Posts by Valheru

Head-mounted VR hardware will never happen, says Neal Stephenson - who coined the term ‘metaverse’

Re: I still want inexpensive AR glasses

Perhaps AR will live on as a strategy to fight the right to repair...

AWS flips switch on Euro cloud as customers fret about digital sovereignty

Re: took their time seeing it for what it is

Well said, French farmers figured out foreign economic gains traded away by their government can cause local injustice dating back to the Marshal Plan.

Re: So can the US switch it off?

This has an unacceptable cost. The counter is EU corporations get pummeled.

Re: Performative hyperscaling

Even then, the lowest paid employee with access is your weak link. Money talks. Tax authorities just make sure there is a net gain. Intellegence agencies taught them.

Euro firms must ditch Uncle Sam's clouds and go EU-native

Re: Not a Trump thing.

Vacines are to protect public health as a whole, not the individual. In hindsight, the Covid vaccines and the corresponding controls seem overkill.

US signals intention to rethink job H-1B lottery

I agree having worked in the USA and Europe. It should say "Western European". My Pole and Czech colleagues have been some of the most intellegent and least entitled I have ever met.

Firefox is dead to me – and I'm not the only one who is fed up

Agreed, tired of firefox sucking up resources on my small linux box. Brave is much less load.

'Close to impossible' for Europe to escape clutches of US hyperscalers

mmmm No. The accounting is transparent in many cases and the costs are not outsized for use of Nuclear power. Swiss nuclear power generation makes a nice small example to have a look at.

The cost of nuclear electricity in Switzerland has been relatively low, ranging between 4 and 7 centimes per kilowatt hour.

If air pollution is factored in, it is far safer than combustion based power. High bound estimates of Chernoble from biased anti-nuclear sources come in around 4-5000 eventual deaths.

Air pollution contributes to approximately 7-8 million deaths annually worldwide from conservative sources.

Signal shuts the blinds on Microsoft Recall with the power of DRM

Re: Copying

Well said brainwrong. The windows screen shot tool works. A compromised OS, a person with a camera... this issue is an example of multiple attack paths with risks that must be accepted with use of ANY secure communication on a typical phone or PC.

99.999% of users will not take the significant time needed to secure the environment.

America's cyber defenses are being dismantled from the inside

Re: Two things:

No he did not cancel ALL of Bidens executive orders.

Particular to this topic, Executive Order 14028 of May 12, 2021 (Improving the Nation’s Cybersecurity) is still going strong.

Federal implementation and enforcement of standards for Cybersecurity are getting stronger and have not slowed down.

The point about "Soft Power" is more on accurate. The decline of globalism is taking the world on a path towards increased state, national, and regional regulation.

International businesses will find life harder, International criminals will find it easier.

CVE program gets last-minute funding from CISA – and maybe a new home

Re: No more Euro freeloaders!

Despite the trollish wording, You do not support the basic premise; balanced funding for an international institution? If you do, the post has some merit.

Re: No more Euro freeloaders!

Then use different software. Every company that wants to stay solvent should heed your words and pay attention to the SW that enables their revenue. Paying particular attention to security.

Trump nukes 60 years of anti-discrimination rules for federal contractors

Re: He's just shotgunning

He is shotgunning. However, Trumps birthright EO does not revoke the constitutional language. We cannot trust many sources to read these EOs for us. It will be interesting how this plays out.

Tesla knew Autopilot weakness killed a driver – and didn't fix it, engineers claim

Two Points

Specific to this incident:

A Tesla has an internal camera. What the driver attentive or not?

About Automobile software in general:

In aviation, we have to widely review every change to all onboard software that impacts safety. Then we must satisfy regulators and customers before pushing a change in writing.

Perhaps it is time we had similar regulation for cars.

UNIX co-creator Ken Thompson is a… what user now?

Re: ...on the feeble pretext that he designed the C language.

I remember when that happened! We were in Denver at a Microsoft Event to roll out their SFU, Services For Linux product. We all had quite the chuckle in the auditorium.

Starlink purchases 'Twitter takeover' ad package, Musk dismisses it as 'tiny'

Re: Tiny by Musk's standards

250k for advertising is peanuts. Musk will make bigger changes for sure and lots of them will be mistakes...

US aims to step up security for federal datacenters: Both physical and cyber

They plan to focus on standards. Metrics and mandates will follow after. $$$ will flow with contracts to implement. Lets see how long that takes... not holding my breath.

Unity and Trinity: New releases for forks of abandoned Linux desktops

I use the Unity desktop daily with 3 or 4 Apps open at a time. I find it productive. What makes it appalling?

Austrian watchdog rules German company's use of Google Analytics breached GDPR by sending data to US

Re: Max's wishful thinking

I think Gordon 10 is correct still.

The vague "puzzle pieces" statement seems aimed at the likelihood that the Google Analytics platform anonymization does not provide 100% coverage of the data set. So there are example fields besides IP that can be used to poke holes but the burden is on the website folks not Google.

Here's how we got persistent shell access on a Boeing 747 – Pen Test Partners

Re: Run old systems for better security

I am sure lots of folks are like me and keep old images of backtrack and other useful legacy toolboxes.

There are lots of old machines still out there and the admins are looong gone and past caring.

China all but bans cryptocurrencies

Re: "And then there’s the Digital Yuan"

Intentions to regulate and tax are more likely IMHO. Do not underestimate the greed here.

However, Ray Dalio is in your corner...

Docking £500k commission from top SAS salesman was perfectly legal, rules judge

I really wonder about the communication here between the salesman and his leadership.

Did he have an email assuring him the commission would be paid on contract signature?

Huawei CFO's legal eagles take HSBC to court in Hong Kong to obtain evidence against US extradition

Re: A bit more detail on that mountie.

Flip it around, He was hired in Macau deliberately to undermine the extradition case?

Signal boost: Secure chat app is wobbly at the moment. Not surprising after gaining 30m+ users in a week, though

Re: Because...

Reverse lookup of personal details by using a phone number is Hard?

I estimate it is a hardlink for 99% of active numbers.

It's been a day or so and nope, we still can't wrap our head around why GitHub would fire someone for saying Nazis were storming the US Capitol

Re: Communist = Nazist

Whitewash. Next tell us how great a person Mao was?

Re: The problem

Communist leaders carry a history and reputation no less close minded and bloody than Nazi ones.

Neither form of government gets high marks.

The US government is tilting more towards Plutocracy at the expense of other interests. The disenfranchised were easy recruits for a deadly farce at the US Capital.

Flash in the pan: Raspberry Pi OS is the latest platform to carve out vulnerable tech

Printer memory Lane

I have fond memories of my little Epson dot matrix in the mid-80s. Attached to my PCjr, it was my High School homework printer. I did not have another printer till after leaving the Navy in 94. The HP Laserjet I purchased from auction got me thru University. A huge lumbering beast with odd noises, the toner cartridge weighed more than my Epson had.

US Air Force deploys robot security dogs to guard base

Re: Burning books...

Non-lethal sounds like a first start...

To distract/attract fire while humans respond from cover:

A very bright spotlight

A very loud horn or siren

A paintball gun with dye for tracking in the ammo.

Selling hardware on a pay-per-use or subscription model is a 'lie' created by marketing bods

Re: fashion

There is an insightful haiku hiding in there somewhere...

There's a reason why my cat doesn't need two-factor authentication

It also comes in a convenient suppository.

Sinister secret backdoor found in networking gear perfect for government espionage: The Chinese are – oh no, wait, it's Cisco again

Re: Keys

The majority of Americans are ignorant not complicit. We were already sold down the river by the supreme court in 2010, Citizens United v. FEC, which was the tipping point. Our current POTUS represents the protest vote fed up with the Corptocracy form of government we have now.

NPM is Not Particularly Magnanimous? Staff fired after trying to unionize – complaints

Indeed, race and genetics are not the same thing. IMHO using an unscientific term like "race" and tracking it in statistics is a fools errand. Better metrics are there and should be used.

Google Project Zero boss: Blockchain won’t solve your security woes – but partying just might

20 something years later...

"Black Hat founder Jeff Moss echoed Tabriz’s calls for a secure-by-default world."

Theo de Raadt said this in the mid-90s

Tesla undecimates its workforce but Elon insists everything's absolutely fine

Re: Undecimate?

Not if they come back as a hillbilly...

..Thats reintarnation

Trump’s immigration policies costing US tech jobs says LogMeIn CEO

Nonsense. Jobs market is tightening here in Phoenix over the last few years. Hired guns in IT are busy and businesss are raising wages and benefits.

Every country uses people for passport control and people make mistakes. Dealing with such situations gracefully is an important skill for expats that merits whole forums and books elsewhere.

The new, new Psion is getting near production. Here's what it looks like

Re: Storage

Storage-IO is my first thought. If it has M2 I will buy one.

Delete Google Maps? Go ahead, says Google, we'll still track you

Re: What's the problem really?

Mr Cobb said:

"it is my data"

In the EU yes, not many other places sadly.

As his 3rd paragraph points out, The danger to society is real and for some folks personal.

Quick note: Brexit consequences for IT

Re: Not just the 51st

Well we Yanks will just come to consider you the East Coast California.

No change in US law, no data transfer deals – German state DPA

Change yes but not for the average joe.

The most likely result IMHO is an agreement between the EU and the USA. The result could be a test for EU federalism.

US corporations work in the EU via a variety of legal structures designed to lower tax and limit liability/risk. They have managed to profit nicely despite changes to EU and local law by just staying ahead of the very slow legislative process and lobbying. Similar methods will be used to architect legal data transfer.

I admit it is fun to imagine this turning into an exciting change. So riddle me this:

How does an EU citizen act against a non-European & non-resident company doing bad things with their data today?

All of the UK is not in the EU, what happens if an EU person's data makes it to the USA via the Cyprus Sovereign Base Areas or British Indian Ocean Territory?

Big Blue's GPFS: The tech's fantastic. Shame about the product

Re: GPFS Solution Architects

I deployed a V7000 system for IBM and the IBM sales folks are indeed the biggest problem. They promise the world and do not understand what they are talking about.

The V7000 had serious limitations and bugs when I was setting it up (Q1 2012) and as Peter Gathercole mentioned the GUI interface that tries to hide the complexity of GPFS just makes things worse.

Add in the support issues John mentioned and it seems Re-Store have a sweet niche helping folks with a genuine need for GPFS.

IBM PCjr STRIPPED BARE: We tear down the machine Big Blue would rather you forgot

Software on the PCJr

My dad bought me one of these when they came out. I was 13.

He used Lotus 123 on a cartridge and something called PC-Turbo (do not know what it did)

I played Wizardry, Starflight, and Kings Quest (which had a bug that prevented finishing the game).

The ROM basic was the only language I programmed on the thing. Funny to think that it was 30 years ago.