Posts by jgarbo

NSO Group 'will no longer be responding to inquiries' about misuse of its software

NSA swats cheeky NSO?

Word is that NSO got cheeky, stealing customers/victims from traditional spy services. So Amnesty (CIA controlled) leaked NSO capers to keep NSA king of the hill. The Israelis must kow-tow to the master, not compete.

Amnesty International and French media protection org claim massive misuse of NSO spyware

No surprise

AI, at least, has been a CIA honey pot for years. I'd consider them sloppy if they weren't spying on members and associates. Next...

USA warns Hong Kong government may demand business and customer data, run surveillance without warrants

Outrageous!

Are the Chinese going to act exactly like the US and scan & steal customer data? They copy everything!

Xiaomi parties like a winner after coming second on world smartphone sales charts

Re: "hires 5,000 engineers"

China's as capitalist as the West, except for essential industries. That's how they got their billionaires, who are kept on a tight leash. "Political freedom"? Oh, throwing tantrums about the color of the PM's underwear? Childish.

Huh, it's as if something happened that made people not like CentOS so much

Re: Too much choice?

Sounds like you assume only one person/group builds all these rebellious distros.That would waste time and energy. But it's not so. At most, a few people/groups build/maintain a couple of aspects. eg Desktops, Browsers, Tools, Multimedia, etc. And again, you're free to choose. I stick with Kubuntu - no big surprises and mostly pleasant. You don't have to try every distro.

Windows 11 still doesn't understand our complex lives – and it hurts

Re: A prayer for those forced to use Teams

Two feet? Quite a length for one lad...

Seven-year-old make-me-root bug in Linux service polkit patched

Re: Kernel

"Sage Advice:" is the preferred prefix...

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

Stupid cops

Advertising your means of capture ruins it. The crims, and there is an infinite supply of them, will switch to another method, and the cops will *follow* as usual. Well, it keeps the boys busy.

Better idea, legalize all "drugs" (as in Portugal), as we already do with alcohol and tobacco, and make the serious ones prescription only.

The drug trade collapses, prices crash, lives are saved, and the cops can get more exercise beating up protesters. Win-win.

ASUS baffles customer by telling them thermal pad thickness is proprietary

Rossmann further points out that under US law, simply opening the computer case does not void the warranty, as implied by Asus. Very big PR mistake by Asus.

Ransomware victim Colonial Pipeline paid $5m to get oil pumping again, restored from backups anyway – report

Re: Gothminister

MoA traced the attack to Ukraine, which is controlled by the US. The plot thickens. More CIA pocket money?

https://www.moonofalabama.org/2021/05/more-hacks-more-baseless-accusations-against-russia.html#more

Re: Pretty cool though

Not Russian. The attack came from Ukraine, which is currently under US control. Funny I thought...

China sprayed space with 3,000 pieces of junk. US military officials want rules to stop that sort of thing

Re: Space Rules?

The US military talks about "rules"? Can I have that again, in English?

Richard Stallman says he has returned to the Free Software Foundation board of directors and won't be resigning again

I'm Back...

Richard, welcome back. We don't need "woke" SJWs in FSF. Let them carry placards and walk the elite's dogs and scoop up their shit.

There was hope Samsung had turned a corner in repairability, but the Galaxy S21 Ultra is a step backwards

Note 4 on her 3rd battery...

Battery replacement is tough. Click back off, click battery out and in. Click. Start. Total cost THB 149. New S-pen THB 30. Still the best Note ever.

Boffins revisit the Antikythera Mechanism and assert it’s no longer Greek to them

So, not Greek. Didn't have lathes for the five concentric spindles. Persian < Indian? They didn't invent zero but they knew how to use it. Smart folks.

Hacking is not a crime – and the media should stop using 'hacker' as a pejorative

Re: Too late for the lazy

Mangled definitions and merging of separate terms, eg hacking - cracking = "hacking" has become common due to semi-literate folk broadcasting their errors over the Net and TV. I used to teach TESOL to foreign students, and to boost their confidence showed them egregious mistakes made even by native speakers. Nevertheless, as Canute showed, you cannot hold back the tide.

Re: Too late for U

Gift is a good addition, implying giving of a useful or treasured object, combing two words - give + gift.

Sorry linguistic dinosaur, it's called evolution. Oh, you don't like that either? (Old language teacher)

Facebook decommissions 185 accounts run by Thai military

Who cares?...

In Thailand we use Facebook for business, simple database of customers. The political stupidity we leave to NED-backed suckers getting pocket money from CIA. It's something to do before classes start again. Relax.

The bank of Bitcoin: MicroStrategy's share price rides high on the back of cryptocurrency investment

Re: Investment? Speculation!

But there is no "house". The creator, Satoshi, never sold his original BTC and let loose his software for anyone to mine BTC. The other cryptos could not match those criteria, ie iffy stuff.

Huawei invokes 140-year-old law at England's High Court in latest bid to thwart CFO's US-Canada extradition

Re: Nothing to hide

Well, HSBC is a notorious criminal operation, so I'm surprised that Huawei didn't keep a copy of all communications with HSBC. Don't they have their own copy of the PP presentation?

Someone tried to poison a Florida city by hijacking its water treatment plant via TeamViewer, says sheriff

Re: @bombastic bob -- For the love of the wee man

I like the ...121. Very tricky.

Kaspersky Lab autopsies evidence on SolarWinds hack

Invisibles

Cracking 101: Successful penetration must be invisible. No log changes, all timestamps correct(ed), clean as a ghost's whistle. If these "hackers" left traces they weren't Russian state actors. Let's instead look for underpaid CIA interns or drunk NSA contractors.

We're not saying this is how SolarWinds was backdoored, but its FTP password 'leaked on GitHub in plaintext'

Re: Hmmmm

No. Trump's a notorious illiterate.

Larry Ellison says he's not following Oracle to Texas, prefers his private Hawaii pad

Re: Austin, of course

And a strong atheist community. Things are looking up in 'Murrika...

Raven geniuses: Four-month-old corvids have similar cognitive abilities to great apes at same age, study finds

Re: We struggle [with non-human language]

They ought to teach rednecks to talk. More difficult, and less satisfying. Yep, leave them dumb...

The Huawei Mate 40 Pro is so mired in strangely hardy glue that the display shattered during iFixit's teardown

Did iFixit ask Huawei

Anyone ask Huawei about glue, repairs, parts? The Chinese want to sell stuff, gain market share. How? Hi-Qal, repairable (keep customers for next upgrade), stuff that works. iFixit are slack. In Bangkok, we fix Huawei gear easily. Of course it helps if you speak Chinese. So learn it...

What's in HP's sack? Pre-built Ubuntu machines for the little data scientists in your life

I sniff a familiar odor: Sneaky profit. How can an ordinary laptop with a FREE OS cost more than the "notoriously overpriced" Mac?

Japan testing sandwiches that discount themselves as they age

Great principle, doubtful practise

Using "big data" AI to grade food quality is good - the busy buy dear, the cash strapped buy late. But the tech and infrastructure involved might kill the benefits. We wait, breaths bated, salivating gently.

Congrats, Meg Whitman, another multi-billion-dollar write-off for the CV: Her web vid upstart Quibi implodes

Re: "Our failure was not for lack of trying"

How does one research an unexpected pandemic that will kill economies? Allowing their game started back in 2018 with fund raising, Covid19 was the "asteroid that wiped out the dinosaurs"....Oh why didn't they hide. Yeah, or hold their breath -- for 20 years.

Granted, not a world shaking idea, but the pandemic has killed off everything.

You don't get it

Non Sequitur. These people don't "retire". They aren't in it for the money at their stage. It's the game, the challenge. She lost more than money. She lost face.

Thailand calls on telcos and ISPs to censor information about pro-democracy protests

Best place if you know

Thailand has more laws than Hamurabi. But Thais only obey the ones they like, while the cops are watching. They rest, they don't bother. Also, cops here barker louder than they bite. A law here is a warning or suggestion. You interpret it according to the situation. Jai yen-yen (Take it easy)

Re: Creat a fake account.

Thailand doesn't allow "burners". ID with every SIM.

Libel

Barnes libeled the hotel, with childish comments about standard international policy - corkage charge. The hotel asked for a retraction, he refused, they sued. What would the Dorchester do?

Assange is better in UK

Julian, avoid Thailand at all costs!!! You could arrested here, mate

Someone not only created a comment-spewing Reddit bot powered by OpenAI's GPT-3, it offered bizarre life advice

Reddit has Humans?

From the odd glance at Reddit posts, I'd prefer an AI bot. Must be an improvement on the juvenile yammerings and endless screenshots of their latest home screen...

Lenovo sheds lockdown pounds with lightweight ThinkPad, reveals price tag for world's first bendy-screen PC

Let me consider....

Sounds like beta testers will be paying customers...old Microsoft gambit.

Microsoft forks out $3m in back pay settlement to make Feds' hiring discrimination probe go away

Not a fine, not a bribe, not extortion, simply

a donation to lawyers suffering under Covid19...

China, Russia and Iran all attacking US elections and using some nasty new tactics, says Microsoft

Sorry for Laughing but...

Microsoft+Security=Oxymoron. The "Russian hacks" of the US 2016 election servers, etc, was an inside job, clearly explained by former NSA boss Bill Binney. Frankly, since the Russians and Chinese already know the US has only one real party, why bother to sway either puppet? Better to follow the money to find the fiends.

Mate, it's the '90s. You don't need to be reachable every minute of every hour. Your operating system can't cope

Re: Perhaps

Bosses like to believe that all their requests are urgent. Why else be the boss?.

What's 2 + 2? Personal info, sniffs Twitter: Anti-doxxing AI goes off the rails, bans tweets with numbers in them

The Solution is Simple

Ban all numbers, symbols and alphabetic characters on Twitter. Only "mindful neural resonances" permitted. Now monetize that ...

Pakistan demands TikTok and YouTube block 'vulgar' content

Oh Pakistan: no lewdness, snogging or cuddles, but heresy, apostasy and awkward religious qyestions get you lynched. My kinda place...

Utes gotta be kidding me... University of Utah handed $457K to ransomware creeps

Utah Retard School

And the hackers were honest enough not to copy the data before encyption and ransom payout, then use it again? OK Professors, what are 2+2?

iFixit horses around with Galaxy Note 20 Ultra 5G to discover glue in abundance

Re: Problem? What problem?

No Problem. The phone is built for "A" market, not "THE" market. Samsung 20 yada yada buyers don't own glue guns, sticky tape and live in Mummy's spare room. They don't care about repairs or replacements - it's in their job contract. Stop this juvenile whining. Buy the phone that fits your purpose and pocket. Uggh, kids these days...

How is Trump's anti-Chinese rhetoric playing out? 70% of smartphones sold in the US are – surprise – made in China

Below cost?

The Chinese are so rich they can make phones and sell them at a loss? How generous.

Geneticists throw hands in the air, change gene naming rules to finally stop Microsoft Excel eating their data

Re: I must be missing something...

Using LibreCalc on Linux. Input DEC10 and it stays there. Never seen this problem. Is it only Excel?

Re: How?

BR**ST??!! How dare you mention that evil appendage that nourishes the new born. Call for the guards.

How old are the children doing this work? "Derogatory science" is an oxymoron, you bloody morons. It's fcuking science! Kindergarten researchers must now be accompanied by parents' affidavit of family sanity...and niceness.

[I despair]

Venerable text editor GNU Nano reaches version 5.0 and adds the modern frippery that is scrollbars

Re: Cult?

I use MC and its internal editor daily and much. Nano is for masochists.

Re: Cult?

This peculiar Christian fascination with suffering to achieve is amusing. Give me easy that does the job faster and keep your self-flagellation for weekends. S&M is for sex not computing.

SpaceX pulls off an incredible catch, netting both halves of its Falcon fairing as they fell Earthwards after latest launch

Is it cost-effective? One-use cones v. reusable + parachutes + retrieval vessels + personnel + refurbishing? I'd like to see some (non-Musk) numbers.