Posts by LazLong

Chinese vendor apologizes for claiming Microsoft open source code was its own product

Re: "with a small amount of modification and some functions added"

That's what I call a typical Chinese programmer.

Google toys with internet air-gap for some staff PCs

Shoulda happened a long time ago

Personally, having worked IT in a couple of different three-letter classified environments, I think corporations that produce security sensitive software have dropped the ball on air-gapping their dev systems a long time ago. eg I found RSA's breach to be astonishing.

Canada plans brain drain of H-1B visa holders, with no-job, no-worries work permits

Re: Russians

The exact same thing could be said about the Chinese. When the US offered to let those Chinese studying in America stay after the Tiananmen Square massacre, my first thought was that this would be a HUMINT boon to the CCP, and I'm sure it was. Plenty of those studying here had aspirations to intelligence careers, and the rest all had family back home who would be hostage to the CCP's demands of those not willing to cooperate. All the same can be said about Russians abroad.

Police use of PayPal records under fire after raid on 'Cop City' protest fund trio

Justification?

What did the plod use as justification to get the warrants for the financial records?

Smuggler busted heading for China with dodgy GPUs … and live lobsters

No doubt

No doubt the cards were destined to be re-flashed as RTX 4070s and resold on AliExpress/BangGood/Temu to greedy morons for unbelievable prices.

Chinese Loongson chips coming in 2023, on par with 2020 x86 kit

Re: Worth watching - as usual

>Were you referring to China or the USA?

China, obviously. Or do you not know Loongson is MIPS-based, with some borrowing from RISC-V?

Koch-funded group sues US state agency for installing 'spyware' on 1m Android devices

ASSuming

"Now, on the whole, the right are more likely to be COVID deniers but in this instance I don't care about that. The State did wrong and it needs to be on recorded at court that they did wrong, and that's the entire reason for the case."

Tsk, tsk. You're assuming the statements in the case are factual. This is funded by a Cock brother, and you should be more sceptical.

California to phase out gas furnaces, water heaters by 2030

Special CA kit

We who live in CA already have to buy special gas heaters and water heaters that adds about 25% to the cost.

Both our water heaters are relatively new, but our furnace is aged, at least 30 years old. I guess we'll be replacing it right before the ban. I already have a rediculous PG&E monthly bill over $300, and that's with our roof covered with solar. Too many older servers, plus other misc electronic kit. I'll be damned if I'm going to pay to have new electrical installed to power the water heaters and furnace. I'll fucking drive to a nearby state and buy what I need. Almost did that with the last water heater I bought.

Teradici re-emerges as 'HP Anyware' to replace ZCentral Remote Boost

Remote data doesn't traverse the network?

"No data from remote PCs ever traverses a network – remote users see only bitmaps."

So, pray tell, how does one log in? How does input happen? Are bitmaps not data? All of this is valuable info for an adversary and must be taken into account, and marketing bullshit claiming no data traverses the network is disingenuine. Some may see this as a quibble, but it's not.

One of Teradici's first markets, if not the first, was classified diskless workstation computing. Not long before the introduction of PCoIP there started a big push in the US Federal govt to move classified clients to diskless solutions. Unfortunately, most widely known solutions were thin clients that weren't suitable for anything beyond simple office computing. Teradici's product aimed to overcome these limitations by providing remote access to workstations, instead of the terminal servers that were in vogue at the time.

China seems to have figured out how to make 7nm chips despite US sanctions

Sexual Stealing

Send enough hot spies to tempt nerdy engineers and you're bound to get what you need.

UK response to China's tech ambitions labelled 'incoherent and muted'

Say 'Thank you' to the moronic Brexiteers

The UK is in this position thanks to Russian misinformation/campaigning for Brexit, voter apathy, and the moronic Brexiteers themselves. WTF did the Brexiteers think was going to happen? Instead of being a big fish in an economically-strong hurd, they are now a rogue hamster that is going to get squashed between the jostling big three rabid hippopotami, China, the EU, and the US. This is what Brexiteers were selling, and way too many morons bought into it. So now they can reap the milkshakes they've sown. The UK's only choice is to enjoy their hamstership, join BRICS if it ever turns into an effective trade block, or go crawling back to the EU with their kneepads on and ready swallow.

Xen patches three bugs that allow guest-host takeover

It's not dead yet?

How one techie ended up paying the tab on an Apple Macintosh Plus

Beige, not Platinum

You say your article "concerns the time when Apple was bringing its beige all-in-one Macs into the classroom for the very first time," and yet instead of a beige Mac Plus you use a photo of a post-SE and Mac II era Platinum-colored Mac Plus. Interesting choice.

New York to get first right-to-repair law for electronics

Too many exclusions

I wonder what the rationale was for excluding home appliances, beyond money from lobbyists?

Starlink's success in Ukraine amplifies interest in anti-satellite weapons

Re: Keep it simple

You sorta beat me to it. I wanted to say that I have no beef with ASAT systems as long as they result in de-orbiting all the components of the satellite. There is enough junk floating around in space as it is.

Just think of poor Endor and all the shit left in orbit after the Rebel Alliance blew up the second Death Star....

Engineer sues Amazon for not covering work-from-home internet, electricity bills

The law is the law, hurrah hurrah

Commuting is not part of actual work. If they had to use their car to visit clients, then yes, CA law requires reimbursement.

What about use of their domicile as office space? That also should be reimbursed. This is especially pertinent to employers who have decided they like not having to pay for office space and all that goes with it.

Amazon is simply displaying the increased trend over the last 50+ years to compensate employees less and redistribute wealth upward to the maximum extent they can get away with. Fuck them.

Declassified and released: More secret files on US govt's emergency doomsday powers

Significant typo

"Another document [PDF] from 1959 describing the aftermath of a Soviet nuclear attack estimated 48 million people would die, leaving 12 million survivors making up the US population."

That should probably be 120 million. The population of the US in 1959 was 177 million.

China offering ten nations help to run their cyber-defenses and networks

The better to raid your resources

"...and mapping the marine environment."

In preparation to mine your resources....

Facebook sues scraper who sold 178 million phone numbers and user IDs

Fuck Zuck, and his harmful products. Boycott Facebook and all their products.

US nuke sub plans leaked on SD card hidden in peanut butter sandwich, claims FBI

Seems risky

It seems risky to have kept these guys in play for a year. Who knows how many copies of this info they managed to sell to real adversaries during this time?

Lithuania tells its citizens to throw Xiaomi mobile devices in the bin

Re: CHaaS

"Here is a story about Apple, an American company, censoring freedom of speech at the behest of an authoritarian government.

Does it really matter if it is only in China or do we only give a shit when it affects us?"

No, what matters is my original statement, facts, and semantics.

Apple's cooperation with China's government was done under color of law, and therefore isn't similar AT ALL to what Lithuania has discovered.

Re: CHaaS

Wasn't done secretly, and the products aren't exported outside the area where this action was mandated by law, so no potential abuse by China's intelligence agencies.

Re: CHaaS

Cite one single similar instance of such an egregious breach of freedom of speech perpetrated by an EU, UK, Japanese, or US firm to back up your baseless accusation. Don't just spout contrarian bullshit you anonymous coward.

Thank you to Lithuania and their contribution to international freedom of speech.

Why we abandoned open source: LiveCode CEO on retreat despite successful kickstarter

Greater-than-equals sign isn't punctuation, it's a math operator. Punctuation would be colon, semicolon, double/single quotes, parentheses, brackets, etc.

Singapore is the only nation with a dedicated 'net link to China. And they've just agreed to expand its use

Re: Trust

FT Meade isn't in Kansas, it's in Maryland.

Australia facepalms as Facebook blocks bookstores, sport, health services instead of just news

Screw Australia's clumsy attempt....

Screw Australia's clumsy attempt to suck money from Facebook by charging for linking. Don't get me wrong. I HATE Facebook, and don't use it, nor have I ever, but charging for linking is asinine. So are poorly, overbroadly-worded laws.

‘Quad’ nations sign up for meta think-tank to advance ‘Techno-Democratic Statecraft’

Maybe....

Maybe they can promulgate some liberal democracy to India and get Modi's ass out of office.

Has Apple abandoned CUPS, the Linux's world's widely used open-source printing system? Seems so

Re: Postscript

It remained very much a feature of the Apple world

And the Unix world. Back when Linux was a pup, PS printers were the printer of choice as well.

Paragon 'optimistic' that its NTFS driver will be accepted into the Linux Kernel

Re: Making Linux more like Windows is never a good move...

A useless, bigoted comment. They aren't "trying to make Linux more like Windows" any more than adding XFS support made Linux more like IRIX, UFS support made it more like Solaris, etc. Likewise, the only way it'll benefit malware purveyors is if it's buggy, just like any other kernel code. It doesn't have any actual Windows code in it. It's merely another tool in Linux's toolbox. Grow up.

Yes, they are the developers of the commercial HFS+ driver for Windows, as well as ext2+, Btrfs, and XFS.

They also have an NTFS and ext2+ for MacOS, and a bunch of other file systems and file system-related tools for all the OSs.

Surprise! Voting app maker roasted by computer boffins for poor security now begs US courts to limit flaw finding

'Cause spys respect EULAs, right?

Yeah, because of course the Nork's, Russia's, Iran's, and China's security agencies respect EULAs, so we don't need software to actually be written securely.

Fucking idiots.

NASA to stop using names like 'Eskimo Nebula' and 're-examine' what it calls cosmic objects

Re: What's next?

> . It is derived from the Czech word "robota" - meaning something like "forced laborer" or "slave".

Sorry. Not even close. The Czech word for 'slave' is 'otrok,' and the word for 'work' is 'práce.'

Check this out, maybe it'll help you:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robot

Re: What's next?

>Really? I thought it was derived from the russian word for 'worker'.

While the Russian word for 'worker,' rabotnik (работник), does include a Slavic root related to 'labor,' the word 'robot' was coined by the brother of Czech science fiction author Karel Čapek, Josef Čapek.

Taiwan turfs out video streamers run by China’s web giants

Re: Fat chance of that happening without an invasion

> No Trump fan, but can we leave out everything having to mention him at the slightest chance? It's becoming the new Godwins law.

Hitler. Hitler Hitler. Stalin Trump Hitler. Trump Trump Trump. Hitler Trump. Stalin.

Mao. Trump Mao Hitler. Stalin Mao. Stalin Stalin Stalin Putin. Putin Trump Hitler Stalin. Mao Putin.

;-)

Fat chance of that happening without an invasion

"But the ban also comes against a background of China being increasingly insistent that Taiwan – which it characterises as a rogue province – should again become part of a single Chinese nation."

Not that there has ever been much of a chance of Taiwan ever willingly reuniting with China, but fucking over Hong Kong hasn't increased the chances.

China's treatment of Hong Kong is a perfect example of what Trump would do to America if he had the chance.

Forget James Bond's super-gadgets, this chap spied for China using SD card dead drops. Now he's behind bars

Re: Money-laundering?

Yes. Any transaction of $10k+ is sent to the Federal Gov't.

4 years in a Federal pound-me-in-the-ass prison is insufficient; At least ten.

Built to last: Time to dispose of the disposable, unrepairable brick

$1000? I have three words for you....

Rossman Repair Group. They do component-level repair. Saving Mac owners from being screwed by Apple is their speciality. (Said in Obi-Wan Kenobi's voice) The owner is a rabid advocate of right-to-repair, traveling across the country spreading the good word to legislative bodies. He also has some cool videos on YouTube.

https://rossmanngroup.com/

Not call, dude: UK govt says guaranteed surcharge-free EU roaming will end after Brexit transition period. Brits left at the mercy of networks

Enjoy your self-inflicted wound Brits!

I hope you guys enjoy Brexit and realize all the wonderful benefits Farage and Johnson conned you into thinking you'll real being free of the EU.

To quote Otto from A Fish Called Wanda:

"Oh you English are SO superior aren't you? Well, would you like to know where you'd be without US the good old U.S. of A. to protect you? I'll tell you. The smallest fucking province in the Russian Empire, that's where! So DON'T call me stupid, lady. Just THANK me! ...If it wasn't for us, you'd all be speaking German, singing, "Deutschland, Deutschland über alles!"

Russian super-crook behind $20m internet fraud den Cardplanet and malware-exchange forum pleads guilty

Throw the book at the scumbag!

We shouldn't be lenient on the dirtbag. He's one of the very, very few that we've been about to catch and hold accountable. Unless he turns Abagnale and fully cooperates under close supervision, he needs to feel the full punishment under the law. It may not be a deterrent, but it's just.

KRACK whacked, media playback holes packed, other bugs go splat in Android patch pact

Close to driving me back to iOS.

Lack of support by Android hardware companies is close to driving me back to iOS. At least with an iPhone I'm fairly certain I'll get two years of security updates.

Fappening celeb nudes hacking outrage: Third scumbag cops to charge

Not cowering, nor ashamed

I found some of the photos interesting in that they were a small window into the banality of these 'stars.' I was also curious as to how they looked when not enhanced by makeup or CGI. Definitely nothing mastibatorily worthy.

Lenovo spits out retro ThinkPads for iconic laptop's 25th birthday

Not "nipple"....

Clitoris! Get it right, dammit.

Can North Korean nukes hit US mainland? Maybe. But EMP blast threat is 'highly credible'

Re: Bigger is not better

The weapons that the Norks have detonated to date have been relatively low-yield fission devices, the most powerful of which was estimated to be no more than 30KT. Depending on design, it is true that low-yield fission devices can be more efficient at producing E1 effects than fusion devices, but the effects are limited to line-of-sight. The E3 effects are what knock out the power grid, and the E3 effect of low-yield fission devices is insufficient to produce anything other than regional outages. Thus, NK would be best served attacking the northeastern part of the US where its financial and federal centers are concentrated, but their current delivery vehicles are incapable of reaching this area from their territory. To overcome this NK could develop a ship-launched weapon.

Well, that escalated quickly: Qualcomm demands iPhone, iPad sales ban in America

Re: Apple's hypocritical

You realize Google "taxes" software developers the exact same 30%, right? Where's your outrage over that?

I don't have a problem with that because Google allows other app stores, such as Amazon's, to be installed onto Android devices. Apple doesn't allow anything to be installed that doesn't come from their App Store and give them their cut. Closed systems are ultimately detrimental to consumers by trying to prevent competition and stifling innovation, among other ills. And please don't give me the closed-garden security drivel; it's beneath The Reg's audience.

Did you think that software developers selling programs for Windows got to keep the entire sales price you paid when you bought a nice shrinkwrapped CD at Best Buy? They didn't even get 30% of it, let alone 70%. And most of them didn't get shelf space on Best Buy, whereas every software developer who follows the rules and pays $99/yr gets "shelf space" at the App Store.

No, I know better having worked computer retail 31 years ago, and still being capable of a reasonable amount of accurate observation today. But, second verse, same as the first: Computer retail is far more open than Apple's App Store, with developers not being prevented from marketing competing technologies to the OS platform developer. And yes, I'm aware of having to pay for shelf space and prime display real estate.

As for the percentage of retail prices developers get to keep, the price of software for traditional productivity platforms is higher, though I haven't bothered to Google app store revenue vs traditional channels.

Apple's hypocritical

"They supply us with a single connectivity component, but for years have been demanding a percentage of the total cost of our products – effectively taxing Apple's innovation," Apple said via a spokesperson."

Like how Apple taxes software developers' innovation 30% of the cost of apps sold on the App Store? Hypocritical bastards. This is one of the reasons I dislike Apple so.

Europol, FBI, UK's NCA ride out to Ukraine's cavalry call

It's 'Ukraine,' not "the Ukraine."

It is not "the Ukraine," but simply Ukraine.' This actually changed when Ukraine went from being a region of the former Russian Empire to a republic of the USSR. However, it was not properly recognized by foreign entities until formally codified in Ukraine's declaration of independence from the USSR and its constitution. Google is your friend.

Chip design chap arrested for using photocopier

Just another normal business day in China

The culture in the PRC is to steal all you can, phuck over your customers as much as you can get away with, and absolutely no respect for the IP rights of other.

Meet the chap open-sourcing US govt code – Paul, an ex-Microsoft anti-piracy engineer

Re: What license is he going for?

@diodesign

The article doesn't tell the whole story about licensing of works produced by US gov't workers. The GPL and Apache licenses are only applicable to use by citizens of other countries. All work produced by U.S. government officers or employees is not subject to copyright according to Section 105 of the Copyright Act. Google it.

I worked at a DOE lab for 11 years doing DevOps before the term was coined supporting code physicists and computer scientists who wrote codes supporting Stockpile Stewardship; so I know a thing or two about software licensing of U.S. gov't-produced codes.