Posts by Woodnag

Marks & Spencer admits cybercrooks made off with customer info

Re: I don't really give a fuck that they got hacked...

To go with the "household information" that they retain.

Microsoft total recalls Recall totally to Copilot+ PCs

Re: Recall does not share snapshots or associated data with Microsoft or third parties

The statement could have been "Recall snapshots and associated data remain on the computer" if they weren't intending to allow weasel room.

Mobile ad world drama: AppLovin not lovin' short seller assault claiming fraud

Re: Good Riddance!

["Code evidences that [AppLovin] is collecting and structuring user IDs from its key platform partners, which appears to be a major violation of the platforms’ terms of service (TOS)," the firm said in a note on its website. ... Foroughi again responded in a blog post, arguing that the biz's advertising pixel – used to track and attribute online ads – is no different from those used by Google or Facebook.]

I read Foroughi's post and he used a lot of words to say 'everyone does it', but failed to address the "major violation of the platforms’ terms of service" criticism.

VMware distributor Arrow says minimum software subs set to jump from 16 to 72 cores

pity the poor saps who remain customers

...pity the poor saps who become laid off employees too. Management will get golden f*ckoff packages of course.

Apple's alleged UK encryption battle sparks political and privacy backlash

I suspect canaries are only at best only reliable in countries like USA where the freedom of speech law means that the gov cannot compel speech or silence.

Vodafone: Be in the office 8 days a month or lose bonuses

Didn't stop them trying though.

Didn't stop them trying though.... we need that story, Brian. Please nicely.

Oh Brother. Printer giant denies dirty toner tricks as users cry foul

[Brother's US limb did, however, tell Ars Technica: "We are aware of the recent false claims suggesting that a Brother firmware update may have restricted the use of third-party ink cartridges. Please be assured that Brother firmware updates do not block the use of third-party ink in our machines."]

The complaint wasn't that third-party ink was blocked... just the performance deliberately downgraded in that case.

US stocks slip as Trump pulls trigger on Canada, Mexico, China tariffs

Or the violation of NAFTA.

Windows 7 lives! How to keep your favorite fossil running

CC

ccsetup532.zip was the last portable versions before Avast takeover...

DIMM techies weren’t allowed to leave the building until proven to not be pilferers

Re: It's ok, we have 24 hour security

When I worked for a company (Mixam: anag.) in Sunnyvale, they put up a new office building and multi-story car park that accessed the flat-roof entrance of the new office building. The MSCP's cameras were either fake or simply never connected to a system, so no coverage. The roof access had to be unlocked for fire reasons, and word got out, so there was a spate of thefts by people wandering in, looking like they worked there, and pilfering stuff from cubicles.

UK Home Office silent on alleged Apple backdoor order

If Apple just says no...

...doesn UK gov really want to have to move all their stuff to Android?

And explain to the population why?

Especially after the UCHR rulings on this topic that comms privacy is a human right, so warrants please not wholesale slurping.

Why users still couldn't care less about Windows 11

Re: Tune Win11

I would suggest Veracrypt FDE instead of Bitlocker. I suspect that "some country like Israel" has no difficulty with getting around BL.

Re: Over the years

I moved from Brief to https://www.editpadpro.com/

Tune Win11

It's not difficult to strip the nonsense out of Win11.

Run tiny11builder https://github.com/ntdevlabs/tiny11builder/tree/main to rebuild the iso so the nonsense isn't installed. The link shows what's removed.

This will install with secureboot and tpm disabled in the uefi (I recommend that), which means that MS won't force an upgrade later that you may not want becuase the install fails the hardware test.

Install as local account.

After install, use Winaero Tweaker to disable other unwanted features.

Last recommendation... partition your drive (or use two drives) with a small C:\ drive for the OS (128GB SSD is fine), and the rest of the space or second drive (HDD if you like) for D:\ with Documents, Temp etc moved to there. Then it's quick to backup the small C:\ reasonably frequently as an image (DD will do that for free), whereas the D:\ stuff you can backup more often just by copying.

TSA’s airport facial-recog tech faces audit probe

Privacy?

TSA: "Photos are not stored or saved after a positive ID match has been made". Bet they are passed on to NCIC and/or NSA. I'd prefer "Images are only retained for the purpose and duration of ID match and then deleted".

Even Windows 10 cannot escape the new Outlook

prevent installation

Martin Brinkmann has details how to prevent installation... regedit is yer friend, innit.

https://www.ghacks.net/2025/01/29/latest-windows-10-update-installs-new-outlook-app-automatically

UK tax collector's phone service 'deliberately' bad to push users online, say MPs

Re: Nudge economists

Try living abroad when you don't have to do a UK tax return due to mutual treaty... HMRC still press hard for you still to do so, because of the 7 year rule. Even though I wrung a letter from HMRC confirming that I don't have to do a UK tax return, twice since then they've written saying that I do, only to back off when provided with a copy of said missive and a suitably strong letter, summarised as "Oy! We've agreed this!".

Tesla recalls 239,382 vehicles over rearview camera problems

Particularly the mirrors that fold flat when stopped, a massive wear cycle.

Google's 10-year Chromebook lifeline leaves old laptops headed for silicon cemetery

Re: And this is why

The life is essentially that of the eMMC.

Apple offers to settle 'snooping Siri' lawsuit for an utterly incredible $95M

Settlement

Settlement covers 10 years, up to 5 devices per phone for $20 each. 950k people can get $100. But how many billion iDevices were sold in the last 10 years? Lets say 950 million claims (devices) are made.. that's 10c per claim. Wow.

Fear of Foxconn reportedly driving possible Nissan, Honda and Mitsubishi merger

Re: computers on wheels

The FIAT MultiAir engine has variable valve control... if the 'brick' that is the hydraulic controller drains out, it has to be primed before the engine will start. Run up the car every few weeks to avoid this.

I rented a K14 with the 900cc 3-cyl turbo. Loved driving it, although had to use 1st gear a lot when merging into roundabouts because with the turbo spun down there was no torque in 2nd.

Re: the surviving car brand

You could argue the same for HD motorbikes, but in both cases the customer base that views the product heritages with affection is literally dying off.

Suggested Actions fails to suggest its own survival as Windows 11 feature killed

Re: Driven by revenue, not usefulness

The features all require surveillance because the analysis is on MS systems. These types of useless features are simply to make it legally obvious to users that the minutae of their computer interactions are being monitored by MS to build a detailed profile of each user.

Pre-crime will be interesting when the real-time analyses from, say, MS, FB, your ISP, gmail, youtube, search engines all point to a person likely to kill their spouse...

Broadcom loses another big VMware customer: UK fintech cloud Beeks Group, and most of its 20,000 VMs

Mathematics?

..and now /. too with "Company Claims 1,000% Price Hike Drove It From VMware To Open Source Rival".

Lawks a mussy.

Mathmatics?

What's funny is that ARs has cross-posted to this story with the lede "Company claims 1,000 percent price hike drove it from VMware to open source rival"... but the wording here "A bill from Broadcom for ten times the sum it previously paid for software licenses" means that the price hike is 900%.

Yeah, I'm being pedantic... but from a technical site???

'Best job at JPL': What it's like to be an engineer on the Voyager project

Re: "I know I do."

"It is better to fail than to do nothing."

It's not a binary choice between impossible/nothing. Plan a project as a sequence of achievable steps. Look at Sputnik. All it did was broadcast a signal until the battery died, but that achieved launch, orbit, and telemetry.

Re: Now there's a real rocket scientist

You are lucky. JPL suffers repeated layoffs and budget pauses, such as MSR.

Microsoft hits back at claims it slurps your Word, Excel files to train AI models

Let's say that Microsoft is lying...

...and does all sorts of egregegious slurping.

Fairly easy to show that it's leaving your PC, essentially impossible to prove what they do with the data.

And say you do prove a badness, who goes to jail?

Airbus A380 flew for 300 hours with metre-long tool left inside engine

Re: "Qantas personnel in Sydney even requested removal of the report"

Q remains the only time I've requested a chargeback on a credit card. During early Covid, or course, and Q cancelled the flight so the law is clear. No, we have lovely vouchers to offer you or you can go through these amazing phone-in hoops to get the refund. Oh, and separate hoops for the base ticket price and for the extra cost for seat upgrade, despite being bought at the same time and part of the same ticket charge. They didn't dispute the chargeback. I'm sure people have similar Air Canada tales of woe too.

Australia tells tots: No TikTok till you're 16... or X, Instagram and Facebook

Re: "biometric facial analysis, voice analysis, and behavioral data"

If the sm companies are the ones doing the gatekeeping, then every user will have to be IDd. So this seems to me like a way to de-anonomise every sm user, under the usual 'save the children' excuse.

Just how private is Apple's Private Cloud Compute? You can test it to find out

Daring? or Dangerous

"However, it will only become significant if someone finds something". Close. In practise, it will only become significant if someone finds something AND TELLS APPLE as opposed to the alternative options.

UK immigration seeks tech support, development partner for border crossing systems

Biometrics mentioned. Palantir, shirley?

Boeing's new captain promises U-turn after Q3 nosedive

Re: "...after Q3 nosedive..."

"it's got a self-screwed up culture"... but the management likely thinks that the screwed up culture is the selfish lazy workforce not taking one for the team, when actually the union and whistleblower activity shows that the the workforce is thoroughly pissed off with taking one for the team for years, with no improvement.

Re: "...after Q3 nosedive..."

One of the real problems is that Boeing did massive stock buy-backs which pushed up stock price and enriched the stockholders (including top level management), and also burnt the cash stockpile that could othewise be spent now to fix the endemic manufacturing quality issues.

US and UK govts warn: Russia scanning for your unpatched vulnerabilities

Re: RICH!

Every country with a sigint service is "scanning for your unpatched vulnerabilities".

Including US and UK.

Since most people haven't a clue how to, say, install DD-WRT or OpenWrt on their home router, this is just a another useless scare story propagandising Russia=Bad, by the same people who pretend that a back door into encryption for the Good Guys won't be exploited by World+Dog.

Keir Starmer hands ex-Darktrace boss investment minister gig

Re: "...a tiny island everybody hates."

You win.

Re: "...a tiny island everybody hates."

I was looking to the skye, mulling what to choose, but my glass is raised to Islay.

Recall the Recall recall? Microsoft thinks it can make that Windows feature palatable

Re: tries to prevent passwords, national ID numbers, and credit card numbers from being recorded

Yes. So opt-out isn't enough. Opting out should mean that the code isn't there at all, so can't be quietly enabled by some hack attack through a hole that hasn't been spotted yet.

UK government's bank data sharing plan slammed as 'financial snoopers' charter'

Re: What could possibly go wrong...

I think that you've spotted the real reason. Firstly, when UK goes cashless HMG will see what other deposits are going in. Secondly, the bit "The bill is also expected to ... protect vulnerable claimants from racking up debt, DWP said." implies that people will be penalise for spending money on anything HMG disapproves of, such as donations to non-profits working on stuff HMG doesn't like.

US Army drafts AI to combat recruitment shortfall

Re: Applicant files?

Yes, this looks very shady. Combing through school records for sure (it's an opt-out: https://edlaw4students.com/military-records-release/) but doubtless having access to FB and other data too.

I'm sure the software doesn't just identify cold-call targets, but works out the mostly effective wording for the pitch to each target individually.

IBM quietly axing thousands of jobs, source says

What about the WARN notice?

[wiki]

The Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification Act of 1988 (the "WARN Act") is a U.S. labor law that protects employees, their families, and communities by requiring most employers with 100 or more employees to provide notification 60 calendar days in advance of planned closings and mass layoffs of employees.

Amazon CEO wants his staff back in the office full time

My guess is that RTO will be monitored on divisions that Amazon wants to prune anyway with the message "TRO or leave". Cheaper than layoffs. Then, middle of next year, layoffs to clear the remainder.

Meta back at it, harvesting Britons' public Facebook, Insta feeds for AI training

Re: Objection!

Not true, if a FB account user tags you in a group photo.

Windows 11 users still living in the past face forced update, like it or not

Re: You will do as you are told

No forced updates on Win10/11 either if you run InControl to set the upgrade parameters.

https://www.grc.com/incontrol.htm/

1.7M potentially pwned after payment services provider takes a year to notice break-in

Very seriously?

Why is the first statement from companies with terrible intrusion detection along the lines of taking security very seriously?

Key aspects of Palantir's Federated Data Platform lack legal basis, lawyers tell NHS England

Re: Is opt-out even legal?

An opt-out option is worthless if the opt-out is ignored. And it will be, partly because it will be very difficult to discover that a particular patient's data is shared, and partly because the punishment will be a cost of doing business fine 7 years later but no redress.

If this sounds too cynical, ask yourself who has received a custodial sentence as a result of the Grenfell disaster, final report out now.

Gelsinger opens up about Intel troubles amid talk of possible split

Re: The sting in the Tail

At least the keyboards will be clean.

Zuckerberg says Biden administration pressured Meta to police COVID posts

Fire!

Actually it is legal to shout "Fire!" in a crowded theatre. Hate speech is also legal. The exception to the 4A is speech that incites immediate violence. So "I wish Fred would die painfully" to a bunch of friends is fine, but saying to a crowd "I want y'all to go and beat Fred over there to death" is not.

https://www.whalenlawoffice.com/blog/legal-mythbusting-series-yelling-fire-in-a-crowded-theater/