Posts by b0llchit

Petition instructs Jeff Bezos to buy, eat world's most famous painting

Re: A very educational petition

All that money has come from creating value.

That is a euphemism for moving money from the poor to the rich.

It doesn't matter. If he can sell it all for 1% of the valuation, then that be almost two thousand million bucks! Now, with that cash, ignoring interest, he may go and spend at a constant rate of one dollar per second^(*). At that rate he may do so for the next 63 years! Well beyond any estimated time-to-death for that guy.

(*) note that spending 86400 dollars per day is more than a lot of very poor people have in an entire lifetime.

What job title would YOU want carved on your gravestone? 'Beloved father, Slayer of Dragons, Register of Domains'

When sounds do bother...

Here lies Alistair Dabbs - Never to be heard of again.

Cheers! (not you, you're dead, the other alive you)

Toyota reveals its work on an honest-to-goodness cloak of invisibility

Re: A fully functional cloaking device

don't you spell Cling on: r o m u l a n?

And, what happens to prey when the bird is no longer visible?

Stob treks back across the decades to review the greatest TV sci-fi in the light of recent experience

Why can't we have more sci-fi in the real world? Living in the future has two options: 1) we live in harmony, or 2) we are all in agony and soon die a horrible death.

As the HHGTTG already stated, either option is good. Especially when option 2 is acute, we'll soon be free of said agony because of the soon no longer being alive part. Now, take that beer and wait for either.

GPRS-era mobile data encryption algorithm GEA/1 was 'weak by design', still lingers in today's phones

Secure channels inside secure channels

Public infrastructure is never going to be secure. There are too many interests to intercept. Therefore never trust the default "encryption" and use an encrypted tunnel you control. You would not use a telnet session inside an ipsec tunnel. You'd still use ssh. Also, you send pgp email, even though the general smtp links are tls links nowadays.

The examples are all a secure channel inside a supposedly secure channel. The security starts when you are in control.

Bad Apple Safari update breaks IndexedDB JavaScript API, upsets web apps

A sarcastic view may be that Apple has not received a 30% cut of those using the IndexedDB feature. No pay means no game on iPlayStuff.

The problem is that my sarcastic and often pessimistic views (or sometimes paranoid views) are underestimating reality. That is the scary part.

<tong in cheek> <cross fingers> <sacrifice $diety preferred animal>

Deluded medics fail to show Ohio lawmakers that COVID vaccines magnetise patients

It was the 400 THz ... 700 THz spread that made her uncomfortable. However, the spread around 1.2 PHz outside did the real damage and her skin has taken a red tint and is starting to peel. Currently, the 20 THz ... 150 THz range touching the skin are causing serious discomfort.

Realizing this is getting out of hand, Coq mulls new name for programming language

Re: Just call it

That would really piss off the poor sods with one eye and a state of chronic oxygen deprivation. Are you making fun of those poor souls?

yes, yes, my coat...

See, no word or sound is safe from sexual connotations. I rest my case.

Re: Vin

So, you manage to do work on this graph? Can't imagine where on the graph you are when vin and vim become indistinguishable.

...and others getting harassed when they said they were working on Coq

This says more about those doing the harassing than those who work on Coq. There is no word or sound in any language that cannot be (ab)used to have some other meaning. Trying to please the zealots only results in more problems.

Or, we can just agree that one word remains: blank. Then we can have meaningful conversations like this:

Blank blank blank, blank blank. Blank blank blank blank blank blank, blank blank blank, blank blank blank. Blank blank blank blank blank. Blank blank blank blank blank blank blank blank blank. Blank blank blank blank blank blank. Blank, blank blank blank blank blank blank, blank blank blank blank blank blank blank. Blank!

How many references to reproductive organs did you find in that text? <blank>

Ireland warned it could face 'rolling blackouts' if it doesn't address data centres' demand for electricity

Re: Lucky Ireland

And, don't forget, the rolling blackouts will be limited to the private homes and domestic corporations who all pay an energy premium for attracting those foreign data centers. The data centers have, of course, negotiated priority and will be running 24/7/365 regardless.

If this is the truth then I have failed miserably at writing sarcasm. Well, sorry then. The lights will go out automatically with the coat. It is a blackout coat ;-)

'Condolences on the death of your conscience' says card from Indonesian delivery drivers to local Uber clone after payments slashed

Re: Good on them

But the companies get away with it because the consumers take part in the race to the bottom prices.

When you see cab B offering half the cost of cab A, will you be looking at the work conditions for driver B before you use the cheapest one? And then, some of the drivers will accept just about any penny because that is more than nothing. With the company squeezing at one side and the consumers squeezing at the other side, there will be no fair system.

Even regulations cannot prevent grey or black offerings and illegal behavior when the chances are slim to none to get caught by officials and fines are pocket money for the big corporations. The gig-economy is just a new/another form of race to the bottom and we all cheer at the prices without actually looking at the cost. For every rich person you should ask yourself: "who and how many paid dearly for that person's wealth?".

FBI paid renegade developer $180k for backdoored AN0M chat app that brought down drug underworld

Trusting trust

Reflections on Trusting Trust should be mandatory reading for all "criminals"?

Not only software is a problem, but the hardware too. If you want some strong guarantees about the system you are using, then you must make both hardware and software yourself. At the same time, you then cross your fingers that you have not introduced any bugs.

Maybe, using an old typewriter, paper and the post-office is becoming more secure than your computing platforms. I guess you should use some kind of code. But then, OTP has a very long history and is very secure. Oh, yes, the RTT is lower, but that is compensated with the better security.

But in the end, it will be the users who make simple or stupid mistakes that cause them to be caught. That cannot be fixed with any type of technology. Or, can you already get an integrated brain replacement?

It's completely unsupportable. Yes, we mean your brand new system

Small steps

The article points out the very truth of all systems, IT and non-IT. Innovative at small scale is a maintenance problem if done wrong. Innovative at large scale is a maintenance problem if done wrong. Often, only when the innovation becomes general mainstream, then you have established procedures that keep things running and cost down.

The real kicker of problematic is people at a company dictating a specific system and or sub-system. How often I've seen the management level interfering with development and innovation by forcing the use of marginally correct or incompatible pieces. That is the nightmare of maintenance doubled down (and the techies get the blamed for all the problems).

The lesson all should learn is small steps are extremely important in making big systems. Planning not only the functionality of a system but the longevity and maintenance are all integral to the system and take time to make/build and describe/document. And lets not forget planing to handle failures and problems while running.

Thanks, boss. The accidental creation of a lights-out data centre – what a fun surprise

Re: Obligatory quote...

So, why hasn't this 'End-of-the-World Switch' been available?

I am certain many have the urge to press such button, even before it gets painted, with hanging wires and all, me included.

Access denied

The last data-center I was working at had a strict policy of non-interference. That meant, the "Boss" did not have the key to the rooms where both active and passive equipment were located. Only certified people were allowed entrance.

Flying dildo poses a slap in the face for serious political debate

A dick move?

How many remote controls do you really need? Answer: about a bowl-ful

Mother knows best

My mother used to say in the shop "Do you have something with one button? Just one on/off switch?"

Many, many moons ago I did not understand the sentiment and was almost embarrassed. Now, I am proud of her asking and sticking to the simple truth.

And now, today, does this technology of buttons, devices and impossible combinations actually make us happy? I guess that a simple working on/off switch would be a significant improvement.

BOFH: I'm so pleased to be on the call, Boss. No, of course this isn't a recording

...

You can check-out any time you like.

But you can never leave!

European Parliament's data adequacy objection: Doubts cast on UK's commitment to privacy protection

Consequences?

There are no consequences for the government(s) and institutions when they violate our privacy. The laws are just words om paper. Every time we hear about violations of the privacy laws by the government(s) or its institutions we only rarely see a pawn sacrifice. But there are no real consequences for the government(s) and its institutions. That is the real problem. They are immune and can simply continue one or the other way.

Actually, they learned something: That illegal path of action was revealed by a wistle. Lets use a different method next time so we do not get caught this way again. This cat and mouse play will continue forever unless and until real consequences will be put in place.

The common factor in all your failed job applications: Your CV

Different types don't match well

Techies are generally looking at the substance of things. They will look at context and details, broad, wide, narrow, specialized, generalized and then some. It is about content, not about the same thing with a new name, again.

Those who generally read/evaluate a CV are looking at the form of it. They cannot grasp any technical content and do not appreciate the depth and width of knowledge required for someone to be a good techie. Thus, they look at buzzwords and think they can determine the quality of a person by looking at how you format the letters and do not care what is written.

It is a petty that the non-technical type is more prevalent than the technical type. We, the techies, are a suffering minority.

Firefox 89: Can this redesign stem browser's decline?

Re: What does it take...

...to actually get the concept of privacy into people's heads? Anyone?

The fox in Firefox will eat chickens in the house. Unfortunately, most people are just sheep and are not as impressed by a fox.

Maybe Firefox needs to rebrand as Firewolf to eat the dissent and simultaneously rebrand as Firedog to steer the sheep in the right direction.

[I'll go find my coat now, thank you]

Space junk damages International Space Station's robot arm

You mean, those future (alien) archeologists and anthropologists? They already know the result: Mostly harmless.

The irony is that space will become wholly inaccessible to all of us if we do not resolve the space debris problem.

But that irony is not appreciated by humanity. We, as a species, are very busy to pollute and kill the world we live in. Then we go to space and continue the same behavior and pollute the orbit. Luckily we have not yet managed to go very much farther out. But everywhere humanity goes it seems to leave its garbage.

We should start by cleaning our local world and learn to leave no junk before we should be allowed to move anywhere else. Maybe humanity needs some alien foster parents to enforce the rules?

TCP alternative QUIC reaches IETF's Standards Track after eight years of evolution

Everything old is new again. Each generation reinvents the same parts of the same wheel using new vocabulary and a modern color. Next up we'd have computers talking to each other as a new fashion thing.

"Human: Computer, where is my computer? Computer: You have me in your pocket."

AWS Free Tier, where's your spending limit? 'I thought I deleted everything but I have been charged $200'

Old game

Simply reminds me of Hotel California:

"... We are programmed to receive. You can check out any time you like. But you can never leave!"

My guess is that you should avoid to play in the first place or else you will get burned in one or the other way.

The Audacity: Audio tool finds new and exciting ways to annoy contributors with a Contributor License Agreement

It is all about trust.

MUSECY SM LTD has in its 9 month or so of existence not proven to be trustworthy, Quite contrary, the recent frustrations in the community have shown a significant lack of trust and the company has done/published some very stupid things.

The organizations you mention have a very different history. While I would not contribute to all of them, most I deem trustworthy enough to trust them to uphold the best interest of the software they are the guardians of.

Sounds like he's desperately trying to drive people away from it.

No, he is are trying to appropriate (steal) other people's work without compensation. Then, he can take the code base private and put it on the balance sheet as immaterial property. The last step is to sell other's work for a profit by squandering the company to whoever and cash out.

Ubuntu, Wikimedia jump ship to the Libera Chat IRC network after Freenode channel confiscations

Re: "confiscated by the new freenode management."

Soon they will be on-the-frits-Node. Who wants to be there anymore?

Next releases of the major and minor IRC clients will remove or deprecate the freenode link(s) and replace it with prominent libera links.

Facial recog firm Clearview hit with complaints in France, Austria, Italy, Greece and the UK

Only one bad actor?

Clearview AI told The Reg it "has never had any contracts with any EU customer and is not currently available to EU customers."

Translation: We, Clearview, don't give a fuck about your complaints. You have no contracts with us and you were stupid enough to put something visible on the internet. Now, go away and sob somewhere else.

Ok, but that just covers Clearview. Lets talk about Google and Facebook and Amazon and Microsoft and Apple and all those others, shall we? Every single one of them gives us the same stinky-finger when we want them to leave any of our data alone. All these companies have made a living (and a fortune) from taking other's data. They all should be held accountable and the bosses/leaders should be held personally accountable.

After staff revolt, Freenode management takes over hundreds of IRC channels for 'policy violations'

The policy euphemism

...forbidding "inappropriate advertising"...

Hm. lets see...

Smartass@#chx> We moved to network XYZ

Bzzzt... disconnect. Ok, this is wrong.

Smartass@#chy> We have a secret. You know what we did? We did the same thing as many others and got smart. You know, that smart thing you can do. We all can do it. We can all be smart.

Pling! you see, advertising done appropriately.

Telling someone not to say A makes them say B with the meaning of A and we all know it. Only idiots try to use bad policies to limit expression. When you need such rules, you have already lost control.

South Korea plans large scale quantum cryptography adoption, thanks in part to tech partnership with USA

Upgrade or die

...and helping with device migration...

The problem will be a large volume of "old" 2G modems that many systems have set up. Here in Europe, the problem may be significantly larger than in South Korea, but I guess that quite a bit of remote equipment will go silent when the 2G net is switched off.

Migrating old equipment may not be an option and would then need to be replaced. But, replacement may prove very difficult, considering that some of this stuff may be 15+ years old and have no "modern" equivalent and most likely no support contracts.

With the accelerated changes in standards during the last 25 or so years, it has become clear that (planned) obsolescence is a much bigger problem. Sure, products are designed to fail fast, but when the standards chance rapidly, then you are forced to change more often than you'd like. As an example, we went through several digital television standards in very short time and created lots of expensive paperweight in that process. Yes, it is expensive to maintain "old" tech like 2G, but sometimes when it just works, why do you need to change it? Well you might want to change it, but please, also make me a dumb-phone again that will work on a 4G network.

Singapore orders social media to correct Indian politician’s allegation of local COVID-19 variant

Re: No variant vs no evidence

There is no spoon.

Azure services fall over in Europe, Microsoft works on fix

Yes, indeed. The Do Not Stumble-bit was cleared in the last update. The machines were under the impression that it was OK to take a break and try to get a better pay for the electrons passing through them. In that process, some electrons took a wrong turn and made a little mess. Mopping the floor took some time before all started to flow smoothly again.

Lessons have not been learned: Microsoft's Modern Comments leave users reaching for the rollback button

Re: Well... there's always...

The suits can't even properly comment inline in an email in plain text and remove irrelevant junk. And you expect them to be able to type properly in a real editor and actually typeset something?

I'd love to be proven wrong, but I will not hold my breath. [My coat stayed on the whole time. It is cold both inside and outside. I'll see myself out.]

Old laws new again

Sometimes, comments are just comments to help the author improve their writing

I'd add: "Comments are just that, comments."

And then we have "sends email". I had an old memory surface about software, Zawinski's Law:

“Every program attempts to expand until it can read mail. Those programs which cannot so expand are replaced by ones which can.”

It seems that this is still true after so many years. An addition is that it not only can read mail, it can also send mail and probably has aspirations to expand into deep space beyond our solar system. Next step is an AI version to walk on three feet.

New IETF draft reveals Egyptians invented pyramids to sharpen razor blades

Even with these imaginative RFCs, they are real and are in fact functionally useful in one or another way. At least one group has made an implementation and thus proven its viability at some level. Adding weights to the feet is a practical consideration, which is left to infrastructure operators for actual implementation.

iFixit slams Samsung's phone 'upcycling' scheme for falling short of what was promised

Re: Its a problem of volume

How the hell is everyone buying that many phones?

Because the network operator subsidizes the phones. Ever since the last 25 years it has been a strategy employed by many operators. It works like this: 1) get a contract at operator A and get a phone for a measly small amount. You are contract bound to the operator for 24 months. 2) Ẃhen the contract expires, the phone is "old" and you go to the next operator B and start again, 3) rinse and repeat for operator C, D, E... etc.

You can even keep your old telephone number with the introduction of number portability in many countries. So, effectively, you get a new phone every two years or so and pay for it through the contract over many months.

There are many other markets who operate with this strategy. Apparently, it is a profitable strategy. Lure the customer with a cheap entry and milk them during the contract period.

Re: Its a problem of volume

New devices are seen in the network by new IMEI numbers coming online. But, even if one third or one half are refurbished, then we still would have the same huge problem.

See https://www.statista.com/statistics/263437/global-smartphone-sales-to-end-users-since-2007/

or https://www.counterpointresearch.com/global-smartphone-share/

Interesting (US only) statistic about proliferation https://www.pewresearch.org/internet/fact-sheet/mobile/. The rest of world is fast moving in the same direction. Most of Asia is already there. Cellphones are subsidized heavily in all markets. Therefore, the proliferation is exceptionally high throughout the world.

Its a problem of volume

Even when few phones get used in another way, it still is a huge problem. There are sold about 1.5e9 smartphones per year. That calculates to an astonishing 45 smartphones per second sold! All year round every single second of the year and that has been going on for at least the last five years at this level.

Even if a few percent get refurbished, up-cycled or down-cycled, it is still a mountain of old phones produced every single year. Now, think about that mountain of trash for a moment and go feel bad about your behavior and the way you contribute to that mountain. Then start to think and act how you can do better for the future generations.

Glimpse of 3GHz 128-core Ampere Altra Max server processor emerges as Oracle teases more cloudy Arms

Re: Licence costs

The yachts per core performance is probably a lot higher.

I can only imagine such chip would mean one new lawsuit per core.

Microsoft sheds some light on perplexing Outlook blank email incident: Word was to blame

Re: "when I have disabled both windows update and office update"

...'would'...

I think it should read "will screw up things". It is a certainty, not an option when using windows and/or office products. Causes for a screw up are plenty.

Audacity's new management hits rewind on telemetry plans following community outrage

Double U-turn

So, they will not proceed with telemetry hosted at the Bad Guys but then suggest to start on building it within their own infrastructure. How is that a U-turn? As if building a telemetry infrastructure at home makes you the Good Guys? That is a double U-turn.

Telemetry has no place in most if not all programs. It is not a benefit for the user and only a profiteering market for the data collector(s). Stop it.

Your private data has been nabbed: Please update your life as soon as possible while we deflect responsibility

Your fault

Of course it is your fault! You used their service and you knew better when you went for them anyway. You should have stayed away. You know it. You feel it. You promise yourself to do so next time. Then, and only then, it will not be your fault.

Well... unless you forgot to change bank, house, nationality, gender, body, soul and also died and were reborn. Next time you should stay dead and let the computer buy your stuff.

Cheers.

Cloudflare launches campaign to ‘end the madness’ of CAPTCHAs

From anonymous and cheap to expensive and tracking

How is going from a bad, cheap and annoying anonymous solution to an expensive personal identifiable and track-able solution benefit the user?

Oh, I was mistaken, it is not about the user. Sorry, to have spoken out loud.

Microsoft bins Azure Blockchain without explanation, gives users four months to move

Re: How very cryptic...

They couldn't hash out the kinks while signed chains were being unprofitable.

Compsci boffin publishes proof-of-concept code for 54-year-old zero-day in Universal Turing Machine

The UTM is vulnerable to both virtual and physical compromise. Even if you have an immutable program, then you still may be compromised by a "screwdriver".

As an example; with all the modern electric grids being online and so, you may time a glitch perfectly to make the immutable mutable. Any and all defense will eventually be broken in a new offense strategy. Otherwise we'd still be fighting wars with sticks and stones.

The illusion of absolute security

There is no computer that can be completely secure. Perfect security is an illusion.

Software can be written defensive but it will not secure you against all possibilities. You are also using hardware, which can make mistakes. That cosmic ray just hit the wrong gate at the wrong time throwing the software into a different state, etc...

As shown, you cannot build security into the system from the start and expect it to be perfect. And when you add it in the process of creating other facets, like software, you still will be lacking or leaking somewhere at some stage. There will always be a compromise possible, maybe unlikely, but the chance is there.

Now then, we people tend to be very bad at evaluating risk and are subject to influences from all sides. The question whether a risk is acceptable is a question already answered. We all want perfection but none can perform perfection. So it seems, the machines are just as bad as we are. So, when are the machines replacing us all?