Posts by JLV

Bollocks or brutal truth: Do smart-mobes make us grow skull horns? We take a closer look at boffins' startling claims

Re: "she hasn't seen phone-induced bone spurs in her practice"

Speaking of Trump...

https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/onpolitics/2018/12/27/trump-vietnam-war-bone-spur-diagnosis/2420475002/

*Spits out coffee* £4m for a database of drone fliers, UK.gov? Defra did game shooters for £300k

Oh, you know, Canada’s online rifle registry gobbled up >1B$ (initial estimate : $2M) and got canned. So consider yourself lucky.

p.s. don’t take this a pro-gun stance, though I am quite happy shooting on a gun range myself, using their firearms.

A $4bn biz without a live product just broke the record for the amount paid for a domain name. WTF is going on?

Cryptocurrency! Social media! Together!

That sounds like selling a Brooklyn bridge built over the Everglades.

Autonomy integration was a 'sh!t show', HP director tells court

Re: I'm confused

No. The illegality is whether or not you committed fraud. Not whether or not the person you conned should have known better. Or was greedy.

Yes, HP looks like a bunch of inbred lobotomized Chihuahuas suffering from Alzheimers and heavy lead contamination. And it is fair for the defence at trial to see whether or not they ran the business into the ground rather than overpaying. And are now trying to recoup post-acquisition mismanagement by claiming it was a (fraudulous) dud to start with.

Maybe another trial should be held for whatever external auditors signed off a $10B valuation.

Maybe Leo needs to clawed back every penny he was ever paid by HP for gross incompetence.

But _this_ trial is about whether the accounting was deliberately misrepresented by Autonomy’s senior management . Not whether it was misunderstood.

The victim may be stupid, but let’s clear or blame the alleged perpetrator.

Must watch: GE's smart light bulb reset process is a masterpiece... of modern techno-insanity

The dim bulbs are those buying these smart bulbs.

Who needs a supercomputer when you can get a couple of petaflops on AWS?

Re: 3x cheaper...

There’s a joke there somewhere, at the expense of UK taxpayers, when US F-35 pilots fly on catapult and plane-less UK helicopter carriers:

https://www.military.com/daily-news/2019/05/07/us-marine-f-35-squadron-will-deploy-british-aircraft-carrier-2021.html

Kids can be so crurl: Lead dev unchuffed with Google's plan to remake curl in its own image

The name definitely needs changing, _especially_ in the open source context. There's a fair bit* of malicious cybersquatting-by-misspelling happening in open online registries and, whatever else its intentions are, Google needs to avoid muddying the waters by intentionally using such a close, and easily missed, variation. That will poison the well, even if you don't use either library.

For the rest, well, assuming (that might be a big assumption), that there is no tracking/ads ulterior motive, it is not uncommon for open source products to compete/fork/imitate each other.

My sympathies, and intent to use, remain firmly with the original though.

* Not necessarily in absolute volume, but, in cases where there is malicious intent, intentional misspelling is a common strategy.

Samsung reminds rabble to scan smart TVs for viruses – then tries to make them forget

Re: JUST SELL THE FUCKING SCREEN !!!!!

There’s a sizeable energy inefficiency consideration if everyone had to run (hours a day) a full-fat PC to add basic Netflix/Amazon/Youtube support which a smartphone-type system-on-a-chip can handle using a trickle of power. Chromecast is good - I use it to watch Youtube - but ... Google, and it doesn’t support competitors like Amazon.

It’s an Idiot Box. Don’t want to have to fiddle overmuch with it, rather fiddle on actual software and servers.

Re: So your smart TV has a virus, now what?

>Samsung tends to stop providing updates two years after manufacturing.

If only. My old-ish Sammy TV regularly updates its long list of bloatware I never use (un-removable all, natch) during which time it is unusable. Of course it has to install at startup rather than shutdown. Sometimes you can’t really tell it’s doing that so its smart functions look dead (I use Netflix and Amazon).

The one thing they couldn’t be bothered to do was providing a new Youtube app when Google sunsetted the (Flash-based?) old one. No more Youtube.

Bought it in a fit of open mindedness soon after they were battling Apple’s rounded corners. Never again. Only thing is people don’t seem all that happy about competitors like LG.

Brave urges UK's data watchdog to join Ireland in probing claim Google adtech breaches GDPR

Re: Comical

It is for the rest of us when there is no more coffee left.

Why are fervid Googlers making ad-blocker-breaking changes to Chrome? Because they created a monster – and are fighting to secure it

See, I respectfully fundamentally disagree with you here. There is no need for “all extensions” to be unconstrained. GreaseMonkey or Pinboard.in’s bookmarking are useful without having to mess with HTTP headers or rewriting responses(DOM manipulation is fine). In almost any sensitive context, be it espionage, OS security, healthcare, the notion of need-to-know/need-to-access is front and center. I don’t much trust Google’s motivations, true. But to claim that all extensions need to know everything all the time is specious and flies against all IT security experience.

I’d much rather have extensions with limited, granular, rights. If uBlock or Noscript need extra ones, then I’ll carefully think if I need them and maybe research how many users they have since how long. only then would I go along with “do what you want”.

More and more we are getting hit with malicious software from trusted sources. Be it app stores, corrupted vendor downloads, malicious software for JS/Python on npm/Pypi, whatever. Extensions are just another possible ingress point and their effect on browser security should be carefully gauged.

I’d go as far as saying we ought to have the capacity to block most extensions on certain of our domains: the risk when doing online banking outweighs the benefits in almost all cases.

I repeat though: don’t trust Google one bit here.

I have made jokes in the past about Google being a Mr. Wolf who wants to outlaw strong locks on sheepsheds. Cuz fire hazard, you know.

FWIW though, I’ve been listening for a while to the Risky Business security podcasts. Breaches and leaks is their bread and butter.

They briefly mentioned the v3 webrequest brouhaha and... weren’t at all supportive of the current permission for that particular browser function, deeming it way too unconstrained.

(That podcast seems on good terms with Google, having recently interviewed, very friendly-wise, the Chronicle guys.)

Good to see an article that is both cynical of what Google is up to but also wants to examine if there is any validity to their concerns. FWIW, if I had to choose between having ads or lower browser security, I’d pick ads. Every time. (Ads bring in their own security risks mind you).

Might be what’s needed is 2-tier trust model, with extensions hitting extra sensitive spots getting external audits, blocking on code updates(to avoid malicious updates). And a special authorization action by the user. Dunno.

Do know that mixing regulator and first beneficiary role, as Google is the position of, is inherently a bad idea. They will always have an incentive to un-throttle ads and those are their primary revenue source.

Might a divesture of Chromium to a foundation help?

Monster magnet in my pocket: Boffins' gizmo packs 45.5-tesla punch and weighs just 390g

Re: When will I be able to put it on my fridge door ?

Is your fridge a connected/IoT one? No?

You want magnetism? You can’t handle the teslas!

Greatest threat facing IT? Not the latest tech giant cockwomblery – it's just tired engineers

Re: Estimating Software Projects

>there are known knowns; there are things we know we know. We also know there are known unknowns; that is to say we know there are some things we do not know. But there are also unknown unknowns—the ones we don't know we don't know.

You know, I hate Rumsfeld passionately, along with Cheney. But I always thought, in this specific instance, he got a bum rap for what’s a pretty deep, if awkwardly phrased, observation.

'AI is not the cause, it’s an accelerant. The pace of change is challenging' Experts give Congress deepfakes straight dope

Re: Internal Relations theory of Analytical Philosophy

Q.E.D.

Re: Expert

There’s another species of troll to consider here as well: the patent troll

Re: Missing the point

In a world where Kim Kardashian is worth 100s of M$ there is no reason to expect that a sizable proportion of the electorate isn’t going to stop at the ooooh, shiny, so pretty level. For those people the availability of alternate sources of information that they would have to think through is pretty much irrelevant if you’ve managed to push through and crystallize an initial false understanding. Ditto cases in our extremely polarized politics where folk will just ignore info that goes against their preconceptions.

So it seems easier to preempt fake news than to rely on everyone seeing through it.

Re: Missing the point

You are, of course, right. But what has changed is the capability to self-publish and forward information. People weren’t necessarily smarter 30 years ago, but they could not propagate rumors as quickly to as many people. Hoaxes did exist, see Protocols of the Elders of Zion, but most of them failed to take root, it took a lot of logistical effort and persistence to keep them up against the pushback of a competent free and open press. Now all you need are Youtube claims about 9/11 or vaccines and you can make a persistent mess.

Law of unintended consequences in what Tim Berners-Lee came up with, though the baby is well worth her bathwater.

Any of you look at the vid that brought down the Austrian far-right-based coalition? So far, no one really knows who scammed them, but it was someone pretending to buy influence on Russians’ behalf. Long vid, plenty of details, but I can see this not being innately believable in 20 yrs.

There’s a lot of downside to deep fakes but also upsides to exposing venality and corruption in politicians. It would be a shame if investigative journalism lost its bite due to this.

Re: Blockchain technology and AI

You know, for being the father of AI and ML and an expert at everything, you seem to be attracting Rodney Dangerfield levels of respect and recognition.

Googling Ilya Geller gets a “Product Manager” Linkedin entry at some sort of security outfit. Not CTO, Product Manager. 4 patents, which I confess I didn’t look at - having neither AI knowledge nor a deep interest in perusing legalese.

And, that’s it, except for numerous forum/social media “Alice is strong” posts, in which you tout your genius.

No widespread recognition of your obvious talents by others that I could see (US PTO patents may or may not be significant, based on their spotty software patents quality history). No one else seems to care.

How unjust. See icon.

Can you explain? On second thought, your explanations are akin to Amanfrommars’ wrt clarity, without any redeeming intentional irony, so just go away and fade away.

You been tellin' me you're a genius

Since you were seventeen

In all the time I've known you

I still don't know what you mean

ALIS through the looking glass: F-35 fighter jet's slurpware nearly made buyers pull out – report

Re: Dreadnought of the skies - Pre-Dreadnoughts of the Skies

Big US carriers carry 80-100 planes, not 20.

If you’re really all for shooting up a beach, I suppose an Iowa class could do the job. You get there, then you shoot. But 30-40km ranges aren’t super great if your opponents can start hitting you from 500k away, with aircraft. Or 100+ with missiles. And unlike a beach, can move to stay away from your 40k radius. And navies generally don't spend all their time salivating about their next amphibious landing support extravaganza.

The Zumwalt class did investigate having a latest-gen, all-out, 155mm to do precisely what you mean, precision shore support. When the number of ships got whittled down to 3, per-shell cost was nearing the $1M mark, so that got canned.

The Dreadnoughts were no failure in 1906 however. They basically said: if we armor up and make almost all of our capital ship guns big long range ship killers, then we’ll stroll over any ship that doesn’t specialize and has its armament distributed to mostly shorter range, less serious, stuff. Before aircraft, that was an extremely valid choice. The Dreadnoughts are known for rendering entire generations of other ships obsolete immediately, not for being a waste of $.

The real F-35 lesson there is that we don’t know if the fantastically expensive, all-eggs-in-one-basket F-35 program won’t be also be rendered obsolete by some future shift in military tech. That could be autonomous, no-pilot, air to air drones (China is quite good at robotics and has incentives to assymetrize). Better SAMs. Or it could be area denial tech keeping US carriers farther away than the F35s relatively limited combat radius. Or something that defeats the stealth factor, which is its one real advantage. Any hot war with China is also going to show up the F35s short combat radius - China itself is a pretty isolated country in terms of where Western countries can operate from - you’re not talking Fulda Gap garrisoning.

In all this, I’m grudgingly admitting that pilots do generally wax enthusiastic about the F35 lately. It might fulfill its mission competently, for a while. But it seems like a very narrow view of future warfare.

Outside the China factor, nothing justified going all $$$$$$ out on _one_ 5th gen aircraft, right now. With the China factor, doing so basically gambles that the Chinese will try to out-fighter the F35 (and Western pilots) on its own turf rather than accepting they can’t and seek alternatives. Counting on your enemy to play to your strengths rather than your weaknesses isn’t super clever.

It’s a 40 year, 1.5T$ bet. The UK doubled down on it by buying a F35-only carrier.

The AVROs entire class of superfast interceptors lasted only 10 years or so. see F104, F106. Took the USSR all the way to the Mig 25 to learn that lesson. Pretty soon those one trick ponies were, in pretty much all air forces, superseded by planes carrying guns , able to dogfight and carry out multirole missions.

Re: Dreadnought of the skies

Only one class of ships carried 18” guns, the Yamatos (Everyone else was at <=16”) See how well both of them fared against aircraft. Or poor Bismarck against err.. biplane Swordfish.

What sunk the battleships was aircraft, end of. Bombs and torpedoes can be carried hundreds if not thousands of kms to hit a ship.

Now we have ASMs and even DF21-type ballistic missiles so it’s even more one sided.

Stiff penalty: Prenda Law copyright troll gets 14 years of hard time for blue view 'n sue scam

One wonders what they could have achieved with the upcoming UK Porn Registry ;-)

Exodus: Tech top brass bail on £1bn UK courts reform amid concerns project is floundering

>slash court staff by 5,000

From Canadian experience (Phoenix) what you really need to do is lay off those people before the project is done and proved successful.

That way you can have an extra bang for the buck: a failing IT system _and_ a shortage of trained staff for manual workarounds. Can always hire consultants, sure Crapita wouldn’t mind.

In fact you can do one better, as a big pharma did when implementing SAP in the late 90s : Count your chicken before they’ve hatched savings and write new customer contracts w price based on those projected savings. If they don’t materialize, then ooops, bankruptcy. Thankfully, won’t happen while taxpayers pick up the tab..

Gonna be so cool when we finally get into space, float among the stars, work out every day, inject testosterone...

Totally true. Which is why people can’t have sex while laying down or in bed.

Oh, wait...

JavaScript tells all, which turns out not to be so great for privacy: Side-channel leaks can be exploited to follow you around the interweb

Re: Yes, but that's no common man solution

>I think the long term goal must be to abolish client side execution of Turing complete code.

You and Herr WhatsGoodForOthers both realize a Turing-complete language ain’t a big thing? Right? A ps printer could run one. What matters is OS API access and paranoia. You can have all the non-Turing limits you want if you can reach the OS. JS gets that, though LOTS more sandboxing needs to happen. No need for world+dog code to be hitting high res JS timers, we’ve seen. Or this. Java really never got it and neither did PDF, Flash or Office VBA.

But the kind of idiotic think of the children he proposes ends up with first time website teen guys and gals having to run websockets service just to serve up a Nirvana tribute page. Graphical, cuz it’s a Nirvana tribute page, FFS. And me from running the dumb Nevermind page and it’s my effin choice to do so.

I loathe FB, have it DNS sunk at router, along with Zergnet and Taboola whom I loathe more. But yeah, I like to think most people are honest, and clever enough as end users, not to have their tech controlled by either of you.

I don’t want to be told not to tinker with radio sets cuz safer.

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

Re: Yes, but that's no common man solution

I don't understand why you are always so insistent on telling others what to do.

You’re welcome to turn off JS and use Lynx.

People are welcome to manage their browsing as they see fit.

I am pretty sure the non-geek common man would mostly prefer to keep their websites as they are and would massively vote down your idea. I know I don’t want it and struggle to think of anyone I know personally who might see any validity in your proposal.

“But it’s for their own good”.

By that reasoning we should not have access to personal motorized vehicles since they’re a significant risk.

Stop telling people how to live their life!

Text terminal? WTF??? And this coming from someone who’s happiest coding in bash.

Re: JavaScript is only a threat when it runs

Not that much, most of the time.

- many sites work

- some sites don’t work at all

- you can decide whether temporary allows is worthwhile for that site

- you perma trust/distrust some JS sources (the main problem being websites that use 10-20 JS sources besides themselves). sometimes you need to experiment a bit with temp allows to identify the 2-3 need to have sources for a site.

- best to have a backup browser for when you quickly need to do something, NoScript is choking, and are willing put up with their crap. online movie ticket sites are some of the worst here. I use Vivaldi as that fallback.

Overall, not too bad. I think of Noscript less as tracking suppression and more as probabilistic JS malware exploit avoidance - hopefully whoever got compromised this morning is not on your limited trust list.

Plus, I tend to downgrade my interest in sites that are too interested in making you jump through JS hoops. Lazy and intrusive coding and attitude.

Have I Been S0ld? Troy Hunt's security website is up for acquisition

Re: I tip my hat

Maybe you can point us to signs of your own significant contributions that allow you to be so judgmental unto others?

'Cynical and bullying' TalkTalk hackerhacker getsgets 4 yearsyears behindbehind barsbars

Re: Mens rea

Probably not in most jurisdictions. Canadian law basically doesn’t consider intoxication as much of a mitigating circumstance.

The reason killer drunk drivers don’t get as much jail as murderers is the lack of intent. They intended to get drunk. And also knowingly break DWI laws. But the killing itself is accidental, not deliberate, even though putting people at risk was.

Putting them in jail for a few years? Sure. 10 yrs and up? Not hugely useful as a deterrent.

Get hopped up on something and deliberately kill someone? You bet you’re going to jail and your intoxication is not getting you out of it.

Not defending drunk drivers, just saying you’re wrong.

Boffins stole our 3D files – and gave them all to Facebook's AI eggheads, claims Lithuanian biz

Re: Your comment is entirely incorrect

You certainly haven’t discovered how to make much sense with your customary ‘Alice is Strong’ gibberish, IG dear.

You come in here and peddle your random short sentence crap every so often. As if we’re supposed to care. Still “I invented ML” sounds pretty effin stupid to me, even by your unimpressive standards, pardonnez mon French.

Thanks for that enlightening and somewhat surprising statement. I was under the impression that the emergent Skynet is coming from scanning the vast corpus of cat videos. Or by looking for bikini pix of your FB friends. Or by tons of other equally culturally significant activities, many of which lack much text.

Thankfully it will be quoting Shakespeare instead. Well, according to you at least.

If your broadband bill is too high consider moving to Idaho, they get the internet for free

Get Pai on the phone and have him file an injunction against it ASAP! Isn’t that what we pay him for?

Call it the Internet Freedom and Competition Bill.

No, not the Internet Freedom Anti Competition Bill. And Competition. Must I do everything here, for a measly $20M/yr?

Joe Ceeheeho @ Big Corp

Apple strips clips of WWDC devs booing that $999 monitor stand from the web using copyright claims. Fear not, you can listen again here...

Re: No one has to buy it

Somehow I suspect I’d be more miffed if I was actually getting ready to buy that monitor. Which apparently is worth its price for some professions. Then I really would have skin in the game and would be facing paying $1k for a monitor stand. As it is it’s just funny and somewhat embarrassing to Apple customers.

Not an Apple hater, I own a number of their products and I will buy more in the future if/when I decide it worthwhile. An Apple cynic? Guilty as charged.

Nice try reframing this ripoff as somehow justified. See icon.

This monitor stand idea should see some people fired at Apple. Whoever came up with the pricing and didn’t realize how much of a PR disaster it was going to be.

It’s really a laughable money grab and gives much ammunition to critics who trash Apple’s cost-benefit. And there’s absolutely no way to disagree here.

It’s pretty much Apple’s own I Am Rich, down to the price:

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

Apple's tailored SwiftUI makes coding Mac and iOS apps RAD again

Re: Bogoffski

Whatever the merits, or not, of SwiftUI, having Sinovsky praising it is a red flag.

His is quite the textbook example of one person having an extremely negative influence. Windows 8 “UI”, ribbons? All his baby diarrheas.

Can't quite cram a working AI onto a $1 2KB microcontroller? Just get a PC to do it

Re: sports just 2KB of RAM and 32KB of flash storage

Quite competent at sucking up your $$$ at $5-10/hr on chat lines though.

First month was a $400 bill. But didn’t happen again.

I am sorry, Dave. I can’t do that. Your* too fat.

* yeah, well of course a $1 chip will suck more at grammar than the average online poster.

Apple kills iTunes, preps pricey Mac Pro, gives iPad its own OS – plus: That $999 monitor stand

> hapless presenter was booed when announcing a $999 monitor stand.

Methink El Reg has missed an opportunity for some strategic brownnosing allowing them back into the warm bosom of Apple press shindigs.

Please allow:

“””

Apple offered a breakthrough, game-changing and exceptional multi-axis monitor orientation device at a more than reasonable price.

“””

I'll just clear down the database before break. What's the worst that could happen? It's a trial

ACID saves the day!

What? No, not LSD. Atomicity.

Sex and drugs and auto-tune: What motivates a millennial perp?

>Sex and drugs and auto-tune

A harsh, and justified, indictment of the Kathy Perry, Ariana Grande and Dua Lipa generation, sir.

To be fair, reading a Top 40 list from the 60s, my birth decade, shows a lot of stuff that seems equally vapid and insipid. Despite the occasional appearance of the Stones.

Cage the Elephant, Lana Del Rey and Weezer back to you!

Google relents slightly in ad-blocker crackdown – for paid-up enterprise Chrome users, everyone else not so much

Re: Mozilla take note

_This_ article however was very much about Chrome’s inner API and workings, not about look and feel.

Re: Mozilla take note

What are you talking about??? Firefox has just spent years reworking Quantum’s core, Servo, using as much Rust as possible.

I mean, I get that Chrome is fast becoming toxic here, but that still doesn’t make your statement any more factual.

I wonder what hay well-intentioned Chrome clones, like Vivaldi, can make of this. Can they just patch the offending functions back? Would even that give enough oxygen and market share for ad blocking extensions to flourish?

Chrome is already very much my 3rd choice these days, barely ahead of Edge and Safari.

DigitalOcean drowned my startup! 'We lost everything, our servers, and one year of database backups' says biz boss

Re: Why were they locked out?

Hmmm. I wonder if DO might not mistakenly have stepped in from the opposite side of the mistake, trying to spare the customer grief.

We hear many cases of cloud auth compromises where the hapless customer is left with $$$$$ bills of cryptomining or the like.

I have a very low $$$ threshold limit because my VMs just sit there at a predictable monthly rate. Past that I get an email.

But if DO had hijack safeguards, perhaps incorrectly defined/parametrized, they might have been thinking this massive spin up was a sign of credentials compromise.

Even freezing backups can help there. Remember the 2-3 stories so far of cloud hosted companies whose backups were terminally erased after key losses? One more reason to back up elsewhere.

Yes, interested in what debriefing will have to say. Especially the “what procedures does DO have to put someone on the phone that can fix things (but not be social-engineered)”.

Introducing 'freedom gas' – a bit like the 2003 deep-fried potato variety, only even worse for you

Re: What's In A Name

Aha, hence Gibson’s Gernsback Continuum short story?

Re: Wrong source

not really.

A chickenhawk is derogatory political slang for a politician that is a pro war (hawk) but has themselves actively avoided military service (chicken).

See also: Dick Cheney.

Both are on the record saying they didn’t want to die in Vietnam for a lost war. Which is a fair statement, true, until you consider their loathsome wish to inflict unnecessary wars on others.

Re: Wrong source

Bolton is a wonderful example of a chickenhawk. Look at his Vietnam War record.

One wonders if these rather childish antics, and the voting patterns they correlate to, are caused by emotional reactions to gradual decline. Or whether they cause/accelerate that decline:

The US is losing influence in the world, while China’s is rising. That’s not necessarily benign, China has yet to prove it will not be a noxious superpower when it gets there. Developing countries are doing just that and Western countries are becoming less uniquely prosperous.

What largely built the US, oil, is fast becoming toxic, even as fracking has made it domestically cheaper.

The kind of dimwit older white voters (with whom I share ethnicity and sadly aging) who support these morons are also seeing a world and country in which they matter even less (Brexit parallels? a-plenty).

So, instead of realistic assessments on how to adjust and which of their country’s, many, strengths to play to, you get a bunch of Archie Bunkers, led by a POTUS who makes Archie look like Einstein, engage in this pathetic parody of Idiocracy.

These are NOT the people who checkmated the USSR, just like Lord Byron was unimpressed with 19th century Greeks. Hopefully more dynamic US citizens can prevail and next election can turf this crew out, without going all AOC.

“America? Fuck, yeah,”

Oh, the massive sky dong? Contrails from 'standard' F-35 training, US Air Force insists

Re: Admit it

Like a Ferrari they sure seem to spend lotsa time at the garagist’s.