Posts by Fan of Mr. Obvious

Google slides text message 2FA a little closer to the door

Re: embrace... extend... bloat?

If someone does not have a smart phone, can't come up with enough room to install something to help protect their accounts, or has such an old OS that the app won't run (added this one for ya) then 2FA of any kind is likely not something that is needed.

No smart phone? Likely not using online accounts that need to be protect via 2FA. If you need 2FA and don't own a smart phone, you should rethink your approach.

No room to install authenticator? You are too stupid to know how to use 2FA and are getting owned no matter what you do.

OS does not support authenticator? You phone is already owned and you are too stupid to know it.

IRS tax bods tell Americans to chill out about Equifax

...as the can bounces down the sidewalk

Call me jaded, but this stinks of the beloved government putting out excuses for why they don't need to do anything about how personal data is monetized by companies with large lobbying budgets, without the consent of the individual who is the subject of that information. Indeed it is far easier to put an excuse on the wire than to do the work needed to fix the mess they allowed to manifest.

If you don't like it, you can always call the complaint line for filing a complaint against a Federal or State Government entity at 1-202-224-3121. Not that anyone pays long distance fees anymore, but you just have to love that this is the only complaint line that is not a toll free number. Some may say this is a ploy to keep people from dialing that number out of fear it will cost them money. Me, I say US government has one heck of a great sense of humor.

Super Cali goes ballistic, small-cell law is bogus. School IT outsourcing is also... quite atrocious

Translation...

Come on, Jerry. Give the muni's some credit.

I have always either worked or lived in a place void of a decent signal. I would love it if carriers could simply submit for a permit to the local municipality building committee and get a booster in place. Chances are they (carrier) would be too cheap to want to erect a new pole, so that should be of very little concern. Just hang a piece of equipment on an existing eyesore and call it a day.

Don't fear the reap... er, automation: Puppet hopes to make IT boring, says that's a good thing

Meh

Shops with well documented dependencies, along with well documented applications do exist, but even then you get the admin that failed to check the dependencies or failed to do something other than make sure the server was up (failed to follow the checklist), or you get the developer that has too much authority in the repository scanning tool and decides that he knows better than the policy. Point is, IT are creative folk and will always find a way, however inconvenient, to turn a deployment into a week of Mondays ever now and again.

Even if the code, continuous integration testing, and deploy are clean, you will still get the business unit that says someone pooped on their doorstep because the requirements did not take their needs into consideration. I think you either need to automate this last one, or get rid of the human element completely, for this stuff to ever reach the utopia that is claimed. In other words, regardless of the approach disappointment will always follow.

Tarmac for America's self-driving car future is being laid right now

Singing in the rain

Just over a week ago I an driving to work, in one heck of a rainstorm, when my adaptive cruise control and lane departure systems shut down. The dash says "sensors blocked" and to my unpleasant surprise, I could not just turn them back on even after the rain had slowed. Sure I had always figured that snow, mud, and on the long end a really bad rain storm like this one, would mess up the autonomous controls (it pretty much says so in the manual), however, I did not expect to have to shut the darn car off and turn it back on to restore functionality.

I say good luck to those that go all-in on this stuff. You are undoubtedly going to find frustration down the road, and maybe even a loss of freedom. Loss aside from the privacy issues that is. Want to head to the lake by taking that dusty road? Not. Want to head to the slopes in the storm to hit the fresh powder? Better plan on taking the bus. Want to change lanes to get out behind the slow vehicle in front of you? Over my dead gas pedal (no way I am letting you in, and your car won't do it for you).

Chairman Zuck ends would-be president Zuck's political career

Re: 'Facebook's business has performed well'

Some light reading? Overall I think the linked article has valid points. Could have really done without the political undertone - simply let the actions speak for themselves is enough.

Super Cali goes ballistic, Gatorade app is bogus: Even the sound of it is something quite atrocious

Thanks CA!

Glad California got heavy-handed with this one. At first I was really worried that kids would be convincing their parents to move away from the CA water coast and head into the landlocked states. We have enough CA migration so I am in a much better place knowing that CA if fine having the kiddies in the water, with the sharks, maybe even drinking some salt with their water.

CCleaner targeted top tech companies in attempt to lift IP

Re: "Peoples Republic's timezone"

Agreed. The "blame China" key no longer has any paint on it. How about some hard forensics to back up the claims rather than notations about attributes that are meaningless without more fact?

VMware wants security industry to shrink so its ambitions fit into market

Know you competition

It does not appear that Mr. Gelsinger knows his security competition. Whilst the image itself is pretty bad for my eyes, I see at least a few vendors that are playing in fields where VMware conveniently left out their logo. Perhaps more vendors covering 80% of the market than he thinks?

And what makes VMware think that everyone is so unhappy with multiple vendors? Last time I checked, it was not such a bad idea to not put all the keys in the hands of a single vendor. Sure a single management console is nice, but a single finger pointing at a massive problem is out numbered.

As for AppDefense, how many will be creating versions of acceptable behavior based on already compromised systems?

Thousands of hornets swarm over innocent fire service drone

Re: "Scumbags" is... Wiki link

From the wiki - "Drones (males) are similar to females, but lack a stinger."

Now we need to go back to the original article. Was this a male Drone, or a drone drone?

Futuristic driverless car technology to be trialled on... oh, a Ford Mondeo

Real world testing in the Real World

So my Ford Fusion parks itself both parallel (left and right side) and backing into a traditional parking spot, normally. This weekend I installed a light weight hitch (Class I, smallest they make) to carry my nifty new Saris bike rack.

Any guesses what my car won't do on its own with a bike rack installed? Any idea the number of F'ing sounds and lights my car fires off when I back into may garage with the bike rack (with or without bicycles)?

Put these autonomous vehicles in the hands of normal people and we will show you just how far off you are from realizing your goal.

Seriously, friends. You suck at driving. Get a computer behind the wheel to save your life

My lane departure gives feedback and makes corrections. Sadly, it frequently corrects in the wrong direction when taking freeway transitions e.g., I am turning vehicle into left curve and vehicle things I am wandering so it corrects to the right. This has caused me to keep it off unless I am on an extended drive.

Slurping people's info without a warrant? That's OUR JOB, Google, Facebook et al tell US Supreme Court

Eat your cake and have it too

U.S. Government declares that cell phones are a necessity and as such gives them to those that cannot afford them. U.S. Government then declares that the data transmission of said cell phone is voluntary.

WTF, pick ONE side.

A glimpse of life under President Zuckerberg? Facebook CEO's boffins censor awkward Q&A

My rant on this situation

[comment removed]

Tech billionaire Khosla loses battle over public beach again – and still grants no access

Political catering

If the California politicians treated this guy anywhere close to the way the treat others this would have been over before it started. The State of California has zero problems taking land (with or without buildings) away from citizens for things as meaningless as needing more parking yet this guy is given a pass.

This guy knew how the property operated before he purchased it, and continued to keep it the same until he didn't. CA should tell him the truth, which is the original zoning commission screwed the pooch by not ensuring a right of way was included, then give him some pittance that he could care less about while you change the zoning, and move on. He retains ownership but does not get to keep his ill gotten private beach.

(ill gotten "private beach," not land)

A sarcasm detector bot? That sounds absolutely brilliant. Definitely

Bots training Bots

How many of those millions of messages that the bots were watching were created by bots in the first place? I certainly hope they had a better strategy other than just looking for emojis else blind leading the blind / stupid is forever, seem to have a real shot at being ways to describe the project.

Sensor-rich traffic info shows how far Silly Valley has to drive

Re: "Auto makers keep the CAN bus locked down"

Big difference between access and and owner willing to violate programming. Even lackluster GM has implemented code that tracks the version and update time stamp so they can deny warranty work. Letting some software company root your car so you can void your warranty [and possibly and mfg liability] is not going to be very popular.

HPE boss Whitman among candidates for Uber CEO job – report

Re: 'plans to stay ... until her work is done'

That did it - new Meg meme on IG - "She Can Do Both"

Microsoft finally allows hosted desktops on multi-tenant hardware

Oh, F*

one too many effs in that link ending in .pdff

Ker-ching! NotPetya hackers cash out, demand 100 BTC for master decrypt key

Re: And...

I get the IBM pile on, but I think the larger issue may be that companies bring in third parties expecting the unreasonable, which is that "we are paying to be secure." IBM is likely doing its part to keep things reasonable secure while still allowing business users to get their jobs done. However, if the users are not trained AND willing to participate, this kind of thing is going to happen regardless.

Migrating to Microsoft's cloud: What they won't tell you, what you need to know

Re: Days?

That assumes that you have 100Mb Up. Not sure how it is elsewhere in the world, but in the US if you only have 100Mb Down, then you are likely only 15Mb or so Up.

Even if you have the full 100 to work with, firewalls/DLP, encryption, file verification, ... are going to slow things down.

France and UK want to make web firms liable for users' content

Nice change of pace

When I close my eyes and think about what it would be like to have the mind of a crazy person, this story fits the bill which is a nice change of pace, for me. I was getting really tired of all the political news being about the tard stuff the U.S. has been doing.

Hotel guest goes broke after booking software gremlin makes her pay for strangers' rooms

Marketing stunt of the year!

Headline: Hotel giving away pre-paid rooms in Brooklyn N.Y. - Book now before this limited time extravaganza ends!

They better get their ass handed to them or ^^^ this ^^^ will be too much for some marketing mouse to pass up. Lose her shit? I would have been lucky to avoid handcuffs and a mugshot to go with the story.

Volvo is letting Android 'take over underlying car software' – report

Re: More importantly

No idea how Volvo is going about it, but Ford's newest implementation of Sync Connect which comes in a limited number of 2017 models has some connectivity in place. It does not have dual antennas so I am not sure how it is connecting, but it does allow bi-directional communication between a phone and the vehicle with Ford playing monkey in the middle. At least 1 vehicle (Fusion Platinum) includes the subscription for Sync Connect for 5 years. I believe Sync 3 with Connect updates it apps over-the-air, but I know for sure that Sync 3 OS will accept updates if you connect the car to Wi-Fi. Andoid (and presumably iOS) compatible apps will get pulled in to Sync 3 from a connected and authorized phone. Sync 3 apps and phone apps (Sync Connect apps??) are in different categories within the Sync 3 UI.

Heroic stepmum takes one for team, sticks pot pipe up wazoo

What are you doing?

I needed to lay some pipe.

What is this bullsh*t, Google? Nexus phones starved of security fixes after just three years

Google's fault

If I had known about the history before I purchased three 5x's I would have still bought them. Now that I know I need to replace three 5x's in the not to distant future, I am pissed.

Pissed at me, or pissed at Google? No matter. I will just blame it on Google - easier that way.

You just sent an on-prem app to the cloud and your data centre has empty racks. What now?

RC track

Indoor RC (battery powered of course) track for 1/18 scale cars. Did it, nothing short of an absolute blast.

It's not just Elon building bridges to the brain: The Internet of Things is coming to a head

Article is a little Mus(t)ky

Using Musk in the title/body come across as trolling. Musk is involved in AI to open source it - his is fearful of what it can do to the human existence, as in ending it. Musk thinks the way to counter this is to give the power to the masses rather than just those that want to monetize/control. If we survive this, we may have him to thank.

Amazon's AWS S3 cloud storage evaporates: Top websites, Docker stung

Will the re-write history?

Since the Current Status on the service health dashboard shows green, it will be interesting to see if they update the Status History to show it was FUBAR on 02/28/2017.

Father of Pac-Man dies at 91

Thanks for the memories

Many memories of play that game, and in some cases associated events, burned into my brain. Most vivid ones are play Pac-Man on a table style arcade at a pizza place that my family went to a couple times each month.

College fires IT admin, loses access to Google email, successfully sues IT admin for $250,000

What ever happened to exit interviews?

Blame the IT admin, the failed initial setup, whatever you wish. This could have/should have been avoided in with an exit interview that listed every account he had/had access to.

Q) Who now has controlling access for the Gmail account?

A) It is my personal account, so I do

I am still amazed that with all the cloud, SaaS, IaaS, etc., BS happening that companies still can't figure out how to track this stuff. Maybe someone needs to set up a hosted instance and sell services?

Thanks, Obama: NSA to stream raw intelligence into FBI, DEA and pals

Number of times "warrant" appears in the guidelines

...ZERO unless you include the word "warranted." Of course they cannot use the information against US citizens so no need to worry. Or maybe that is the part they redacted (why would we need to read that part?).

Of course we trust these agencies to do the right thing. No way any agency that that would have difficulty getting a warrant would not go this route.

Me thinks someone is massaging the rocker switch on the shredder that holds the Constitution.

Microsoft sued by staff traumatized by child sex abuse vids stashed on OneDrive accounts

Re: poor widdle snowflakes... wait, what?

I get where you are going, but according to the post one of the plaintiffs was working for a contractor of MS "doing the same work." He then hired on with MS to do the same thing!

Would reviewing this stuff day in, day out cause serious damage? If you were somewhat sensible going in my vote is in the definite column. Did at least one of these guys volunteer? If he knew what the job was before he was hired then it is on him in my opinion.

"Blauert began working for Microsoft contractor Society Consulting in 2011 doing content screening, the complaint says, and was hired by Microsoft in 2012 as a full-time employee doing the same work. He claimed disability in 2013."

Dieselgate: VW pleads guilty, will cough up $4.3bn, throws 6 staff under its cheatware bus

Re: Where does the $4.3e9 go?

HAHAHAHAHAHAHA [cough] [cough] [cough] [choke]...

Where to begin the comments on that one! Only in dreams will that money go towards any debt, or anything of value. How the crap do you think the debt happened to begin with? Certainly not by being responsible.

Google gives up YOUR private data to US govt – but won't hand over its OWN staff personal info

Re: As the article pretty much says

Google does not have this level of info on their employees - they all know better and use Yahoo! Guessing a few hundred bitcoin should allow the fed to acquire the lot.

(no need to DV - relax, just a joke)

USPTO: Hi, Ask Me Anything. Reddit: Can we trademark 'AMA'? USPTO: No.

Question for Reddit AMA

Have any more worthless endeavors that will consume my tax dollars?

US axes $722m takeover of chip biz by Chinese investors. Thanks, Obama!

Best not to deal with the Devil

It seems Aixtron is learning the valuable lesson that making money from powerful governments makes you a government contractor for life. Face it, they own you.

Renewed calls for Tesla to scrap Autopilot after number of crashes

Re: 98%

Sure, lets add legislation. How about a background check before you can buy a Tesla, same as before you can buy a firearm? This question should do nicely:

What is Tesla Autopilot? A) Enables you to text and squeeze your passenger while the car drives itself, or B) Requires that you drive your car at all times.

I am on the road (around stupid drivers) far more than I am around [stupid] people that have guns (probably around smart people with guns, but they are smart enough to not let me know), so I vote for the Tesla background checks! I would feel much better knowing that 100% fewer Tesla's were likely to drive up my rear, even if it is only 2% fewer Tesla's on the road.

Whatever. Either allow the cars or don't. Sooo tired of "more" regulation that does not work.

ExaGrid, Pure, and Veeam want IT to march to their drumbeat

Red headed stepchild and the missing link

Pure's dedupe and compression gives customers that are in fact a good fit for Pure, sufficient disk savings to where adding additional capacity for online backup is kind of a no-brainer. Why spend the money on Exagrid, which is not so far off from Pure from a cost perspective, and is not evergreen, just to push your backups to a slower disk?

Seems like VMware should have paid the publishing costs on the article and an pushed ExaGrid to the side since it is kind of a prerequisite, unless you are the one shop using MS' hypervisor. Lastly, gotta love that Veeam lists "NetApp" HPE" Cisco" and "Dell EMC" under Solutions > Storage and Server on their website. Purely, a mistake I am sure.

AI can now tell if you're a criminal or not

Hold on

I am going to keep from rendering my opinion until the results are in from scanning politicians. Please be sure to tweak the algorithm properly before doing so. After all, that is how this stuff works, yes?

New Relic: Turtles? No. It's cloud infrastructure all the way down

Re: New name just needs "Stick" on the end

If nothing shows on the stick, does that indicate you are in good shape or about to melt it down?

'Too big to fail' cloud giants like AWS threaten civilization as we know it

Re: I don't get it...

I would argue that Data Centers are in fact, different.If for no other reason, they are different because you own and fully manage the hardware resources. Private cloud is nothing more than your own app/OS instance(s) running on some otherwise shared resource. All the XaaS stuff has its place, but you cannot escape that you are not in control. If you do not operate your backend, best case you have a managed service contract where they racked some dedicated hardware in a DC, but that is also a far cry from AWS/Azure.

If you run your own DC or lease space, unless you are so small it just does not matter: You should have multiple peering points that YOU chose and are paying for. You are not relying on external cloud providers load balancing your traffic with everyone else on both ingress and egress. You are not relying on DDNS to find your servers and services. You are not worried that some evergreen deploy is going to wipe out functionality that you are relying on. And it goes on.

The "Too big to fail" is in regards to the potential damage that will be caused, meaning the need for external propping up could be required else it would do substantial financial harm to others. The contract does not mean jack at that point.

Crypto guru Matt Green asks courts for DMCA force field so he can safely write a textbook

gmail is the answer

He wont get the royalties, but guessing he could just type up a bunch of emails and send them to his gmail account. Once the account is hacked, and the emails public, all will be forgiven.

Four US states demand restraining order to stop internet power handover to ICANN

I get the sarcasm, but both AZ and NV, while the do make news, are toss-up states - they both have an equal amount of extreme BS on both sides.

Ladies in tech, have you considered not letting us know you're female?

TMI

The quotes would have been interpreted much differently if I did not have an image of John being a rich, white, egotistical, man. Feels like I cannot un-see him.

HP Ink COO: Sorry not sorry we bricked your otherwise totally fine printer cartridges

Got Heinz?

Speaks of total lack of confidence in the part of HP - we know we are inferior and more money, so we will just screw you over. Canon has been selling superior ink for photo enthusiast, and they seem to be doing just fine on the loyalty side.

Could you imagine how Heinz would be viewed if they were somehow able to, and actually acted on preventing restaurants from refilling their bottles? All these places that do not actually buy Heinz would not be advertising for them, and those that want to use Heinz but refill the bottles from a lower cost can would find a less expensive option over buying new bottles all the time.

HP had been a dead stick in my book for years. They seem to be about what tricks they can come up with to generate revenue rather than innovation and quality. They should do their employees a favor and act responsible.

Facebook's AI boss is on a mission to end spoon-fed machine intelligence

Head start

AI does in fact have to receive instruction up front, but then it is expected to continue to enhance its own learning at some point. I have never listen to a lecture or read an article that outlined AI being able to start from a blank canvas. As for the continued collection of information required to continue learning, sensors, cameras, mics, a robot in every room, will all be data collection points for something that is able to continually learn.

Still, I am not gulping the cool-aid. The human brain includes more than the four senses and memory when reasoning - it also includes emotion, and for some, faith. The latter two are in my opinion, critical omissions when the elites preach about AI surpassing the human brain by 2025. Now of course I suppose we could require the world population to be implanted with sensors for emotion at birth to at least eliminate one part of the equation, but by then we may as well just lest AI eliminate humans.

The elites acknowledge that a human problem (possibly catastrophic in nature) could happen if AI is able to outperform humans, but that is kind of where it ends. The potential reality that AI could displace millions of jobs, collapsing both the supply and demand side of economies, is not something that to them, is more important than progress in the field.

AI may be solving logic problems in my lifetime, but I do not see it solving human problems. And even if it did, us squishies are likely not going to listen. After all, the solution would probably be racist or something like that.

High rear end winds cause F-35A ground engine fire

Opposite of what you would expect?

I would have thought blowing on a tail [pipe] would have a cooling sensation. Seems I have it all wrong.

Is Tesla telling us the truth over autopilot spat?

Re: We are not liable for...

Indeed, Volvo did say that. However they also said the US must work out laws regarding liability first -- the rules are just not clear enough for Volvo.