Posts by a_yank_lurker

'I don’t want to see another computer for the rest of my life'... Brit Dark Overlord cyber-extortionist thrown in an American clink for five years

Re: white collar crime

Shoplifting is a state level offense and the states vary widely on how it is handled. Parole is common in the state prisons. He was nailed on federal charges where there is no parole.

Re: Five years - Not Enough

In US states you would be probably correct but federal is full sentence so he will have a long stay in Club Fed.

Tesla wins defamation counterclaim against Gigafactory whistleblower

Re: Shorting Tesla Stock Was Big Business

Too many 'tech' companies are overvalued because vultures want to make a killing off the suckers by touting the company will be 'printing money' forever.

Halloween approaches and the veil between worlds wears thin – the Windows 10 October 2020 Release walks among us

New BloatWare

Any bets on how bad the new Bloatware-as-a-Disservice release will be? The Rejects of Redmond are due a major screw up again.

Oracle Zooms past rivals to run TikTok’s cloud, take stake alongside WalMart and ByteDance investors

Into the Fire

So Tik-Tok is sold from one sleaze bag company to another sleaze bag company. But in fairness to the Minions their competition was as equally sleazy.

Alibaba wants to get you off the PC upgrade treadmill and into its cloud

Re: so, a 'Network Computer'?

More like 1976 or 1966.

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

Depends on what is in the files and this is apparently for federal contract compliance which is not quite the same as your normal hiring discrimination suit.

Sounds like Spotify and Epic have been chatting: Music streamer blasts Apple One service as 'anti-competitive'

Re: When will it happen!?

Two words: market share. Fruit does not have majority market share in their major markets while the Rejects of Redmond had ~95% of the key market share (OS) at the time they were sued. Fruit may be making it potentially difficult for Spotify in the Fruit market but there is a large market that Fruit's services will not reach.

Chinese database details 2.4 million influential people, their kids, addresses, and how to press their buttons

Re: Good old propaganda

Most people can be ensnared by their own vanity or fears. If you have some idea how to approach a person to entrap them it is not very hard to turn them. So the idea is to find out these vectors from publicly available sources. There is no legal risk and it only takes time/manpower to do.

The plods often do a reverse of this when investigating a crime. Once a suspect is identified they often peruse social media for any free information they can get.

Bad apples: US customs seize OnePlus earbuds thinking they're knock-off AirPods

Re: Dumb

The dumb part is not reading the paperwork, assuming the mental midgets can read. There all sorts of paperwork associated with the shipment that will describe the goods. Probably more worried the price was wrong so they are not getting enough duty.

Microsoft's Surface Duo cops 1 repairability point for each of its screens: That's 2/10

Re: In other words...

$1400 for a phone is a bit steep. I agree, buy a laptop and moderately priced phone for the money and you might have some leftover.

IBM made ‘top-down’ efforts to fire older workers, says US employment discrimination watchdog

Lawsuits

This could make for some interesting lawsuits as this is government saying this.

Don't pay the ransom, mate. Don't even fix a price, say Australia's cyber security bods

Security Practices

Good security practices are critical to avoiding ransomware and mitigating its effects. But often the 'advice' says not to open files attached to emails, etc. which is impossible to do for most workers. It's not uncommon for me to get an email attachment from an internal colleague. Now if you are in accounting and sales you have a much greater chance of receiving a legitimate attachment from an external source (bids, invoices, etc.) that are necessary for the business to run. These attachments have to be opened. So I am given idiotic advice that says I cannot do my job because some moronic 'expert' says never open an attachment, etc.

One scenario that requires minimal social engineering is to pose as business trying to set up a business account with a company. The company will require financial and trade information to verify before approving the account. It is rather common to send this information via email as an attachment. And obvious for it to reviewed the attachment has to be opened.

Something to look forward to: Being told your child or parent was radicalized by an AI bot into believing a bonkers antisemitic conspiracy theory

Re: AI?

The basic problem of AI is it answers questions based on the data (questionable at best) available and cannot see issues with the data. Essentially is mostly GIGO with an occasional useful answer.

Re: AI is here!!!!

Is AI IQ that high? Not that QAnon spouters have IQ's above 0 to begin with.

Go Huawei, Android: Chinese telco biz claims it will spread Harmony OS for smartphone to devs come December

Interesting

It obvious where HarmonyOS will be marketed first. I tend to think its success will be driven more by Beijing getting behind it and making it the defacto national Chicon phone OS. If so, there will be pressure and possibly money to develop apps quickly for it. How well it well do outside of China, not so sure as many are suspicious of Beijing's motives and methods right now. I doubt other Asian countries will allow it all.

Server buyers ask Lenovo for made-in-Mexico models instead of Chinese kit

Part Sourced?

The final assembly point is not that important. Parts can be shipped around the world to an assembly point. So the real question is where were the parts made. I tend to doubt the core parts are NA sourced but come from the PRC. So Mexican assembly is meaningless.

Gartner on cloud contenders: AWS fails to lower its prices, Microsoft 'cannot guarantee capacity', Google has 'devastating' network outages

Re: Gartner in the title of the article...

Gartner is a well known navel gazing outfit (rarely right) that is widely believed by the upper manglement. It is nice to know what vomit they spewing so as to know what turds will be emitted by your local manglement. Consider it a public service announcing idiocies to come.

Customers defecting to Oracle? Not according to our research, says SAP chief number cruncher

Believe Leisure Suit Larry?

I tend to doubt Leisure Suit Larry as the integrity, honesty, and truth are words I would not use to describe him.

Zero. Zilch. Nada. That's how many signs of intelligent life astroboffins found in probe of TEN MILLION stars

Re: Looking for signs of McDonald's on other planets?

The problem with all SETI searches is they are limited by what we can detect. If FTL drives are not science fiction how would we detect them when we have no idea what to look for. Any advanced technology would be the same, we have no idea what it is and definitely no idea how to detect it. Some of the ideas such as look for technosignatures in principle are correct, but what signatures should we be looking for and can we even detect them is an issue. Looking for fluorocarbons sounds good there is the assumption the alien civilization produced them and a local biological process did not. If they were not produced at all by an alien civilization and the local biosphere there is no signature to detect.

Apple to Epic: Sue me? No, sue you, pal!

Re: Mudslinging

I suspect the 30% levy will stand up once you compare the rate to standard retail markups. Normal retail markups are at least double the cost to retailer (50% levy or higher). So Apple and Google are being cheap compared to Wally World and others. The app makers are getting 70% of retail which is actually quite high. While 30% does give a hefty margin it is not all profit, the app store does cost money to run which someone has to pay for. Also, right now I believe it is app producer that sets the retail price not Apple which is another difference between the app store and traditional retail.

Re: Microsoft Has anyone else noticed...

Apple's market share on this side of the pond is not 60% but in the mid 40%.

Anti-Trust

While the iOS is a strong walled garden I am not sure if one can argue anti-trust. One there is Android which has a similar walled garden. Second once an app is available it is pretty much survive or sink without interference from Apple or Google.

Vivaldi offers users a 'break' from browsing. No, don't switch to Chrome... don't sw..

At best it seems like a niche feature that will be useful for a few. For most closing the browser when not needing it seems like a better idea.

China proposes ‘Global Initiative on Data Security’ forbidding stuff it and Huawei are accused of doing already

Timing

Are the trade war with Trump and Covid-19 actually causing problems for China? It seems like there are many reasons to be distrustful Beijing as their recent antics have not inspired confidence about their willingness to obey their international treaty obligations. Plus Xi seems to bent on involving China in numerous shooting wars and open rebellions at the same time (India, Mongolia, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Tibet, etc.), not exactly a wise policy when your neighbors and their friends do not trust you. Also, I am not so sure the timelines for repatriating/moving manufacturing could not be accelerated if there was a political will to really do so.

Power platform envy? Google wants to 'empower non-technical employees' with new Business Apps category

Re: New Wheel Invented?

Where I work tried a 'low code' 'solution' (nameless to protect the criminal) which I got some training on. My impression was of the 'solution' is was actually much harder to work with than writing code in the traditional manner. I seriously doubt non-programmers could actually get something that works and programmers were frustrated by the inability to fix problems efficiently.

Low code solutions have to so modular that one can literally 'drag-and-drop' modules into the code and it will work. But one of the major problems I have seen is the backend code is often so bad that any competent programmer will vomit when they see it.

Ghost of Windows past spotted haunting Yorkshire railway station

Which Is Worse?

Given the Rejects of Redmond's inability to reliable patch Bloat 10, making Patch Tuesday nothing more than a game of Russian Roulette with the box, is one better off running Bloat 7 even though it is unsupported. Either way you are taking significant risks with the OS, either you get hit by ransomware or you get your files wiped out or box borked by the Rejects.

The Wrath of Amazon: JEDI wars rage on after US Department of Defense affirms Microsoft contract

Not Surprise

No matter who won the contract there were going to be (meritless) lawsuits claiming it was not properly awarded. A contract this big is bound to get scrutiny. With hardware (ships, planes, etc.) it is easier for the losers to still get some subcontracts as a consolation prize from the winner. Plus there is often another project to bid on in the near future. With this type of project it's all-or-nothing, the prime is not going to subcontract out anything worthwhile to get the losing bidders.

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

If something is urgent we are told to IM the person if they are online at work. I often talk to others several times a day after being pinged. Email is very useful to create a written record for all to see.

In my personal life, again, it it is urgent call or text and then maybe follow up with an email with more details (if needed). If you are in my contact list I will respond as soon as I can.

Why cloud costs get out of control: Too much lift and shift, and pricing that is 'screwy and broken'

Re: Cloud is expensive

The issue with the 'Cloud' is not that it could be a viable solution for many organizations for at least part of their workload but the adoption is often not thought out. Every organization has a different balance between on prem and cloud they should be using. Surprisingly it is often weighted in favor of on prem for numerous technical and legal reasons. So the cloud use should reflect not what the sales person says but what a cold, hard look of the organization's needs are.

The 'Cloud' has been touted too often as the solution for all problems to non-technical types who do not appreciate the complexities of running a server farm of any type. The problem is the decision is made without consulting the people who will be implementing and running it.

There’s no new normal coming for PC sales, just the boring old normal of a long, slow decline

Mature Market

Cov19 created a one-off blip in sales but did not change the market fundamentals. PC sales is showing the characteristics of a mature market. Kit is generally good enough to last many years before needing replacement for the vast majority of users. And there is no compelling to buy the latest CPU or GPU for most users. What will happen is the decline will eventually stop and sales will bounce around a mean with the possibility of sluggish increase of units sold occurring; behavior typical of mature markets.

Most of these 'analyst' are not telling me anything that has not occurred before as markets matured. Now if they can accurately predict the floor and the long term behavior once the floor is reached they might be worth something. Otherwise perusing a history book is more valuable; the pattern has always held.

In the frame with the Great MS Bakeoff: Microsoft sets out plans for Windows windows

Re: Simple

If the Rejects from Redmond really want to migrate users away from Win32 applications they probably should do something like a new OS (let's call it Roof) that does not support Win32 applications natively. Roof would need to be compatible with either MacOS (not likely) , Android, or Linux so there are applications available immediately. The Rejects could then have a decadish long phase out of Win32 support in Bloat so users (companies) have time migrate to another API in Windows. If Roof becomes more popular than Bloat they could even slowly phase out Bloat altogether over a longer period.

Failure to think

Code written awhile ago and is still actively used is not likely to be rewritten to use a new API just because the API exists as it is generally a waste of time. The only way to force users and devs to stop using Win32 is to stop supporting it and removing it from Bloatware at some point in time. But there is a lot of elderly, useful business code that would have to be rewritten; the howls of anguish would be loud. As far as consumer code, I am not sure how much would be affected but there will be some howling from them also.

The only other alternative is to create an API that is so superior to the current APIs that when the next major revision done to the elderly code will be rewritten to use the new API. I do not think this scenario is very likely to happen as I do not think any new API will be that much better than its predecessor to warrant a rewrite.

The Rejects of Redmond are stuck, either support Win32 for the foreseeable future or alienate your customers; pick your poison.

Things are getting back to normal: Chinese hackers revert to bugging Tibetans after brief Euro campaign

RTF Attachment

That is a blast from the past, I have not seen an RTF file in ages. I had to check Word to see if still can handle an RTF file, thought it had been executed awhile back.

Borking all over the world: At home or abroad, you're never more than 6ft from a BSOD

Snowball in a Blast Furnance

I would be putting my money on the snowball lasting longer+

IBM ordered to pay £22k to whistleblower and told by judges: Teach your managers what discrimination means

Re: targeted by four managers within IBM

There are many complaints of various forms of discrimination, ripping off sales commissions, etc. by the Itsy Bitsy Morons manglement. This would lead one to suspect there are more fundamental internal problems. I doubt this is an isolated incident.

What a time for a TITSUP*: Santander down and out on pre-Bank Holiday payday

Monday is often a good day to avoid also. Hangovers can mess with one's concentration.

Forget your space-age IT security systems. It might just take a $1m bribe and a willing employee to be pwned

Old Training

In my younger days I remember getting security training. One of the points made was that spies, etc. will try to set you up to coerce you into working with them by various means mostly foul. But what was noted in the training was that going to the security people as soon as it was safe with the details will clear you of any wrong doing and they will probably use you to maintain contact until they are ready to pounce.

Engineer admits he wiped 456 Cisco WebEx VMs from AWS after leaving the biz, derailed 16,000 Teams accounts

Switchzilla has some incompetent admins because they have no idea what access rights he has and how to remove them. Their incompetence does not make him less guilty.

My crow soft adds audio transcription to premium Word Online... Only joking. It's pretty good if a bit on the slow side

What Accents

Given the Rejects of Redmond constant failure to grasp most English speakers (native and non-native) do not speak with a West Coast US accent I am dubious about the accuracy of the transcriptions and how much time will be wasted cleaning up the trash produced by the 'service'. I work for a multinational company and with some regularity I speak with people who have a variety of accents (Scots, Irish, US Southern, German, Norwegian, Indian are just a few). As a nominal native speaker, some accents require me to pay very close attention to the speaker to understand them.

What legacy is IBM really shooting for? Cheating its own salespeople out of millions? Here we go again, allegedly

Re: Corporate Arrogance

The politicians on both sides have been 'bought' by the major corporations because they run in the same circles and know each other. How well they know each other individually varies. So there is little interest by the pols to go after their drinking buddies unless someone's antics brings too much attention to all (think Epstein and all those whose names have come up in the saga). The upper managelment of Itsy Bitsy Morons is in this group. So as along as the mistreatment stays generally on the back pages of the various rags, if it is mentioned at all, there will be little pressure for the manglement to be ethical.

Physical locks are less hackable than digital locks, right? Maybe not: Boffins break in with a microphone

Pile It Higher and Deeper

While the technique will work in the lab, out in the real world mechanical locks can be picked very easily. If you do not have the tools or skill to pick a lock there is always busting the door down which also works. The people I am worried about breaking in are not going to use such a technique but something more traditional like kicking the door down. Great for a thesis (or feces) but not of much use in the real world.

50%+ of our office seats are going remote, say majority of surveyed Register readers. Hi security, bye on-prem

Re: Loss of human contact

There are some problems with working from home particularly when you have never done it before for and extended period. First is to establish clear work/personal time boundaries. The second is get exercise and human contact besides family at home. For a business, it might consider company picnics, lunches or similar activities for employees to maintain personal contact. Also, consider one the problems for many now is the fact the kids are not at school but at home even if they are studying.

Backup a sec – is hard drive reliability improving? Annual failure rate from Backblaze comes in at its lowest yet

Tentative Conclusion

The tentative conclusion I draw from this is drives have been improving with newer drives being more reliable than older drives. This seems to follow the trend others have seen with drive reliability. However to use this data for drive selection without more research is not wise as it is just one set of data.

Re: Not solid research

The report is not a study but a data point provided by a company who uses a lot of drives. It implies drives are can be very reliable on demanding conditions. Conducting such a study would require careful study design, i.e. what use cases are you testing (home/SOHO use, corporate workstation, data center, etc.). If someone who has thousands of drives says they are getting these failure rates it does provide a glimpse into the reliability of drives in real world use.

Many benchmarks are artificial because the testing does resemble real world use. USEPA mileage figures are notoriously wacky (normally high) because the testing does not reflect real driving conditions. But as a comparison number between vehicles they are useful as they give a relative idea of fuel usage.

Not now, Gartner. We've had enough of the future to last a lifetime: Meet 'Formative AI' and 'Algorithmic Trust'

I wonder

Has anyone gone back a few years to see how of the BS ideas these idiots were touting as next 'greatest and best' thing that went do in flames? Also, how many are perennially in the BS phase?

Cloud now bigger than Dell, HPE, Lenovo, Cisco COMBINED

Re: So the numbers are in

All the cloud really does is shuffle hardware and wetware around. Someone has to do the work and it has to run on something. So the real question for a company is how to do you want to pay for the hardware and wetware with the corollary being what split between in-house and out-house

IBM takes Power10 processors down to 7nm with Samsung, due to ship by end of 2021

Re: The company may be more of a problem than the chip

Or how inept to do you think the fearful leaders of Itsy Bitsy Morons are might answer the question as to the long term future. I tend to think they will whither away do to serious manglement issues, just not sure of the timeline.

Oracle and Salesforce targeted in €10bn GDPR lawsuit backed by profit-making litigation fund

Isn't Red...

Isn't red the color of blood oozing out. May the EU kill the Minions and bankrupt Leisure Suit Larry (prison is a better place with a couple of hungry wild boars as cell mates for Larry, but I don't think they can nail him on a criminal charge). With regards to Salesfarce, I have no direct experience with but do not generally trust the frauds who purvey Spyware-as-a-Service, especially ones run by a junior Leisure Suit Larrys.

Snortical warfare: Wild boar launches amphibious assault against German beachgoers

Over Here

Wild boars are major problem over here. Often organized hunts are done to thin the population done. They are notoriously dangerous. I have never hunted them but based on their size I would think a fairly large caliber rifle would be needed to kill one.