Posts by MatthewSt

Open source router firmware project OpenWrt ships its own entirely repairable hardware

Re: So WiFi only for client connections. Really?

Reversing them isn't going to change the speed if you've got 2gbit internet...

The only thing worse than being fired is scammers fooling you into thinking you're fired

Re: You have to wonder

Maybe so, but the project managers, market researchers and developers are all doing a pretty effective job

EU buyers still shunning pure electric vehicles, prefer hybrids

That's exactly the scenario I was in. Owned a petrol car, and the lease plus fuel on a new EV was less than the fuel alone for the petrol car. No big outlay required.

For second hand: The ODB port on EVs gives you a load of stats (total energy used, total charged split by fast and regular, individual cell health etc) so as long as that information is reliable...!

I don't understand these "it doesn't work for everyone/me, therefore it shouldn't work for anyone" attitudes. We can have multiple solutions, we can solve problems. Some streets near us don't have driveways, so I've advertised my chargepoint and let people use it at cost. Got a few regulars, one who actually has a driveway but has decided it's cheaper to use mine than buy a charger!

More expensive to buy, yes. Depends if you look at total cost of ownership. Fuel and servicing can be significantly less compared to ICE, so over the course of a few years it balances out. That's before taking tax incentives into consideration too.

Swiss cheesed off as postal service used to spread malware

Warnings?

I'm trying not to victim blame here, but don't you have to ignore a lot of warnings to allow apps to be installed from outside the Play Store?

It's going to turn into how the banking apps look when you transfer over a fiver.

"If someone has told you to select these options then this is likely a scam"

Kids' shoemaker Start-Rite trips over security again, spilling customer card info

Might need to give their security team the boot...!

Will Windows Insiders find Recall lurking under the Christmas tree?

Implemented properly (I know...) it could be a useful tool. Like your browser history, but across the whole PC. Everyone works differently, and I'm very much the "I don't know what the document I'm looking for contains, but I know when I last had it open I'd just asked X about Y" kind of person.

I can't understand why anyone would want to eat mushrooms but I'm not going to go around insisting that restaurants stop serving them, I'm just going to not eat them!

The US government wants developers to stop using C and C++

Re: Is this a bandwagon I see before me?

No... Just Rusty

Want advice from UK government website about tax 'n' stuff? Talk to the chatbot

Exactly, because the alternative is that you have import/export tariffs on _everything_ (products _and_ services). How can the tax law determine whether the money being sent abroad is a legitimate transaction or one to avoid paying tax in the country? Microsoft sell software/services in this country, but very little of the "cost" of that comes from the work undertaken in this country. (Yes, I know they should be paying more than they do, but how do you describe that legally).

Not to mention there are certain parts of the tax law that are historic (so you'd need to review and potentially vote on each piece to work out whether it's still necessary) and there are some that are there because taxes (or lack of) are designed to discourage (or encourage) certain behaviours. For example we have [S]EIS that is meant to encourage investment in small risky startups. We have gift aid that is meant to encourage donating to charity. Even pensions are a tax "workaround" so do you want to abolish those as well in your simple tax regime?

Voice-enabled AI agents can automate everything, even your phone scams

Cost of an unsuccessful scam?

Everyone I know keeps these scammers talking until they get bored and hang up. If an AI one isn't going to get bored then you could get it to read out recipes, or something else that requires it to generate a lot of cruft.

Will make them think twice about calling you again!

That position you just applied for might be a 'ghost job' that'll never be filled

81%

Those 81% of recruiters giving the rest a bad name...

UK councils bat away DDoS barrage from pro-Russia keyboard warriors

Re: Keighley

Not sure what infrastructure Bradford run on but considering they take it offline every other Sunday for planned maintenance it's probably a box under someone's desk!

Forget the Kia Boyz: Crooks could hijack your car with just a smartphone

App?

I wish Kia would commission them to write actual app. It doesn't do half the stuff they were able to do and even with the things it can do it fails half the time.

Kamala Harris campaign motorcade halted by confused robotaxis

U

Hard shoulder!

Don't give them excuses to drop the U out of words!

Blackstone invests £10B to build Europe's 'biggest AI datacenter' in UK

Re: How many jobs?

Microsoft reckon they have 50 "per building" (https://local.microsoft.com/blog/frequently-asked-questions-about-our-datacenters/#:~:text=How%20many%20people%20will%20work%20at%20the%20datacenter?) so I suppose if this site is comprised of 52 buildings then it could work...!

Re: Announced? Nothing to do with Starmer.

A little help from Suank indeed! Without his intervention BritishVolt may have got somewhere and this site wouldn't be available...

Ransomware gang using stolen Microsoft Entra ID creds to bust into the cloud

If it's a password stored on a device that the device uses to authenticate to a cloud service then it has to be stored using reversible encryption. The app on the server (in this instance) needs to be able to present credentials to the service it's authenticating with.

The only way round this is to use something like a TPM, where the certificate itself cannot be removed from the device, and it does the signing for you.

Citrix adds remote Mac support, but some customers are grumpy

"Microsoft 356 applications"

Intentional or typo?

Did you hear the one about the help desk chap who abused privileges to prank his mate?

Back in the good old days the BBC had a dedicated network from Blighty to down under (presumably Neighbours related). The offices there were reachable on an internal number, at which point you could dial for an outside line and make an international phone call without it showing up as one!

Disney kicks Slack to the curb, looks to Microsoft Teams for a happily ever after

Not anymore. New Teams uses Webview2 instead of Electron.

https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/microsoft-teams/teams-2-0-moves-away-from-electron-to-embrace-edge-webview2/m-p/2484565

250 million-plus unused IPv4 addresses should be left alone, argues network boffin

Re: Well...

For Zen you need to have it specifically enabled on your account: https://www.zen.co.uk/help-support/does-zen-provide-ipv6-support

Ex-Windows boss who tried to save the Start Menu now Shopify tech wizard

Re: Thieves Bazzar

Always use a credit card (and pay off the balance each month). Then you can issue a charge back (pretty simple process) and it's down to the merchant to prove the charges were legit. If (when) they lose, it costs them money too.

Tech support chap solved knotty disk failure problem by staring at the floor

Who wood have thought...!

Microsoft closes Windows 11 upgrade loophole in latest Insider build

Re: Should be made illegal

"or figuring out which of the multiple Windows editions"

Yes, good point. You can just pick Linux and go. No decision necessary about which "edition" to choose...

Indian telcos to cut off scammy, spammy, telemarketers for two whole years

Re: Oh boy howdy, a blockchain!

you don't need either Pow or PoS if your users are authenticated. Messages are only accepted on to the chain if they are signed by a trusted key. The distribution of those keys is centralised by the telecoms authority, and each provider has their own key. You could even make it so that your central authority is the only entity adding blocks, and you're just using the DLT for replication purposes. Update requests can be submitted through another method.

(I suppose technically it's still Pow but you make the work involved really really small)

If a cheesy '80s flick is a good metaphor for how you run projects, something is wrong

Re: MS Passport... There can be only one?

Your examples there are similar names to related products...

How about Outlook. Is it Hotmail's replacement? The old desktop email and calender app? The new (web based) email and calender app?

Microsoft patches scary wormable hijack-my-box-via-IPv6 security bug and others

The tricky thing is how does the device know if it needs it without having it enabled?

Sky and BT have rolled it out quite successfully in the UK, but it wouldn't have been possible if they needed to tell everyone to enable IPv6 on every single device they own.

ICANN reserves .internal for private use at the DNS level

Re: Would have prefered "*.int"

No harm in having more than one

Can they add .local while they're at it?

Microsoft punches back at Delta Air Lines and its legal threats

Re: Is this normal?

Also, isn't measuring things by cost a bit like measuring planes by weight, software by lines of code etc?

Yes you've spent billions, but has it all been on expensive contractors that have ripped you off, or are mates with the CEO?

Japan stops measuring train crowding by ease of newspaper readership

Re: Fishy

If your suggestion isn't taken up you'll be carp-ing on about it non-stop

Sneaky SnakeKeylogger slithers into Windows inboxes to steal sensitive secrets

Re: Malware.NET?

They probably would if this was 2014, but the framework now comes in at 55mb and supports tree shaking to only ship the bits you're using

Japan mandates app to ensure national ID cards aren't forged

Re: Oh, Great!

The app is used by the person who wants to verify the authenticity of the card, not the cardholder. Cardholder isn't required to have any device whatsoever.

Re: Lest we forget ...

I would imagine it's the person verifying your identity that needs the app, not the bearer of the card. Presumably the bearer of the card already knows who they are and whether the card is legitimate.

Otherwise, as well as a market for a fake card you've now got a message for a fake app too...!

Microsoft's results are in, but the E7 subscription remains mythical. For now

Ecosystem

The case for an E7 would be something like you'd get 2-3 add-ons for the price of 1.5-2, so someone may be inclined to go for the package to get the deal, spending a bit more per user than if they just went for the add-on they were after. We've done that in a few cases, eg an O365 E3 + PowerBI Pro is about the same as O365 E5.

Then the partners rub their paws together because they get to "train" you on everything you didn't realise you wanted...!

Patch management still seemingly abysmal because no one wants the job

Especially when Microsoft have already got multiple distribution methods available to them. If they actually made use of the Store for their apps then patching, disk usage, bandwidth are all taken care of automatically. Even supports zero downtime patching (new version is installed side by side and executes next time you start the app)

(new Outlook uses the Store, new Teams is MSIX but not store)

NASA sends 4K video from a flying plane to the ISS using lasers

Re: And yet

What do you mean "believe"? The graphic in the article clearly shows it's flat!

Kaspersky says Uncle Sam snubbed proposal to open up its code for third-party review

Re: Umm, why does he need US Government approval ?

Because he doesn't want to publish the code, he wants just the US government to see it so that they stop saying it's unsafe.

Alphabet's reported $23B bet on Wiz fizzles out

There might be a discount on another cyber security company after recent events...

Microsoft: Our licensing terms do not meaningfully raise cloud rivals' costs

They should probably tell marketing...

... That it's not much more expensive - https://azure.microsoft.com/en-gb/pricing/hybrid-benefit/

"AWS is up to 5 times more expensive" (although granted that link is now a 404)

Microsoft's CISPE settlement includes a suspension of audits for members

Nice cloud operation you've got there

Would be a shame if some came along and... Audited it

EU gave CrowdStrike the keys to the Windows kernel, claims Microsoft

Yes, but you _know_ you've lost and someone needs to fix it, rather than the system carrying on unprotected with malware having free reign

What if we're dealing with a system with two drivers. One. Starts a centrifuge spinning and the other checks the status of all the components and applies the brake when something goes wrong. Problem lies in the 2nd driver, so Windows goes "fine, I'll start and ignore that one".

Centrifuge starts, problem occurs, system physically destroyed.

Current method has less danger as centrifuge won't even start.

That's a good suggestion, but that's not Microsoft's job. The whole reason you're running Crowdstrike is because you think they're doing a better job than Microsoft. It's a black box as far as Microsoft is concerned. There's no concept of definitions, there's nothing to roll back, there's no notification that a change to your system has been made.

Crowdstrike needed to detect that their driver had sh*t the bed and done their own rollback. It was their code that threw the blue screen. There's plenty wrong with Microsoft software without blaming them for others too.

So failing open but with logging.

There's no such thing as a last known good configuration if something updates itself outside of the normal Windows process.

Running it outside of Kernel mode isn't the answer no matter what the question is. If the code calls out to User mode and crashes, what does the Kernel code that made the call do? Does it fail open (no security) or does it fail closed (hard crash).

Question remains the same whether you're dealing with Kernel mode or not. Microsoft could have put the equivalent of "ON ERROR RESUME NEXT" in when calling third party Kernel libraries, but you've got the same problem then.

And I can bet everyone would be up in arms if Microsoft left things insecure by default...!

The answer is test what you're shipping and roll it out slowly.

Facebook prank sent techie straight to Excel hell

Our training method was an email from said offender to the rest of the office letting them know that they'd be bringing cakes in the following morning to celebrate IT Security

UK cops arrest teen suspect in MGM Resorts cyberattack probe

Re: September!!

It's always summer in Vegas

Dangerous sandwiches delayed hardware installation

Or the more generic "club sandwich"

Microsoft 365 remains 'degraded' as Azure outage resolved

Post-mortem

Microsoft usually go into some detail in their "what went wrong" documents. Looking forward to reading this one!

NASA swings budget axe, kills $400M+ VIPER lunar trundlebot

Re: Custom components?

Depends what you mean by "obsolete". Will there be better components available? Without a doubt. Will that prevent the rover from doing what it was designed to do? Not in the slightest.

Curiosity (for example) is coming up to its 12th year of its 2 year mission.