Posts by C Montgomery Burns

Cold callers illegally sold Aussie farmers 1,700 years worth of printer ink

HP cartridges

I wondered about that too. If they are looking into helping out people with aggressively stupid quantities and pricing, they'd be helping out a lot more people by going after the OEMs who sell the ink for $2300 a gallon.

$350m! shaved! off! sale! price! as! Verizon! swallows! Yahoo!

Re: Statler and Waldorf

"Yahoo was attacked by a state party. "

Says who? Yahoo? That's just lawyer-cushioning against class-actions.

Drone biz Lily Robotics takes $34m in pre-orders, ships nothing, shuts down, gets sued by San Francisco DA

Not a lawyer

If your case has your CEO in writing, using the phrase "I don't know much about lenses but I think we should be extremely careful if we decide to lie publicly.", you probably should look to settle.

Cancel! that! yacht! order! Marissa! – Verizon's! still! cold! on! Yahoo! gobble!

Re: Where's the value?

I have had a Yahoo account for a decade that I have faithfully logged into maybe once a year or so. It's an email to give out to places when I don't want to get spam in my main email. What do you think the cash value of me as a user is?

Re: Oh they fucking know

Not having has seen the contract, it would be typical to have opt-out language to allow for a serious material non-disclosure by a party. From Verizon's point of view, failing to mention theses breaches could be seen as such a thing.

Also not a lawyer.

Los Angeles to extradite bloke from Nigeria after scores of city workers fall for phish scam

Thwarted?

"The second-largest city in the US says that while it "thwarted" the attack, it is warning some residents that their personal information may have been exposed, and it's offering free identity protection services to the affected people."

Is there some sort of alternative California dictionary at work here?

Security! experts! slam! Yahoo! management! for! using! old! crypto!

Re: Recommended alternatives?

I'd recommend Protonmail as long as you just want email.

I think the price for Yahoo! just went down again.

I think if Verizon had sense they'd simply walk away. I don't think it's a question of it being one or two billion dollars less. It's the potential other pitfalls a legacy of incompetent management is going to bring.

Lastly, I doubt that there are even 100 million, real, current users of Yahoo.

A single typo may have tipped US election Trump's way

So the email stating it was "legitimate" was widely derided as being stupid. And that's because it's a "typo" and not a stupid mistake? Some large helping of benefit of the doubt is being heaped here. Seems the more sensible explanation is that Delevan was duped by the phishing mail too.

Setting that aside though, the "Russians" didn't create the very real, very damaging information that was there.

Canada asks citizens: How would you like us to spy on you?

Our Liberal Government here in Canada has taken to online polling as a means of providing some political cover for what they were planning to do anyway. It theoretically makes people feel all warm and fuzzy that they're being "consulted".

Of course it's worded like garbage, with leading questions. But it doesn't matter, since the results will in no way be public, or audited, or even likely read.

Hey, here's our new law, you told us it was what you wanted.

Vegans furious as Bank of England admits ‘trace’ of animal fat in £5 notes

Re: But Why?

" As a chemist you should be doing what you did at university, READ."

The original article seemed to imply that it was a deliberate formulation decision, rather than inadvertent trace amounts used in tallow lubricants.

"there is a trace of tallow in the polymer pellets used in the base substrate...."

So, an even more ridiculous matter then.

But adding oddball things to the formulation isn't that insane. Back in 1991 the Bank of Australia had a polymer note, and the three resins used were chosen for being harder to identify specifically by analysis, when blended. So I was wondering if it was something more than "it's what we use to wax the pellet chutes". The University lab I was working in was contracted by the mint to see how easy it was to reverse engineer. The answer was still extremely easy if you have access to high grade analytical equipment.

But Why?

I am a chemist, and I can't figure out why on earth you'd need beef tallow in a polymer note.

No super-kinky web smut please, we're British

Re: VPN

I use this script to put OpenVPN on a new server. Dead simple, and secure enough for me.

https://github.com/Nyr/openvpn-install

Carly Fiorina makes like HP and splits – ex-CEO quits White House race

Re: Bring Marshmallows...

Meh.. Rob Ford drunk or high off his ass was still a better mayor than David Miller on his best day.

Alibaba security fail: Brute-force bonanza yields 21m logins

Re: This will never be fixed?

"So why have we built a world where the security measures are hard for the average person to deal with? Things are really broken and the bad people are having a field day."

I think the problem is one of perception. People aren't placing a high enough mental value on their digital accounts. Nobody needs to remind anyone to lock their door or car, because the loss would be immediate and tangible. Yet few complain of the hassle of carrying around a set of keys.

Realistically, it might take identify theft, money theft, or some other personal disaster for most to take their online accounts more seriously.

Wikipedia board stands by new ex-Googler appointee

"and a focus on doing what is right."

Is this new? Because the only reason people know who the hell you are is because you participated in a wildly illegal, and certainly unethical, scheme that materially harmed thousands of workers, and actually fired someone for a minor breach of your illegal policy in order to placate Steve Jobs.

Assange™ is 'upset' that he WON'T be prosecuted for rape, giggles lawyer

"Samuelson added "He will be very unhappy if the conclusion is that he is the winning party here, he doesn’t see it like that at all: he wants to clear his name.""

Yeah, I too smell an odour of BS from that statement. You weren't "clearing your name" hiding out in a foreign embassy to duck extradition.

Intel beats earnings estimates (because nobody expected it to earn much)

It what universe is earning $2.7 Billion in profits on sales of $13.2 billion considered not "earning much"? Compared to what? Margins on cocaine? ;-)

LastPass got hacked: Change your master password NOW

Is the Short Version...

.. Don't worry at all if your password was complex enough? That's the takeaway I get. Is that wrong? Mine is 15 characters with all different types and not dictionary. I am aware of no breakthrough in GPUs or what-not that can realistically bust that before I am too dead to care.

I operate under the assumption that a hacker will have access to the hash database at some point. For every "breach" that's announced, how many happen that the company is either unaware of, or never cops to?

Macy's: Now with Apple's Minority Report ads system that TRACKS your iPHONE

"...It’s one way to engage consumers with the products."

If by "engage", you mean "Annoy the f%$# out of.", then sure.

My phone would do this to me exactly once. If I were unable to disable that "feature" easily, it would no longer be the phone I carry.

Snowden: Hey fellow NSA worker, mind if I copy your PASSWORD?

Think the NSA should consider adding standardized IQ test to the polygraphs and background checks.

Assange anounces candidacy for possible WA Senate by-election

Hey Julian? It's never nice to learn when your 15 minutes of fame are up. Yours ended a few years ago. Deal with your rape charges in Sweden.