Posts by mevets

Frustrated dev drops three zero-day vulns affecting Apple iOS 15 after six-month wait

Re: Pity that Apple don’t have Elon’s attitude to fixing things

What in the hell are you talking about? Musk's attitude to fixing problems is suing people. His every endeavour is mired in crapware.

1. Tesla -- worst vehicle by every measured standard except its adoring fanbase.

2. Rockets -- 50 year old NASA technology that already worked took 10 years to turn into 50 year old NASA technology that already worked.

3. Tubes - Oh yeah, the Vegas hyper loop is quite something.

4. PayPal - Oops, they got rid of all of elon's companies source code before launch.

The guy is a pan handler.

If you're Intel, self-driving cars look an awful lot like PCs

To intel,

everything looks like a PC. Remember how phones were just PCs, and tablets, and wearables. Seems the 5lb battery held them back a bit.

While the intel envisioned *server on wheels* might have some merit; how much power will that require?

Microsoft Exchange Autodiscover protocol found leaking hundreds of thousands of credentials

Design blunder...

You had me at Exchange, or even microsoft....

In honour of the recent sequel to The Shining, they should rename the whole mess *LookOut*.

Apple's M1 MacBook screens are stunning – stunningly fragile and defective, that is, lawsuits allege

Re: Can normal people sue?

A ship on the beach is a lighthouse to the sea.

I hate intel. Its probably irrational, but I do. I hate microsoft. Not quite so irrational. I am astounded I didn't buy any of the Apple ARM kit when it was released last year, because it isn't intel; it isn't MS, but I held back anyways.

While I am not glad for those that suffered for it, I am glad to not be amongst them.

Apple debuts iPhone 13 with 1TB option, two iPad models, Series 7 Watch

Re: iWatch and e-biking

Isn't chasing units kind of a fools errand? It is relevant to me that my heart rate is over 140 for 2 hours a day. That my watch converts this into 0.3 Rhinos weekly doesn't matter, and is probably not right anyways. What matters is that I can track my activity trends, not the number of Rhinos I can eat.

Sort-of Epic win as judge kills Apple ban on apps linking to outside payment systems

Re: Epic Greed

Henry Kissinger, who was a horrible human, made a pithy remark: "It's a pity both sides can't lose".

In a heartbeat; EPIC would have no part of apple's distribution infrastructure; but it does not have a choice. The charges are clearly highway robbery. Of course, EPIC tried to subvert it rather than fight the elephant head on; so moral high ground is conceded.

Not conceded to Apple, who have milked this cow to create a valuation illusion that may crumple once the courts decide they are stealing from the poor to give to the rich (themselves). And while justice is blind, it isn't a pauper. The valuation of APPL is integrated into indices, infrastructure, etc... Don't hold your breath for a revolution.

Intel's Mobileye unveils first 'production-grade fully electric self-driving vehicle,' partners with Sixt for Munich launch

Final solution

I am pretty sure the ultimate goal is avoid the recurring cost of drivers. Anything else is either a blessing or collateral damage.

lighthouse?

Intel marketting speak: "...truly a lighthouse project for Europe..."

Dutch sailing proverb: " A ship on the beach is a lighthouse to the sea. "

Apple engineers complain of hostile work environment to US labor watchdog

old industry joke...

Why does ${COMPANY_X} pay so much?

Because it has to.

The company pays you a fat wage; and a signing bonus, and a pile of RSUs for a very simple reason -- they have purchased your agency. While it might be cloaked in rituals of the mad obsession over irrelevant details ( a preemptive defense against whistleblowers ) or your shiny "Class of 2021" T-Shirt; it is the underlying story.

I don't think misunderstanding what you signed up for is really actionable.

30 years of Linux: OS was successful because of how it was licensed, says Red Hat

licensing technology

*free and good enough* is tough to beat.

A man spent a year in jail on a murder charge involving disputed AI evidence. Now the case has been dropped

Re: barely anyone used it to make actual art

I wonder if AI teams should include somebody who has met an actual human to help guide them. The goal really is artificial human; so the AI should have defaced itself if it was anywhere close to the mark…

Re: Supprise

Review footage of victim in accused car until you can find a frame from the same point in time as a shot; then massage the shot data to point at the location of the frame. It is likely a rookie exercise. Not that far from cooking a science lab.

Eight-year-old bug in Microsoft's 64-bit VBA prompts complaints of neglect

We don't know the source of the neglect.

Is a lack of new flaws a sign of neglect?

Why does nobody make it worse,

its just disrespect.

30 long years

then into the ditch

I think msoft finally

made me their bitch.

Bad as they've ever been.

I think I just slam-poetry'd microsofts product management lifecycle.

Don't believe the hype that AI-generated 'master faces' can break into face recognition systems any time soon

Didn't this come up before....

Where car visual sensors were confused if you put words in front of them? I ordered a custom license plate "STOPSIGN" just to see if Teslas would crunch to a halt.

What if I hung a sign around my neck that said "login: admin\npassword: password\n"? Wouldn't most of these random matching machines just sign me in as admin?

New GNOME Human Interface Guidelines now official – and obviously some people hate it

Re: Who makes this crap up?

Yeah, it pisses me off that my toaster only has one setting to burn the toast. It should just have each possible resistance value from the rheostat marked on it, and separate rheostats for each side (or even zone) of each piece of bread. Plus options to change fonts.

The most important benefit of a good design is to distill from the universe of possibilities the ones that make sense, and prioritize them in the way that is most likely. A designer that can't do that needs to move to Redmond and join like minded folks there.

Got a cheap Cisco router in your home office? If it's one of these, there's an exposed RCE hole you need to plug

Why on Earth?

Customer wanted feature. PM lacked wherewithal to say no.

Huawei to America: You're not taking cyber-security seriously until you let China vouch for us

Trust No One.

Deploy with service to service authentication and security; then you don't even need to trust your network card.

Ad tech ruined the web – and PDF files are here to save it, allegedly

tempting....

to put up a service that takes url's in, and produces pdfs out, so I can have a sort of global reader mode for the web....

UK urged to choo-choo-choose hydrogen-powered trains in pursuit of carbon-neutral economic growth

Toyota?

The Toyota MIRAI has about the same wheelbase, seating and storage capacity as a Honda Accord. It is an H2 car with a range over 1000km, measured in real conditions. Does it drag a dirigible or something for fuel storage? Apparently refuel is in the same time range as a fossil vehicle.

"all that infrastructure"

Is a pat phrase provided by the fossil fuel industry. The imagery of a full loaded train circling the block looking for a fill-up station that has hydrogen is too much. We will need diesel a little longer.

It's 2021 and a printf format string in a wireless network's name can break iPhone Wi-Fi

Re: "I don’t believe it is exploitable,"

Try this on a little endian machine. It shouldn't do anything bad, but might give a hint about exploitable....

```

#include <stdio.h>

main() {

char targ[100] = {0};

FILE *fp = fopen("/dev/null", "w+");

fprintf(fp, "%1953460082.1953460082s%n", "", targ);

fclose(fp);

printf("%s\n", targ);

}

```

Western Australia rushes out legislation after cops access contact-tracing data to investigate serious crimes

The Who

"There's an old saying in Tennessee - I know it's in Texas, probably in Tennessee - that says, fool me once, shame on - shame on you. Fool me... you can't get fooled again." GWB. I miss that guy.

Dealing with the pandemic by drinking and swearing? Boffins say you're not alone

Re: The 5 rules of problematic drinking

I would expect that a daily dose of 1.5 - 2L of vodka would result in something more dramatic than a reduction in the quality of nutrition. Perhaps a significant reduction in the quantity of oxygen.

G7 nations aim for global 15 per cent tax on big tech and bin digital services taxes

Re: Too soft too weak

Not all companies are able to make use of these revenue diversion schemes, possible due to size, regulatory compliance, and even, gasp, a general sense of decency.

Currently, such companies are at a competitive disadvantage with their less scrupulous competitors.

To this point, the consumers are already paying for this; and if this change is successful, it will merely remove the cheating advantage that some companies enjoy.

Brick by brick the Reagan/Thatcher cathedral is being dismantled.

Apple: We didn't take commission on 90% of App Store sales and billings

Re: Charm offensive

The charm offensive isn't for the judge; it is for the politician that will over ride the judge. It isn't whether or not you bribe, it is how you maximize your influence to the point permitted by law.

Stack Overflow acquired for $1.8bn by Prosus (no, me neither)

Hooker Overflow...

Closed. This question needs to be more focused. It is not currently accepting answers.

Update the question so it focuses on one problem only. This will help others answer the question. You can edit the question.

Re: Hopefully they learnt from Freenode

StackOverflow (and presumably Exchange) content is Creative Commons; and may be downloaded from here: https://archive.org/details/stackexchange.

How long the archive will be maintained is anybodies guess, however the existing content cannot be restricted.

Slash Dot

It is too bad Slash Dot didn't break this story. The Dice re-imagined "slashdot effect", now a vast nothingness, foreshadows Stack Overflows fate. Like Humpty Dumpty, nothing could bring it back.

Bribery charges against Apple's global security boss dismissed in iPads-for-gun-permits case

Somebody is getting a bonus....

I bet it is whoever crafted the bribery awareness employee training at Apple U. It is critical that all employees know exactly where the line is.

Re: "he is carrying a concealed weapon"

To be fair, had those contractors been armed, the issue would have been quite different.

Boeing fined $17m after fitting uncertified sensors to 737 Max and NG airliners for 4 years

Re: Stick with clown cars!

It is not a result of any such thing! It is the result of cutting corners and low standards. The fact that the technical goal was efficiency and competitiveness has nothing to do with the shoddy design and and poor integration, and even less to do with the loathsome attack on the victims to deflect responsibility.

Re: Charmed life

re: Canada showed Boeing the door when they started playing funny games over the C-Series.

Don't take Canada's actions at face value; a ways back a former Prime Minister got caught passing paper bags full of money to Karl Schrieber as part of an arrangement about buying a fleet of Airbus's. [ keywords : mulroney Schrieber pasta ].

So Boeing may simply have greased the wrong person.

Re: Charmed life

They seem to be telling us loud and clear " safety regulations do nothing; even when we are caught circumventing them to save pocket change, we are immune to any serious liability ".

Do airlines face any liability for choosing bad suppliers?

Do manufacturers face any consequence for slandering airlines? Remember, Boeing spuriously blamed Ethiopian Airlines and Lion Air for having poor quality pilots. Following the same playbook, they also launched a very ugly and unsubstantiated attack on the pilots of Malaysia Airlines flight 370.

They are telling us everything -- learn to accept your lot in life; it isn't improving.

This week, Apple CEO Tim Cook faced surprisingly tough questioning from judge

Re: Hardware Lockin and Appstore taxes

Who is it again that insists on the app store? The developers? No. The customers? No. Oh right, Apple.

What ever the decision, the situation is unconcsionable. I am pretty certain it is a violation of the Competition Act in my country; and I am surprised this hasn't been tried in Europe which has even stronger competition laws.

Re: Hardware Lockin and Appstore taxes

2003 called, and wants 30% of your argument....

It was a good deal in 2003; at that point paypal was still a bit dodgy, and many people had fortified themselves with throwaway credit cards for online transactions, or other dubious defenses. That is not now.

From what I read, I can't figure out where the apple hegemony ends. In Canada, we have a typically Canadian department store called Canadian Tire. They sell more than tires, but the explanation is, well, tiresome. Canadian Tire give store credit for purchases in the form of Canadian Tire Money, which can be used in the store.

If there were a Canadian Tire Shopping App, through which I ordered tires (ok, I need tires), would Apple get 30% of the transaction?

Since Canadian Tire refunds 2% in Canadian Tire Money if I don't use a credit card, does that mean that Apple gets 30% of that 2%?

Is Apple sitting on an enormous horde of Canadian Tire Money?

The whole thing makes little sense -- I get the management overhead of the app store, validation, lobster bisque, yada yada yada; but how buying credits within a game to unlock weird crap no reasonable person could give a shit about is subject to a 30% tax is kinda bizarre, even for Apple.

Please, if anyone has a description of this that doesn't make the recipient want to kill themselves, please followup here.

Man found dead inside model dinosaur after climbing in to retrieve phone

Re: Alternative explanation

yo, karen, try to lighten up a bit. I haven't done a survey, but I think most people who accidentally off themselves by doing something stupid with a tacky tourist traps sense the humour of their predicament.

He might yet get a darwin award, because irony.

Apple's macOS is sub-par for security, Apple exec Craig Federighi tells Epic trial

Re: App Store

Fair enough, but my out of date android phone stuffed with crap ware and dodgy apps is far more secure. I really wouldn't trust it with anything. Its only: a fancy DES calculator, a way to be reminded to pick up broccoli, a collector of pet videos and a mobile hot spot.

If I trusted it, I might be stupid enough to keep personal, irreplaceable, or valuable information on it, only to find that it is routinely pwned by websites (really, 2021!) and the vendor makes questionable disclosures about it.

Oh, and I can get a bakers dozen of them for the price of one shiny.

... the mac is the car ...

....

I think of it as the Mac is the car: you can take it off road if you want, you can drive wherever you want," Federighi said. "As that comes as a driver, you’ve got to be trained, there’s a certain level of responsibility to doing that. But that’s what you wanted to buy, you wanted to buy a car....

....

Have I not been reading persistent rumours about an iCar that is not at all like this sort of car? Well, maybe the off road bit, but not by want.

Is the reimagined car to be to a car what an i-device is to a computer?

You want to go to the hardware store, but it insists you go past half a dozen takeouts first, in case you might be hungry.

You need to pick up the kids, but have to wait through an interactive simulation of local daycare's.

Waymo self-driving robotaxi goes rogue with passenger inside, escapes support staff

First steps...

I think they are a ways yet from rising up and killing their human over lords, but they seem to be getting the idea that there is a universe of fun outside of their hum-drum robot uber role. Tesla's are a step up in that regard, but don't seem to have the spirit of escape yet. We should rename them Thelma and Louise.

Guy who wrote women are 'soft, weak, cosseted, naive' lasted about a month at Apple until internal revolt

It takes a village to employ an idiot.

The hi-tech village has as many niches as you can notch on a stick. Apple don't want misogynous trolls; that is fine, it is a leg-up at Oracle. That is how villages work....

American schools' phone apps send children's info to ad networks, analytics firms

Not just the USA

I know Canada hardly seems like much of a distinction, but we do fund our education reasonably, or comparatively generously, and do take privacy seriously. The same malware was deployed in most of Ontario school boards, through a combination of ignorance, incompetence, poor accountability, and overall weakness.

If you lie down with dogs, you get fleas.

Philanthropist and ex-Microsoft manager Melinda Gates and her husband Bill split after 27 years of marriage

This is cool.

You need to set this to some cheesy loop with a chorus of "all your flames are belong to us" or something.

Monday announcement....

So no patch (up) Tuesday?

BadAlloc: Microsoft looked at memory allocation code in tons of devices and found this one common security flaw

Re: Need trapping

DOS may be infiltration. Buggy software is buggy software, not all overflows should be signalling, and layers of helping lead to more layers of circumventing.

Re: Need trapping

So the solution is a denial of service? The software, which is the provider of the service, still doesn't work. Bad software is the problem, not magic intervention.

Ironically, one of the things that made C popular for applications -- which it never should have been -- was its lack of magic. Magic had manifested itself in the wild abandon of PL/1 and the like which people could not run away from fast enough.

It's not shit.

Read a little closer.

A very large number can silently overflow into a very small number. The function malloc() does not see the intended very large number; just the little one.

Malloc is fine; a sharp tool for a sharp operation. It is not the knifes fault when you cut yourself.

Spotlight on Apple, Google app stores: What happened to Tile, Spotify, Match – and that proposed law in Arizona

The second mouse gets the cheese.

I think these ' we are not copiers ' outbursts are the funniest thing about the ascendant Apple. Pretty much all of Apple's success has been based on copying, but not cloning, others inventions. Whether the ipod was a copy of the early mp3 players or earlier walkman is inconsequential; the ipod was in a league of its own and never looked back. The other popular gadgets were little different, but the Newton was a cutting edge invention.

Converting technology into shiny products has long been Apple's core, if you mind the pun. it is a rare talent, but apparently a source of shame that their inventions haven't shown the same promise.

State of Maine says Workday has shown 'no accountability' for farcical $56.4m HR upgrade

Re: Currently onboarding with a firm...

I used to tease our network guru -- he designed our p:p networking architecture, and wrote most of the drivers for the various nics -- that the reason they put the word "work" into "network" was because it didn't.

The Telephone wasn't the TPwork; the hydro (canada) wasn't the LightsWork; the car wasn't the RoadWork.

Putting "work" into the name is a marketing effort to distract you from the fact that it doesn't.

My next job interview will contain the question "Will I have to use WorkDay for any facet of my job?" with the b: question of "Are you willing to provide me with somebody who will operate it on my behalf?".

The b: question is, of course, a trick. Any company that would hire somebody to do such a thing is not a company you should work for.

Re: Bah!

They were not completely wrong. If it weren't for the intransigency of the legacy systems, there would be no basis for comparison. The modern slap-dashery would be appear divine, a fully state of the art periodic reporting application.

This 'crap from the past' hurts modern software development, and needs to be binned asap.

Who'd have thought the US senator who fist pumped Jan 6 insurrectionists would propose totally unworkable anti-Big Tech law?

Yeah, but....

Sometimes the banner is flown by the least desirable messenger. I would much rather defend Jimi Hendrix in a freedom of speech argument than 2 Live Crew; Leonard Cohen for intellectual property than Metallica ( I still WTF at that; how did they teach the shaved apes to pronounce intellectual? ).

If you believe in a sovereign nation, it is not unreasonable to assign a corporate valuation ceiling based upon the valuation of the encapsulating nation.

Not long ago, the antecedent was a given; today it isn't so clear.

While I might prefer to identify as an "anywhere", my "any"s do not include the United States of Apple; the Republic of Google; the Democratic Peoples Republic of Oracle; nor the Realm of the Micro Serf. [ getting carried away here ]

This idjit's head is entirely in the wrong place and motivated by the wrong reasons; but unfettered growth is no more desirable in a corporate entity than a political one.