Posts by Doctor Syntax

CrowdStrike file update bricks Windows machines around the world

Re: One assumes

If they're critical they should run something better. Something designed from ground up to be a server, not something adapted from a desktop design.

Re: Fun Times......

Nevertheless it's a trade-off of risks - or it should be if you recognise the risks. But if you do recognise the risks you are at least in a position to look at mitigations.

"This was an antivirus update and because of zero day exploits it has become the habit (or indeed the default setting from most providers) for these to be applied automatically, invisibly and 'seamlessly'."

Providing it's seamless, fine. That, possibly unconscious, trade-off of risks is now going to have to be revisited.

"If you are a big company like a bank, the national rail company, air line, you should have the resources to do that."

And it's now very evident which banks, national rail companies and airlines didn't bother.

"Setting up rolling updates takes effort."

And fixing the consequences on this scale doesn't?

Re: Remote / WFH

All the more reason to test on a test machine before rolling out business-wide.

Re: Related?

I think it's more a case computer not saying anything.

Re: Related?

It's the Windows monoculture that has turned this into a global outage.

Re: Related?

You can list them by discovering the businesses that have been hit today.

Re: Related?

I'd hope that bonuses at Crowdstrike manglement are going to become a distant memory once all the damage claims have been paid but suspect the EULA will have protected them.

Firms skip security reviews of major app updates about half the time

"There doesn't seem to be a single root cause as to why security reviews are so time and money-consuming"

It's work and work is both. it becomes visible to the bean-counters because it isn't some visible new feature that marketing can point to so it doesn't appear to have any value. If security failures were a cost, such as by vendors becoming liable at law for any damage caused by a security failure then maybe it would have a value.

Thunderbird is go: 128 now out with revamped 'Nebula' UI

Twiddling the UI instead of bug-fixing isn't what most users would regard as maintenance. If they're not going to do the latter I think most people would prefer them to have just left the thing as it was a few years ago.

Re: which began in Thunderbird 102 and continued in the previous release.

They lost the plot when they split browser and mail/news client apart. I suppose enshitification is easier if kept separate.

"Should" is doing heavy lifting there.

Re: Do you still need

It doesn't seem to be accessible from the Settings menu in Firefox. Go to about:config instead.

There isn't much contrast between the slider an background on the scroll bar. It really needs a proper 3D setting to outline it but I suppose that's forbidden by the style police these days. I think I'll keep using Seamonkey as email and main browser until they break that (the calendar is already starting to rot).

Ransomware continues to pile on costs for critical infrastructure victims

Re: How many times do we have to say it?

Yup. If VIP goes to jail the insistence will be that it isn't on the internet.

Add a felony offence for paying the ransom. The malware slingers must be amazed that they're enabled to get away with this scam.

London council accuses watchdog of 'exaggerating' danger of 2020 raid on residents' data

At least they're consistent. If they don't believe the risk was serious then it's reasonable to believe they didn't need to defend against it.

Perhaps their response could be taken as escalating the seriousness to the point where a fine is appropriate. Even so it doesn't make sense for one part of the public sector to be fining another. It's not an easy situation but one that needs to be looked at in terms of how to tackle this in future. Perhaps a requirement that an admonition to a public body should reult in a note being placed on the personal records of senior officers, sufficient to block any salary increases or promotions for some years and a requirement that it should be mentioned on their CVs when applying for any other job in the public sector.

Mega-city's Oracle system won't have effective cash management until 2025

"a project once hailed by Oracle co-founder and CTO Larry Ellison as an exemplar of the company's competitive wins."

And so it was and is. Just think how it boosts Oracle's income every time the price goes up.

Windows NT on a whole new platform: PowerMac

Sometimes the Everest explanation is the only one that fits: "Because it's there"

GNOME head honcho Holly Million steps down

Nominative determinism

"Last November, the GNOME Foundation reported that it received a million euros ... from the German Sovereign Tech Fund"

I wonder why GNOME rather than KDE which is based in Germany.

Craig Wright admits he isn't the inventor of Bitcoin after High Court judgment in UK

Undeniably - afterall Satoshi is anonymous.

Cold comfort to teachers who got paid late, but ERP software rollout had 'unrealistic' timeline

Re: poor understandings of the 'as is' processes that were already in place

This is where the genuine consultant comes into play; one who goes round, listening to the little people because they actually know what goes on, and presents it along with a substantial invoice. Because the information is now more expensive than it was it must now be more valuable and heeded. Price = Value.

Re: Ownership

These roles are easily defined. The owner is the one who gets to shuffle the blame onto someone else. The runner is the one onto whom the blame is shuffled.

Can we have an icon for "Cynical? Moi?"?

Are all those who made bad decisions still in post (or in similar or even better posts elsewhere)?

If so, why?

Agile Manifesto co-author blasts failure rates report, talks up 'reimagining' project

"It didn't even remotely, shall I say, mirror what I would consider to be Agile."

The No True Scotsman approach.

Hey Microsoft – what ever happened to 'Developers, developers, developers'?

"Care? We're not paid to care."

"And if ever an outfit qualified for full understanding of its market, it's Microsoft.

So when it causes what looks like random suffering to its customers, we must assume it's deliberate."

Obviously - except that it's not random.

The understanding is simple. Having established a monopoly and terrified its victims customers about the prospect of jumping ship it can then screw them as hard and as often as it likes wherever there's a chance of increasing revenue.

Developers are just collateral damage.

SpaceX's Falcon anomaly could have serious implications for the space industry

Re: FAA?

Always remembering that a lot of those citizens are also included in the investors, whether they realise it or not.

Is Teams connector retirement a tweak to fit EU laws, or a sign of price rises to come?

"Independent of what Microsoft is required to do by European regulators in the Teams case, there are still some likely pricing and licensing patterns customers should expect based on history"

Translation: This is what we do, being able to blame it on EU regulation is a nice bonus.

The graying open source community needs fresh blood

I think Steven's problem is going to what sounds like an old fart's conference (I speak as a very old fart myself) and being surprised to find himself surrounded by old farts and specifically those of the conference-going variety. If there are any Linus clones beavering away somewhere would they have been invited? Would they have the funds to go if invited? If they were funded to go would they have stayed after taking a quick look at what was on offer?

Re: Closed source community?

What they don't know about will largely be how to fix their reputation for dumping employees rather than paying them what their experience is worth.

Re: Realization

"1. they're paid for it (in which case it's not really open source, as originally conceived,"

AFAICS it was originally conceived, in the main, by people in academia who were being "paid", either actual payments or students on whatever student maintenance was applicable. I don't think it was conceived as being the province of any group more restricted than "those able to contribute". Those being paid by, e.g. Intel may be paid to come up with a specific product for their employer. But the academic or student also has a product in mind - the usual academic product of a publication to enhance their career. It's just that releasing a FOSS is an alternative form of publication to the usual academic paper.

I spy another mSpy breach: Millions more stalkerware buyers exposed

Re: Linksys

Irrespective of who owns the company, why should a router be sending information like that to AWS irrespective of whether it's encrypted or not?

Stop installing that software – you may have just died

Re: Gas

A prime example of why jobsworths shouldn't be put in charge of emergency planning.

Re: Bomb

Just assume the worst and act accordingly. A real incident wouldn't give you a chance to try again if you get it wrong first time.

Re: No strange reason to stop work but I did spot an old box still in action

This was on a Sequentbox with an IBM service contract so it would have to have been they who argued it out with HP. The spares were couriered over promptly. They must have kept plenty of them in stock.

Re: I won a Capture The Flag contest

When it comes to breaching security the only rule of the game is to win by any possible means.

Re: Bomb

Some readers will be aware of a large glass walled building on the Leeds ring road. One of the firms occupying it was a call centre that used to get regular hoax bomb threats. Our evacuation route was supposed to be out of the back door, along the path running beside the all glass gable end to an assembly point of the front lawn. Having come from a situation where my work had had a genuine bomb (and subsequently half destroyed by a genuine fire) I made it clear that whatever the probability of the threat being a hoax there was no way I was going to evacuate by any other route than out of the back door and as straight a line as possible as perpendicular to the building as possible and as a far away as possible.

Re: Gas

"It took a long time to identify a safe place to take the kids for the rest of the day, and I stayed on to help supervise/entertain them."

It might have been worth tipping off the local fire officer. I'm not sure evacuation planning would be in their remit but it might have been and he'd probably have been able to leave TPTB with the distinct impression that the school would have to be closed if they didn't get their fingers out.

Re: How did you get into this room?

The cleaner would probably have been the last person to realise she had a problem - it would just be normal to her. OTOH security should have had a problem with an unescorted cleaner being in the server room.

Re: No strange reason to stop work but I did spot an old box still in action

"Some old boxes are very hard to kill."

Most things made by HP in their days of glory* were hard to kill. Things made now are hard to resist killing.

* except, for some reason, their DAT tape changers. We got through several of those over the course of a couple of years or so.

Re: No strange reason to stop work but I did spot an old box still in action

I can't help feeling a real engineer would just have shown respect.

Re: Strangest?

Pheasants seem to be the most suicidal birds. My dad used to ride to work by motorbike and stopped to pick up one that had jjust been hit by the car in front.

I noticed one day the side of the M! down about Northants/Beds had a lot of dead pheasants at the side of the road. I decided stopping to collect one wouldn't be a good idea.

Smartphone is already many folks' only computer – say hi to optional desktop mode in Android 15 beta

Microsoft are not going to like this. Maybe they'll retaliate by getting into the mobile phone business....

New Outlook set for GA despite missing some key features

"Directions on Microsoft analyst Mary Jo Foley noted other missing features.

. ...on-premises and third-party hosters will not be able to host Exchange with the latest client."

That's not a bug, it's most certainly a feature.

Singapore's banks to ditch texted one-time passwords

When your phone is the security device whoever has your phone is you, even if it isn't you.

Google can totally explain why Chromium browsers quietly tell only its websites about your CPU, GPU usage

So I'll just kepp using Falkon for Google site.

BOFH: It's not generative AI at all, it's degenerate AI

Re: You're now an infinitesimal part of a vast number of weighting algorithms

"feeding IT into IT will cause highly dangerous infinitely recursive loops."

All the more reason to ensure IT data is fed into it. Attack is the bes form of defence.

"Spawn of Satan because that is what I think these AI models are" - and BOFH certainly is.

Re: Best of luck

They'll keep appointing new bosses - they'd get bored otherwise.