Although each of the individuals involved in these incidents was authorized to view video data, the attempted access to that data exceeded what was necessary for their job functions.

Thinking like the corporate wonk that I am, based on the above corporate-speak I'm going to SWAG¹ that Ring monitors the total amount of video data used by each employee as well as the total number of videos they view. Probably while most employees look at a few dozen personal videos per month, these four employees total data exceeded some threshold and reached a point where it could not be kept quiet. The usage must have been open and obvious, possibly exposed in a requested PowerPoint presentation by an upper-manager that requested a security audit - PowerPoint, being a battle axe of corporate warfare, is a great way to expose embarrassing information to reluctant co-workers.

So they fire these employees and then make the firings public to create the image they actually monitor and care.

.

¹ Silly Wild-Ass Guess

Ministry of Justice bod jailed for stealing £1.7m with fake IT consulting contract

Irony is hypocrisy done with style.

Microsoft engineer caught up in sudden spate of entirely coincidental grilling of Iranian-Americans at US borders

Re: And the consequenques fo failing to act?

Not really. There are credible reports that Chinese Americans are regularly being approached by Beijing, which reminds them that they still have family back in the old country who might come to harm if China's interests weeren't taken into account.

I can affirm this is absolutely true.

Re: And the consequenques fo failing to act?

Your memory seems to not stretch all the way back to last week where Iran's most senior general was assassinated by drone which I think for most countries constitutes a declaration of war.

Attacking an embassy is, by definition, an attack on a nation's sovereignty and is in itself an act of war. Failing to respond to such an attack is an open act of weakness - it's saying that attacks on this country will not be punished.

RISC-V business: SiFive and CEVA join forces to enable the development AI-amenable, edge-oriented processors

Apples & Oranges

RISC-V is an open, royalty-free instruction set architecture, unlike Intel's x86 the ARM chip architecture which requires a license to implement recent processor designs.

FIFY

RISC-V and x86 are completely different markets, the first is for embedded and the second is definitely not. RISC-V is punching it out with ARM, period.

If at first you don't succeed, pry, pry again: Feds once again demand Apple unlock encrypted iPhones in yet another terrorism case

Deja-Vu All Over Again

The FBI has asked Apple to unlock two iPhones belonging to a murderer, potentially reviving a tense battle over encryption and the rights of law enforcement to digital devices.

I dunno - I suspect the Feds have secretly had the ability to unlock these phones for a very long time, maybe even with Apple's covert help, and this is all just misdirection.

Smart speaker maker Sonos takes heat for deliberately bricking older kit with 'Trade Up' plan

Re: articles supporting climate change

I oppose climate change. I think the climate should be the same every day. I also oppose the change of seasons too.

It's 2019 so, of course, this Wells Fargo employee accused of stealing customer cash posed with wads of dosh on Instagram, Facebook

Re: How many trainers?

The Bank and the Criminal

or,

Dumb and Dumber

Canada's .ca supremo in hot water after cyber-smut stash allegedly found on his work Mac ‒ and three IT bods fired

Re: Do you think

A few months later, Holland allegedly asked for the transfer to be “completed” at which point the IT staffer who had seen the images asked his colleagues what to do, and they recommended taking the issue to human resources....at the end of the probe, Holland remained as chief exec, though three IT staff were fired and others decided to [read: "were asked to"] leave.

Human Resources exists to protect upper management from the employees. Just like @DavCrav wrote, going to H.R. is the worst possible advice for an employee up against top management. Of course Holland was dead wrong and the IT bods completely right, so of course H.R. punished the innocent IT bods.

I saw a similar situation where the manager claimed the IT guys had planted the images on his company computer.

When in this situation, either quit or call a lawyer.

Google Chrome will check for leaked credentials every time you sign in anywhere

Re: Is this *another* attempt to smother me in Gmail shit ?

I have two gmail accounts I use for non-critical purposes. Gmail is now demanding my mobile phone number or it will not log me in.

Google and privacy do not go together.

RISC-V business: Tech foundation moving to Switzerland because of geopolitical concerns

Re: Even if both Trump and Pence were impeached

DougS wrote: They wouldn't be impeached at the same time. If Trump was impeached first, Pence becomes president and gets to appoint a vice president (with senate confirmation, which would be easy since there is a republican majority)

During the Bill Clinton impeachment hearings it was theorized that Bill Clinton could step down, making Al Gore the new Pres. Gore could then appoint Bill Clinton VP. If approved and if done early enough in Bill's 2nd term, Bill could have run for re-election for a 3rd term.