Posts by Doctor Syntax

Danish artist pockets museum's cash and calls it art... and other stories

Re: Great (blank) future

Correction:

not some non-dabbling dilettante

2FA? More like 2F-in-the-way: It seems no one wants me to pay for their services after all

Re: "Something I know" isn't ....

"sent by means of non-arriving SMS messages"

Just this.

Tried to make a payment this morning. After jumping through the hoops of enter password again and enter two digits from security code again they send a text. Phone which was supposed to be charging wasn't.. Hastily plug it in properly. Request resend. Request it again. Nothing. Eventually 3 texts arrive by which time the payment page has timed out. If I try to go through the whole thing again will it send duplicate payments? Who knows with this wunch of bankers? Thank goodness I still have a cheque book.

"Authentication proves that you are consenting to this security check."

By the time you've entered the password a second time and entered two digits of the pre-arranged security code a second time the SMS, should it arrive before time out seems a bit superfluous in terms of authenticating that you are consenting to the check.

And let's remember that the bank, should they ring you up, will be totally unable to distinguish themselves from any random phone phisher.

They will also fail to reply to any emails requesting that they confirm whether of not the marketing spam, laden with links, sent in their (noreply) name from some 3rd party professional spammer digital marketing company professional spammer is really theirs or not.

"Adding 2FA into the mix means the attacker also needs to physically have the 2FA device, or be able to spoof it, as well."

And nobody ever lost a phone or had one stolen. Or had their SIM swapped by a bit of social engineering of their mobile service provider.

"As in authenticating that you are the person who you identified yourself as."

And some potentially lost, stolen or cloned package of electronics does that?

It's all security theatre.

"This sort of thing makes me wonder just how maintainable the name-space for usernames is."

Obligatory https://dilbert.com/strip/2000-08-19

Re: Smartphone apps

"why do I need to pollute my phone for a one-night stay in a hotel I never intend to use again"

In fact it could be the cause of reversing the order of "never" and "intend".

Re: Maybe more for On Call but here goes....

That's easily dealt with. Ensure that scanning the sample results in a message telling them that it's only a sample and scan the one on the authentication scheme.

Two factors: User Id and password.

Count them. Two.

Why don't we call these two factor ID/

Because some numpty at some point decided that the user's email address was a piece of secure, unguessable information that could be safely used as a user ID and would save on the effort of keeping a separate email address. And the lemmings followed. Because most people only have a single email address they use the same user ID everywhere, reducing its authentication value to zero.

So now we have to have an additional, how many hoops can you jump through, "factor" and call it 2 factor authentication.

One-character bug gives away $90m in COMP tokens – recipients can keep 10% or consider themselves doxxed

"In the Compound forum, developers discussing the incident believe it would be a good idea to commit to rigorous testing and auditing prior to major code changes."

Rigorous testing and auditing! What is the world coming to?

If it's going to rain within the next 90 mins, this very British AI system can warn you

Re: Don't need AI for this!

I think the Lake District equivalent would be "Summer is the best time of day".

"weather forecasts can be good or bad in lots of different ways; perhaps one forecast gets precipitation in the right location but at the wrong intensity, or another gets the right mix of intensities but in the wrong places, and so on. "

It sounds like a job for quantum computing.

Re: Don't need AI for this!

The more general form is "If you can see the $LocalHill then its going to rain, if you can't see the $LocalHill then its raining already"

There's a reason why East Anglia is drier than the rest of the UK.

Beijing explains what China's new data protection law really means – a month after it took effect

There's a lot in there that other countries could usefully learn from. Even the national security stuff - MoD promotion lists & BCC for example.

'Quantum computer algorithms are linear algebra, probabilities. This is not something that we do a good job of teaching our kids'

Teach linear algebra and probabilities? Why not include critical thinking as well?

As Google sets burial date for legacy Chrome Extensions, fears for ad-blockers grow

Re: Toy extensions won't mess with their revenue stream.

In my case it means I won't switch to Chrome.

The browser market has swung one way and another ever since the web was invented. There's no reason why that won't continue.

Samsung is planning to reverse-engineer the human brain on to a chip

We already have brains. We may not understand how they do it but we have a good understanding of the results it can produce. A much better effort would be to look at what the human brain finds difficult and make products that help with those tasks. But that sounds remarkably like what we've been doing all these years with so much existing software.

Metro Bank techies placed at risk of redundancy, severance terms criticised

If I had an account there I'd be quite agile about moving it.

If your head's not in the cloud, you're not in the right place

Re: The complexity and scale of a proper corporate infrastructure

Back in the distant past - 1980s, 1990s - I worked in an environment where we had a small team working on Unix/RDBMS (mine), another on VAX/VMS and another on IBM type stuff all handling different aspects of the business. I'm not sure about the last two but in my area we didn't really differentiate between development and operations; our technical knowledge applied to both operations (which wasn't all that onerous) and development, and user support informed our knowledge of our part of the business which was essential for development. Back then it was just what we did - it didn't need a special name.

Only in the last few years before retirement was I in a mostly Windows shop where operations and development were separate. It made life harder, at least from a development point of view, not least because of the amount of ceremony involved in handing stuff over. Oddly enough the ceremony was suddenly set aside any time we had to look at the operational system to sort out the crap data my client's client (one of the Usual Suspects) had sent because their favoured Indian outsourcer had rotated in another lot of XML-deficient staff on short term visas.

I wonder if combining the two has somehow become special because of the notion that you have to crank out new stuff on a daily or even hourly basis.

Don't touch that dial – the new guy just closed the application that no one is meant to close

Re: the words "DO NOT CLOSE DOWN THIS APPLICATION"

"bigger and better idiot-proof"

I think there's probably another iron triangle involved here. Certainly "bigger" and "idiot-proof" don't fit together very well.

Huawei CFO Meng Wanzhou admits lying about Iran deal, gets to go home

The whole affair seems to have been a mix of political dogma and personality issues, global security, national trade issues and US overreach, particularly getting Canada to do its dirty work. No wonder it's eventually fallen apart.

With just over two weeks to go, Microsoft punts Windows 11 to Release Preview

Re: Joke

"And the eco-crowd is nowhere to be seen."

Migrating from one single issue to another takes time.

"A problem is not FIXED until the customer has tested it and verified it is fixed"

I don't think Microsoft look on you as a customer. Customers are OEMs who ship Windows installed on computers. They don't have your problem.

The devil you know

Why fret about updating? By the time your W10-running H/W dies W11 will have reached what used to be known as SP3. Folklore ways that was the marker for considering a new OS to be safe to install. No need to hurry.

Scientists took cues from helicopter seeds to invent tiny microchips that float on wind

Scattering e-waste over the countryside.

Check your bits: What to do when Unix decides to make a hash of your bill printouts

A late cousin-in-law was reputed to occasionally go over a roundabout to save time. And, no, that's nothing to do with him being late - he lived into his 90s. At one stage he owned a car I'd have loved to have had a drive in - a Bristol 406. The family were also keen on caravanning (takes all sorts) and wrote to Bristol for advice about fitting a tow bar. The body was aluminium on a chassis that stopped somewhere about the back axle. They wrote back to say if he worked it out could he let them know. As he co-owned an engineering works he did work it out.

Re: Not a Cossie, but...

Did they even wonder where you might be parking it?

Re: HP LaserJet 4

LaserJet II? I wouldn't be surprised to find a numberless LaserJet working somewhere. Probably in the ruins of the building that collapsed under its weight.

Re: I don’t think printers will ever work…

You should look for an old HP laser printer.

CutefishOS: Unix-y development model? Check. macOS aesthetic? Check (if you like that sort of thing)

Re: We need a Windows simlation plugin

I forgot the progress dialog that jumps randomly between 99%, 2%, 110% and 84%. This isn't and ordinary progress bar, it's an MS progress bar.

Of course it is . Has been for years.

Re: Which do you choose a hard or soft option?

If it's part of the distro the correct way is to open the distro's S/W installer (Synaotic in my case), search and click. You only run the install as admin, unlike some of the S/W on my old Windows VM (I occasionally look to remind myself on what I'm missing).

Irrespective of whether the base desktop environment is Gnome or KDE it provides things like file management which are available across all the distros that use it. I simply don't grok the idea of reinventing these wheels.

Re: We need a Windows simlation plugin

You forgot random control panels to control random things and the occasional need to hack the registry. Without those you're fooling nobody.

Simple. The object is to bluff people into thinking they're running a Mac. In those terms the objective is met (or maybe not). Productivity is for peons.

Re: Which do you choose a hard or soft option?

You don't think that have been something to do with whoever put together the RPM file?

What an odd comment.

All KDE settings are handled by the System Settings GUI. S/W installation from the distro is handled by Synaptic. Admittedly I usually handle upgrades from the command line because apt update;apt upgrade is simply slicker than fiddling with a GUI. Definitely better than messing with that registry thing.

And I've only seen one full screen launcher - that's on Ubuntu. I suppose there has to be one for those who like the app-centric smartphone approach to working but there are alternatives for those who have a document-centric approach to working, minimalists or pretty well any way you want. One size doesn't fit all and, in the Unix/Linux world, it doesn't have to.

You should give it a try instead of relying on random internet posts you might have read.

Nothing works any more. Who decided that redundant systems should become redundant?

Re: Been There...

"a brief period of unemployment...It barely lasted two months."

In freelancer terms that's called "being available" as in the pimp's agent's greeting "Are you available?".

Re: Chuddies (sort of)

The old ones are the best. Alternative version involves diabetes and urine.

Re: Doubting Hervé

"The Candy, Hoover and Beko branded ones are all 60cm wide, whereas Hotpoint is 59.5cm and Bosch is 59.6cm. "

You don't mention AEG. For reference new Bosch is wider than old AEG. Either that or it's deeper because the gap narrows slightly back towards the back.

BOFH: You'll find there's a company asset tag right here, underneath the monstrously heavy arcade machine

Re: Sshh!

At a site visit? All that should have been sorted out from the plans at requirements stage before even plans were drawn.

Re: "I'm sure we'll lose the records of it in the fire, though...""

On second thoughts it was Church of Ireland parish records that were lost. All those presidents etc want RC ancestors.

Re: Personal heaters

No, proper heating would have been in order.

Re: Personal heaters

Spare 13 amp plug once I'd wired one end to the rest of the garage wiring.

Re: "I'm sure we'll lose the records of it in the fire, though...""

The Dublin Four Courts fire of 1922 made Irish genealogy much more difficult although oddly enough it never seems to have inconvenienced US presidents and other celebrities who realised having Irish roots might be a good idea.

Your own fault: sending a manager to do something useful.

Re: Personal heaters

"don't be the idiot who fitted an extension block but forgot to wire it up so made a double plug ended cable to energise the extension block"

I once discovered one of those powering the garage when I moved house.

Re: Personal heaters

"the electrics in our building being quite old (building no longer exists)"

Cause and effect?

If you're Intel, self-driving cars look an awful lot like PCs

Re: To intel,

The car's aircon will be re-purposed to cool the server room.

Re: Trickle-down effect?

"using them like taxis, instead of being something personal"

Good luck with getting your subscription car to take you to work in rush hour when everyone else wants to do the same. In order to guarantee that your subscription will approximate to that of owning a car except for the addition of somebody's profit. Unless the pattern of usage changes the number of vehicles , the need to store them outside of peak demand and the consequent economics won't change.