Posts by Doctor Syntax

It's a Meow-nixed system, I know this: Purr-fect storm of 3,000+ insecure databases – and a data-wiping bot

According to the articles the first one discovered was a database of logs of a VPN that assured its customers they didn't keep logs. I'd say the customers would be quite pleased to know this had happened.

Re: Security

"Who'd have thought?"

Not enough did.

Re: Have any sites gone catatonic?

It's the lesser of two alternatives. In fact, if the data was data that shouldn't even have been held by whoever owned the database it's an excellent outcome.

Raytheon techie who took home radar secrets gets 18 months in the clink in surprise time fraud probe twist

Re: Maybe

Except in a military radar establishment where you can never find a sledgehammer when you need one.

Not only did he take what he wasn't authorised to,he was extremely careless, not to asy inept in handling them. And yet time fraud was the only offence he was convicted of.

Re: Approximately ten

And having documents on his person. Tattoos?

Nowadays it's called working from home. If he wasn't going to work on it and he wasn't selling it on (which seems to have been accepted) then time fraud seems a bit dubious. In fact he might have got more work done than if he'd been in the office.

UK's NCSC reveals Premier League footie clubs to be ripe pickings for cybercrooks: One almost lost £1m to BEC attack

Re: Football

It's not as simple as you think. I'd include bookies in the list of businesses I don't sympathise with but I've done my bit in regard to dealing with at least one crime in regard to them in the distant past, probably more but run of the mill cases tend to merge in the memory or get lost from it.

Being opposed to crime and feeling sorry for the victims aren't necessarily linked.

"He ended up moving the next summer for about £30m, so it's not peanuts on the line"

Football's one of the areas for which I can't really work up any anger about their getting scammed.

It might not take too much guessing around first name/surname combinations.

What evil lurks within the data centre, and why is it DDoS-ing the ever-loving pants off us?

Re: Updates are important!

"yet another tale of developers believing that the latest patches are so unbelievably great"

Or possibly doing what they'd been told to do by some mangler who insisted they needed this level of checking right now.

Re: TomTom Updates

"I still have to keep Chrome around for those dumbass sites that don't work in FF."

I usually take the view that if they can't take the trouble to make sites that work properly the site itself isn' worth me taking the trouble to look at.

Re: SMTP ddos

I think it relates more to business practices and maybe training practices in India.

Back in the day my then client did a good amount of work with one of the Usual Suspects. Like many at the time and, no doubt, much later the Usual Suspect subbed all development out to one of the Indian Usual Suspects who would - I think for visa reasons - rotate staff from India (or Indian staff if you're prepared to tolerate the adjectival form) through their UK office. These ranged from great* to just out of some training establishment. Needless to say it was the latter who got thrown into the deep end of actual coding. The consequence was periodic bouts of receiving not-quite XML files and having to explain to one of these staff-newly-arrived-from-India (and presumably just out of some training establishment there) how to get names such as O'Neil into well-formed XML.

So the fact that the dude was Indian speaks volumes about the general business environment.

* And a distinct improvement on the initial definitely not Indian "consultant" who initially arrived to brief us about one project.

Bill Gates debunks 'coronavirus vaccine is my 5G mind control microchip implant' conspiracy theory

Re: Gates' problem

"UFO's are space aliens"

Half the problem with believers in this one is an inadequate grasp of English or at least ignorance of what the U stands for.

If they're unidentified what are they doing claiming to have identified them?

Re: Gates' problem

Why would anyone who wanted to build a steam powered rocket (as opposed to Rocket) and fly in it be unlikely to also be a flat-earther?

Re: Very good skeptoid podcast recently debunking this stuff

"Unless they've already thought about it (or had someone think about it for them)"

This last. What you need is to get them to realise that that somebody has ulterior motives for having lied to them.

Re: Very good skeptoid podcast recently debunking this stuff

"Sadly, calling them 'fucking nutters' doesn't play a constructive role in pulling them out of their hole."

Expletives are always fighting talk.

Calling them gullible might be better. It puts them into the role of victim and you into someone who wants to help them so if they want to fight then their enemy is whoever sold them this garbage in the first place.

Some first posts are good. Some are by people who blundered into the wrong forum by mistake.

Fitness freaks flummoxed as massive global Garmin outage leaves them high and dry for hours

"worrying perhaps about their personal data stored there"

The time to worry was when they were wondering whether to store the data.

Twitter hack latest: Up to 36 compromised accounts had their private messages read – including a Dutch politician's

Privacy Shield

Is this covered in those standard contract clauses?

UK tech spending in 2020 will be hit harder than in France or Germany with little prospect of growth next year – analysts

So this fall in spending explains https://www.theregister.com/2020/07/17/everything_must_go_distributor_clear/

I assume the analysts' process for dealing with the unexpected is:

1. Will it increase or decrease spending? Flip coin to decide.

2. Make up appropriate figures.

3. Write up figures as a press release.

My life as a criminal cookie clearer: Register vulture writes Chrome extension, realizes it probably breaks US law

Re: Information cannot be contained

One thing which amuses me is sites which aren't paywalled but retaliate against blocking their Javascript by fuzzing the pictures that punctuate the article. Pictures that contribute nothing to understanding the article but which presumably cost the site good money from a picture library.

Alternative approach

Dear example.com

It has come to my notice that you are storing data on my computer. Please find attached my invoice for storage costs at 1 [currency unit of choice] per byte. Payment is due in 7 days. If this invoice is not paid all such existing data will be removed as will any further data you may attempt to store.

They can't complain about the consequences they were warned about and which result from their own inaction. They should consider themselves lucky that you didn't get a winding up order on non-payment.

Twitter Qracks down on QAnon and its Qooky Qonspiracies

No, the original ant-vax conspiracy theory, MMR, was a particularly ingenious one.

The deep state is worried that welfare legislation is removing natural selection's ability to root out people who aren't bright enough to cope on their own. You can't Darwin out people who've already bred. What you can do is get them to stop their offspring breeding hence MMR. One of the Ms of the MMR vaccine is mumps. If you can persuade the numpties from vaccinating their offspring against mumps you make use of one of the side-effects of mumps, male infertility.

The real genius of the way this conspiracy was planted was to make a fuss about the other M, measles. That distracts from what it's really about.

Re: Such Hypocrisy

Whoosh?

Maybe. Who can tell?

I can't help thinking that the best way to deal with things like this is to take advantage of the fact that those who believe conspiracy theories are both paranoid and gullible. Don't try to explain there is no deep state. Accept they believe it exists and play on that by launching counter conspiracy theories along the generic lines of $CONSPIRACY_THEORY is a lie propagated by the deep state to distract you from $WHATEVER_ELSE_THEY_CAN_BE_PERSUADED_TO_FEAR

Cynical? Moi?

UK intel committee on Russia: Social media firms should remove state disinformation. What was that, MI5? ████████?

Re: If you acknowledge Russian operations supporting UK separatism - what's the consequence?

"IK, that remark was written from the perspective of the current UK PM,"

Use of second person is tricky.

Re: What the..

"a retrospective assessment of the EU Referendum is not necessary" [under breath] "because it would call our entire political position into question."

Sick of AI engines scraping your pics for facial recognition? Here's a way to Fawkes them right up

Re: Artificial Competence

Actual Incompetence

Re: Yabbut...

Attempted Inference

'First ever' snap emerges of something vaguely resembling our solar system 300 ly away. We'll take 10 tickets

Re: Are those numbers right???

My first reaction was that "very similar to our Solar System" relies on your definition of "very similar". But he goes on to say "but at a much earlier stage of its evolution". Does this mean that the early Solar System is considered to have been similarly widely spaced?

Mexican cave relics suggest humans were populating the Americas up to 17,000 years earlier than thought

Re: YDP

Theories and evidence should have a close relationship. Theories are attempts to understand existing evidence and new evidence is used to test them. However I do share some reservations about archaeological theories.

It's amazing to see things going in cycles. Back in the late '60s when I was involved in this sort of thing type-fossil nomenclature such as Older and Younger Dryas was being replaced by type-sites such as Allerød and Bølling.

Re: Spelling

Correct in the case of Macallan. Across the pond - and I mean the local one - there's also whiskey.

Re: "Of course it's all just guesswork"

AIUI it's still faster than counting radioactive disintegrations the way we used to do it.

After banning Chinese comms bogeyman, UK asks: Huawei in this mess? It was a failure of capitalism, MPs told

Exporting manufacturing to cheap labour countries has served medium term government policy well. Exclude one cost you can't export - property - from cost of living calculations and you can hold down headline inflation figures. Tie interest rates to that, ignore the housing bubble and create a fool's paradise. It served well until reality intruded.

Re: It is capitalism

"For the record, I don't see a fix."

The fix would also be long term - to turn boardroom thinking round so that it looks at the long term. That would require changes in financial and taxation regulations. Ban bonuses that don't reflect long term performance or make them more highly taxed. Likewise, hit short term trading in stocks and shares.

Nominet shakes up system for expiring .uk domains, just happens to choose one that will make it £millions. Again

As I read it you won't be able to order it through your usual supplier,you'll have to bid at the auction. The auction will be advertised and there's more likelihood of somebody noticing it. The Harry Potter first edition that the local charity shop marks at £1-50 on its bookshelf would make much more if they put it into auction.

Does Nominet come under the jurisdiction of OFCOM? If not, why not and isn't it time it did?

We've heard of littering but this is ridiculous: Asteroid dumps up to 50 quadrillion kg of space dirt on Earth, Moon

Re: 50 quadrillion kg...

We can reduce it a bit. 5x10^13 tonnes. Or tons for all the practical difference it makes. How much does a typical social media data centre weigh?

Don't strain yourself, Zuck, only democracy at stake... Facebook makes half-hearted effort to flag election lies by President Trump

Re: For values of "terrified little boy" ...

"maintain a straight face"

I don't think Zuck has any other facial expression so it doesn't really mean anything.

Re: Flagging falsehoods

"your major shareholders aren't calling for the Board to be removed"

Their major shareholder isn't likely to do that.

What might have an effect is the advertising dollars walking away if they don't take action.

Re: why aren't postal votes considered a fraud risk in the US?

" I honestly hope the US manages to get it's shit together, but I doubt it."

A lot of us hope that. We also doubt it based on long observation.

Re: why aren't postal votes considered a fraud risk in the US?

Thank you for your long explanation. For the benefit of us folks in the UK could you please explain what a hanging chad is and why it matters.

Linux Foundation starts new group to build pandemic-popping software

Re: The right tool for the job?

"I don't have to worry about incompetent/cavalier developers that make stuff that violates my privacy far more than necessary to accomplish the job."

Of course not. HMG and their special advisers are competent at violating your privacy.

The W3C steers the way the World Wide Web works. Yet it is reluctant to record crucial meetings – and its minutes are incomplete

"It is important both that people be able to participate, and that they feel comfortable expressing their inputs. Since we have heard from some people that they would not be comfortable participating if they expected audio recordings to be made available"

That seems to be a cogent argument for making recordings and making them public.

Twilio: Someone waltzed into our unsecured AWS S3 silo, added dodgy code to our JavaScript SDK for customers

the idea of uncontrolled/3rd party resources being pulled in on client-side without any checks at all is just ludicrous normal in this day and age.

FTFY

Brit telcos deliberately killed Phones 4u, claim admins in £1bn UK High Court sueball

Re: Ah yes P4U

"Within the space of 10 minutes"

I wouldn't have stayed there so long.

I'm always prepared to walk out on poor service and high pressure sales count as -ve service in my view. I've also walked out for the opposite reason; after being left alone for an unreasonable period of time I walked to the dealership across the road and bought a new car there instead.

Re: A few things

If you're aware of it being evidence of something illegal you might have an obligation to preserve it.

I never got the impression that "the dog ate my homework" would have gone down well with a judge.

UK.gov admits it has not performed legally required data protection checks for COVID-19 tracing system

The problem would be in educating the policy makers. A DPIA saying what the impact of existing policy is would make far more newspaper headlines than a court saying that haven't had one when they should.