Posts by pig

Three quarters of software engineers face retaliation for whistleblowing

Sorry, I don't believe this

In my experience there is no way the figure is as low as 75%.

I don't think I have ever seen a whistleblower treated fairly.

Outage-ous: Twitter OKs cannabis ads, then goes up in smoke

Re: decriminalisation

It was class B, then Class C, then Class B again.

But in 2018 they made it so you can get it legally prescribed.

I have a prescription for 20-25% THC medicine.

It is amazing.

It is also odd that most coppers don't seem to have been told it can be legally prescribed now.

World of Warcraft Classic lead dev resigns to protest 'stack ranking'

I had to reread this before my mouse moved over from downvote to upvote.

(And I assume those 3 downvotes just didn't read it twice).

A very true point.

It is strange, As I have got older in IT and implemented 'if you do X, I don't work for you' rules my work life has got far smoother, and the companies I work for are better.

Morrisons tells top court it's not liable for staffer who nicked payroll data of 100,000 employees

Re: Real life example

There is a great deal of difference between what auditors should know and do and what they do know and do.

The .amazon argy-bargy is STILL going on – and Uncle Sam has had enough with ICANN

This reminds me of the long fight between WWF (Animals) and WWF (Wrasslin') over WWF.com.

Obviously someone high up at WWF (Animals) had decided they should have it, come what may.

The arguments made by WWF (Animals) were long and, at times, convincing. It was all politics though.

The WWF.com domain has never been used to point to the animals site.

The same here. I don't think Brazil or any of the countries actually have any plans to use the domain.

it is just silly politics.

Another sign of the End Times: Free software guru Richard Stallman speaks at Microsoft HQ

Now now, let's not get silly.

Divert the power to the shields. 'I'm givin' her all she's got, Captain!'

Re: Measuring standards pedant alert!

So you would be allowed a square one? 100x100yards?

That would be interesting.

It's 2019 – and you can completely pwn millions of Qualcomm-powered Androids over the air

Re: The bad news

"What's unclear? Many, maybe most, of the vulnerable devices won't be fixed -- ever."

Yeah, but it is also clear most handsets wont also be pwned, and most users wont care or know either way.

I know us lot like to think that everyone should be super security savvy and fully alert about their data, but most people just don't care - unless it has an explicit and noticeable effect upon them.

Certainly, I don't think your solution is the right one. Shutting yourself off from the world is not the answer, and neither is overplaying the threat.

Are the risks of someone getting some/all of your data proportional to your actions?

I don't think so personally. But hey, each to their own.

Braking bad? Van with £112m worth of crystal meth in back hits cop car at police station

The Pro wouldn't crash the van in the first place.

Hey China, while you're in all our servers, can you fix these support tickets? IBM, HPE, Tata CS, Fujitsu, NTT and their customers pwned

Re: Huawei

They specialise in the cloud though.

Securing clouds is HARD and there are groups that take advantage of that. Some of those groups are state backed, some are - essentially - private enterprise.

In the early days of 'the cloud' I remember seeing a great example of lateral thinking for a 'hack'

The provider was pretty good with the security on the live servers.

If you hired a box in the same data centre as your target though, and then purchased backup services you could, given the right skills, follow that route to a backup box shared with your target...

The security on that box was not as good as live.

Vulture gets claws on Lego's latest Apollo nostalgia-fest

Re: Why is Christmas so far away?

LEGO sets will usually have a few extra bits, almost always the smallest parts.

It is due to the way they pack the sets and that they decide a while ago it was better (and cheaper) to have extra bits in then have people upset they are missing a bit. (As happened during the dark days of LEGO when the company was struggling)

Over time they add up to a lot of pieces.

I know I have a bag full of 'extra bits' that is scarily large!

How do I get this job?

Lego reviewer for El Reg.

Tis a dream!

Mayday, mayday. Cray, you cray cray: Investor attempts to halt HPE's $1.3bn biz gobble

Given their history with buying companies and running them in to the ground HP should have to pay a premium if buying a business.

If I were a shareholder I would want 4x what it is worth from HP to compensate me for future losses.

So if a company is worth around $3billion I would demand HP offered $12billion.

Hang on, have we discovered how the Autonomy valuation was arrived at?

Judge slaps down Meg Whitman for accusing Autonomy boss of being a 'fraudster who committed fraud'

"Whitman fell back on saying she trusted her team at HP, particularly including then-CFO Cathie Lesjak"

Maybe HP should have trusted her before the acquisition, when she was recommending against it?

For the judge though, surely this just reinforces that HP decided a value for Autonomy without proper care and attention.

They then decided Lynch and Hussain were fraudulent, again without proper care and attention.

In both cases they leapt before they had full finished looking.

I see no one to blame here except for HP.

Controversial American bigwig in London... no, not Trump: HPE ex-CEO Meg Whitman to give Autonomy trial evidence

"Just for good measure, HPE also claims that as time went on, Lynch became “less and less focused and grounded in reality,"

Sounds like he was nearly perfect material for a HP Chief Exec, except he must have remained a bit too grounded in reality for their liking.

Is it just me though or does most of the evidence HP have brought work against them?

This is a most odd case.

Don't be Russian to judgement but... Bloke accused of $1.5m+ tax filing biz hack, fraud

Re: a refund to be paid into a prepaid debit card

I'm sure there are people without bank accounts, but doubt they would be filing a tax return at all, let alone online.

Allowing the refunds to be paid on to pre-paid debit cards is bonkers.

Part of my brain screams 'inside help' but then the other, larger, part just says 'stupidity'.

Here's what Lynch, Hussain and HPE are saying about Autonomy pre-buyout due diligence

Re: Auditors?

This.

What I heard at the time was this:

Autonomy: We are for sale for $6billion

HP: We'll give you $11billion

Autonomy: Errrrrrr. OK! :D

If you put your car up for sale for £600 and someone tries to buy it, but for £1100 and forces the cash in to your hand, are you really liable for overcharging them?

Autonomy didn't think they were worth that.

HP finance people didn't think they were.

But Leo and his adviser decided $11bill was a snip as they could make it worth $17bill!

In reality they made it worth about $3.5 bill.

Autonomy should point out prior behaviour to the court too.

They are far, far, far, from the only company HP have bought and messed up.

Ah, this military GPS system looks shoddy but expensive. Shall we try to break it?

Re: waste

I once supported a 4 person departmental HR team that had 3 colour laser printers.

When colour laser printers cost around £20k.

They did like to keep their budget.

UK's ICO slaps £120k fines on Arron Banks' insurance biz and Leave.EU campaign

"When questioned about the consent, Leave.EU tried to argue they weren't unsolicited emails because subscribers had agreed to receive newsletters, and a privacy policy referred to information from third parties.

However, this policy ... did not say who the third parties were, or what type of marketing they might receive."

I can't think of ANY policy I have read that lists the 3rd party companies or the type of marketing. They all just refer to 'partners, 3rd party companies may send you stuff we think is good' (paraphrasing obviously)

If they used that criteria 99.9% of firms would be guilty.

Combined with receiving no customer complaints this does indeed look rather unfair.

Q. What do you call an IT admin for 20-plus young children? A. A teacher

Re: "Young students, for example, cannot be expected to remember and enter a password. "

My 3 year old Nephew knows the passcodes of all the iPads in his house.

Why my sister has pass codes when all her kids know them I don't know. If I am there and I want to use one I just ask my nephew for the code.

The problem with school IT is usually more with the teachers than the students, especially in infant and primary school.

My wife is an early years teacher. She has a passion for it. She does not have a passion for IT security, and neither has she been taught how to deal with it. And neither have her bosses.

As such they bumble along finding practical ways to get things done. If, and it always does, this involves unencrypted pen drives rather then secure storage they will use it.

Can we really blame them when they haven't been taught why this might be wrong?

ZX Spectrum reboot scandal firm's original directors rejoin

Re: Massive-

True Story.

The only way Chequered Flag ever loaded for me was if I stopped the tape half way through the loading, rewound it a bit, then hit play again.

I don't know how I discovered this, but I do find it amusing to this day that I didn't find it odd at all.

That's just how it was having a Speccy. You learned to be creative to get things working.

(Like my level skip cheat for Operation Wolf. It involved rubbing my socked feet across the keyboard until it gave the message it was skipping to the next level).

Townsfolk left deeply unsatisfied by Bury St Edmunds' 'twig' of a Christmas tree

Meh.

Imagine the comments if they had a 50ft tree covered with loads of decorations.

It would be all "Why are you spending on a tree instead of children's / adult / other council services"

Council's can't win. Damned it they do, damned if they don't in this world where everyone is a critic and we seem to compete with each other over who can spot any semblance of fault first.

Who needs custom malware? 'Govt-backed' Gallmaker spy crew uses off-the-shelf wares

It is an interesting idea.

By only using existing tools and outputs it makes identifying the state (if there is one) behind the group a lot harder, whilst at the same time giving them greater plausible deniability if they are correctly fingered for it.

Smart move I think, whoever it is.

Oh no, Xi didn't! Chinese spymaster cuffed in Belgium, yoinked to US on aerospace snoop rap

That's what I was wondering.

The Interpol boss didn't make sense until I saw this.

Tit for tat.

It's like the 80s again.

Reanimated Violin returns to scene with flashy XVS 8 array, and, er, AR app

Re: Really?

Errrrr.... Think about it folks.

I'm pretty sure scanning the QR code isn't the *only* way to get the performance info.

You could bring it up in a browser instead of making such an onerous trip.

If it doesn't need to be connected, don't: Nurse prescribes meds for sickly hospital infosec

Re: More than NICE to have

"But I couldn't find guidance for infosec (looking under several relevant terms) on the NICE website. If it's there, it's not obvious. Does it need a disaster first?"

Yes.

The NHS is, sadly, anything but proactive.

It requires a Wannacry that doesn't suddenly stop, but instead spreads more and destroys/costs more.

Sense wont get change, only public outcry after a disaster.

it's bloody sad it like that, but that's how it is.

Holy ship! UK shipping biz Clarksons blames megahack on single point of pwnage

I wonder if their HR database was accessed via Active Directory automated login?

A lot of places authenticate internal systems like this now.

Yes, it saves you typing more passwords but it also means once an attacker is in they are in.

Of course, since most users would just use the same password for both previously anyway.......

UK 'fake news' inquiry calls for end to tech middleman excuses, election law overhaul

Clinton Win = Good democracy.

Trump Win = Must have been fraud - from RUSSIA!

Remain Win = Good Democracy

Leave Win = Must have been fraud - from RUSSIA!

And so on.

It runs the risk of people judging that 'fake news' is simply anything the cognoscenti of the current zeitgeist dislike or disagree with.

Also, I've never voted a certain way due to fake news. And neither has anyone I have discussed it with.

Ask a room full of people and they will tell you the same.

Ask a stadium full and again they will all say they haven't.

Yet look at the news and you'd be forgiven for thinking the winner of the election was merely at Russia's whim. I think the power of 'fake news' is massively overstated and being used for political purposes be people we should be very afraid of this.

Any censorship that comes from this is a massive step back, not forward.

Rights group launches legal challenge over London cops' use of facial recognition tech

lol, story synergy.

https://www.theregister.co.uk/2018/07/26/amazon_face_recogition_sucks/

I like the Amercian way of warning their politicians better!

Facebook can’t count, says Cambridge Analytica

OK. I'll bite.

"Due to the very nature of Social Media, even 30 million can cause a lot of damage.

Here how it works. Hit the 30 million with targeted ads. Say 10 million take the bait and like or share it with all their friends. Some of those do the same. After a while it becomes a meme on Social Media and untraceable back to the original source.

To be honest 1 is to many"

1. How much do you think it would cost to send ads to 30m? Go find out. It is not cheap!

2. 10m out of 30m to like or share?!?! LOL!

(For comparison) Direct Marketing has a standard return rate of around 0.01. To even imaging 10m out of 30mil would respond is bonkers.

I think so many people are overstating the effects of this.

You have been served ads.

Are you all as fickle as to be directed by these ads? No. You are not.

So why do you all think everyone else is?

Finally, social media is a business with 2 products. The platform and us.

The platform is the product we buy, and we pay for it by being served ads (targeted via our data).

We are the product the advertisers buy. They buy it with money that funds the service/company.

I thought most people understood this? I do.

I expect my data to be used to target ads because they tell me they will do this.

A lot of this complaining is like my nan moaning about ads on ITV. . .

Smelly toilets, smokers and the Kardashians. Virgin Media staff grill top brass

Given up

I have been with Cable for over 20 years.

Cable Company>Telewest>Virgin.

I've now cancelled and given up.

Sick of being lied to.

Last time I moved they said they would transfer my deal (£30 a month, no tie in).

Instead I got that for 6 months then it went up.

Had to pay to cancel the contract too. FFS.

They lie. Their sales staff are incentivised I presume? So like Vodafone will say ANYTHING on the phone to you, then surprise you with the bill later.

No benefit for loyal customers either. As usual you get treated worse for having paid a bill each month for 20 years then a new customer who may hop every year.

I used to take their crap, because I needed the better internet. But now there are genuine other options for fast broadband I don't have to.

So they have had the last of my money.

If they treat the rest of their customers the same I predict a hard next ten years for them. The one advantage they had is their fibre broadband, but that is wilting away.

If they have to rely on their customer service to retain customers they are in serious trouble.

Lightspeed PoS vendor breached, sensitive database tapped

I hate it when they say this

"However, there is no indication that any specific data, including any personal information, has been taken or used"

Time after time companies are forced to admit intrusions, and then try to pass it off by making out that perhaps those who hacked into the database then would decide not to copy any of the information from it.

Every time a communications or marketing person issues such a statement they should be slapped with a wet fish and made to paint their usernames, passwords and banking details on the front of their houses. If they are so sure these things are not likely to be used.

BBC vans are coming for you

There is no checking other than a database.

See title.

They stopped trying to 'detect' years ago.

Nowadays they use a big database of addresses and cross reference it with which addresses have a license.

Those that don't get letters and visits.

Simple.

The only problem is their letters are very badly written and their visiting staff seem to be vetted to ensure they are twats. (Probably send them to traffic warden school)

I have a license as I think it is great value. Hell, I'd pay it for I'm Sorry I haven't a Clue alone.

You shrunk the database into a .gz and the app won't work? Sigh

Re: When life imitates art...

"and if they were that helpful, they probably wouldn't have ended up as a network engineer"

LMAO. Funny and true.

Vodafone posts uptick in Europe but UK still a challenge

They phoned me up a couple of months ago to tell me they had overcharged me and they were reducing my bill from £17 a month to £16 a month.

Having been with them since 1999, and experienced the horrendous drop into the mire of their customer services in recent years I was not surprised to find they were now charging me £22 a month.

Or that it took over an hour to correct on the phone with them.

57 minutes with the call centre idiot, then about 5 with the resolutions team when I finally managed to get them to put me through to someone who had the authority to fix it.

I know I should leave, but I’m lazy. More fool me I guess (and really, are the others better? Recommendations happily accepted).

Autonomy ex-boss Lynch tells of poisonous life within HP in High Court showdown

anxiously

"...HP anxiously looks forward to the day Lynch and Hussain will be forced to answer for their actions in court."

I bet they are anxious.

I'd be very surprised if this ever actually got to court.

Did HP pay far too much? Yes.

Is that Autonomy's fault? Probably not, even HP people at the time were saying it but they still chose to buy it.

Regardless of the price did HP use its legendary ability to fuck up an acquisition to destroy most of the value of Autonomy?

Yup.

First Microsoft, now IBM: Box deals are coming thick and fast

I feel sorry for the users

Box is awful to use.

Really, really awful.

Yay for Tor! It's given us ransomware-as-a-service

Here's hoping

"The operational security chops of the English-speaking author will be put to the test, should the prolific and competent anti-blackhat research community seek to identify the perp and send their special brand of love."

Let's hope this happens.

WOODEN computer chips reveal humanity's cyber elf future

""Mass-producing current semiconductor chips is so cheap, and it may take time for the industry to adapt to our design," "

Cheap??

It might be once you have spent a few billion on the fab...

Not something I would call cheap though.

Microsoft to TAKE OUT THE TRASH in the Windows Store

"That includes removing apps that it determines "do not offer unique content, creative value or utility." So long, flashlight apps"

I'm confused*.

When I bought my new Windows phone the first thing I downloaded was a torch app. It is dead handy when looking behind machines and under desks etc.

I don't see why anyone would consider nuking them.

*I must be, I bought a Windows phone.

Frayed British Airways plays down mega hack attack on frequent flyer accounts

Weasel Words

"At this stage, we are not aware of any access to any subsequent information pages within your account, including your flight history or payment card details."

Is it just me or is this BA saying "They hacked access to payment details but as far as we know they haven't bothered to look at them".

TalkTalk 'fesses up to MEGA data breach

Re: @Vimes

A smart scammer would now resend the phishing emails as being from Talk Talk.

Inside GOV.UK: 'Chaos' and 'nightmare' as trendy Cabinet Office wrecked govt websites

Re: They're not all idiots, but ...

"the 12 year old suggested replacing it with an iPhone app. He and his team were hurt when we laughed"

LMAO. Digital Dan by any chance?

The sad thing is that group of shysters actually believe that their solutions will/can/do work. They seem to be hard wired into thinking everyone they talk to is just over complicating things and a shitty iPhone ap with a catchy name and a picture taking up all the real estate on the screen is what people want.

What Whitehall needs is a trap door system so that whenever someone says "Agile" the floor opens and they are deposited to some pit, where the only way to exit is via an iPhone ap that doesn't have the exit button yet as that is tricky and has been put off to a sprint that will never actually happen.

Is cloud the answer to all your storage problems?

Re: One big problem with online storage is when you become too reliant on them and they shut down.

"To be fair, there's a world of difference between an corporate oriented provider, and one that hopes to make money slinging ads."

Not with 2e2 there wasn't.

Home Depot: 56 million bank cards pwned by malware in our tills

Re: > with no physical connection ... they won't be able to break in, and data can't get out.

The large 24 hour ASDA near me has 16 self service tills.

They leave them unlocked. If you push the handle with the lock on, it clicks and the screen of the machine lifts up, revealing the PC (yes, these are XP based too) and 4 usb slots.

The usb slots are enabled as this is how they reimage them if something goes wrong.

Sadly getting physical acces is nothing like as hard as it should be.

I was discussing this with a friend who fixes cash machines, and he reminded me that almost all the threats he deals with are physical.

Avere SPEC benchmark shows cloud's just as fast as on-premise

Re: Fine but whathappens when...

"> Some idiot with a JCB (backhoe) digs up your business critical network link and it is down for several days?

You would face a similar problem with on premise storage"

No, we wouldn't.

My organisation is going the full cloud.

At the moment we have our own onsite data centre. If the internet line to the building goes down than the only effect is a notable upswing in actual work being done.

In a year or so's time, once we have gone fully Desktop as a Service (I can't wait...) the effect of the internet line to the building going down will be that no work can be done.

And yes, we do have a backup. In fact we have 3 internet lines coming in to the building. Primary and 2 back ups.

Being Local Governemnt though the 3 lines are all Virgin cable and, most likely, anything to take out 1 would also take out the other 2.

Stricken 2e2 sacks 627, winds down, retains a few data centre caretakers

@Eagle One

>>The "S.S. 2e2" may not sail again, but she won't leave those who depend on her high and dry.<<

Really?

Out of interest which part of the 2 people who we relied upon not being paid, being laid off, and us being told we are going to get f'all from 2e2 is not being left high and dry?

We will be ok, but only because we promised to pay the staff ourselves if they rock up and complete their work from here.

€1.5bn swiped from EU cards: Fraud mainly takes place in the US

Banks will try and take the proverbial

I had £550 of Ryan Air flights go out of my account.

The bank told me as it was chip and pin they would not refund it.

I phoned them up and offered to send them instructions of how to commit fraud on a chip and pin card (I was just going to send links to 3 ro 4 Reg articles) and they instantly backed down and refunded me, without me even having to send the links.

The sad thing is they know they are liable, and tat in many/most cases the customer is not as fault but they will still try it on and although us geeks will know to not accept it I fear many other people will just accept it and end up paying for it themselves.

The banks should be forced to be more fair, and not just be allowed to take advantage of peoples ignorance in these matters.

Windows Media Center EPG has SWITCHED OFF, wail Euro users

Re: 'Poll' position

Live subtitles are typed on a special type of keyboard which is phonetic.

This is why subtitles of live events will often have the correct word phonetically, but the incorrect spelling - like your Poll and Pole example.

In a live broadcast there is no time to double check these as they go.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Speech-to-text_reporter

Use a Mac? For actual work? Evernote Business has arrived

Re: ummmm

You have 1?

That's 1 more than I know of here (but then, we only have 2000 employees on this site......)