Posts by Doctor Syntax

Chrome 56 quietly added Bluetooth snitch API

A year or so ago there was a lot of talk about Thunderbird finding a new home and the Document Foundation was mentioned. My own view was that they would do well to take over not only Thunderbird but also Seamonkey. I liked the idea of a browser free from the influences of both Google and Mozilla. Sadly I haven't heard about the Thunderbird proposals for months.

In another place (OK, /.) there was an article on an Olimex laptop and comment was passed on the 1GB memory and what couldn't be done with it. Someone said that nobody sane runs an out-of-date web-browser. In this case nobody sane runs an up-to-date Chrome.

Slammer worm slithers back online to attack ancient SQL servers

Lessons have been learned.

"Only a few customers were affected"

"Your security is important to us"

"Nation state attack"

We'll hear all the old familiar lines. I wonder who from...

Thought your data was safe outside America after the Microsoft ruling? Think again

Re: Email is like a postcard

"But what happens when you have to communicate OUTSIDE your domain?"

Not using a US-based multinational is a starting point.

Re: "Unless you go the full totalitarian, and run a private security state"

"Someone with enough cojones"

The usual rejoinder on this side of the pond is "You and whose army?". That, in effect, is the question I posed. In the event of a face-off who would be responsible for enforcing or opposing and on which side would they come down.

Re: America's increasing isolation (@ AC)

"this was long before safe harbour was shown to be so much hot air, but our lawyers had already come to that conclusion"

I hope they didn't bill you too much for that. A couple of seconds' worth would be about right.

Re: I don't see this as a problem

"This order concerns a US citizen and US company, with offshore data. The precedent would be limited to such cases or similar."

If I understand the article correctly a part of the argument rests on Google moving data about between jurisdictions for their own convenience. I can very easily see a lawyer arguing that the precedent applies whatever the nationality of the data subject and getting away with it. That's similar, thin end of the wedge etc.

Re: "Unless you go the full totalitarian, and run a private security state"

"That would be the 1 clause act suspending The Senate and Congress and instituting direct rule from the Oval Office."

My understanding of the US constitution is fairly restricted but an Act would indicate Congress & Senate, rather as it would indicate Hoc & Lords in the UK. So do you think they'd suspend themselves?

An Executive Order might attempt this but AIUI there are then mechanisms in place to declare the President unfit.

In the event of the excrement entering the aircon in this fashion who'd have to implement such rival orders & who would they side with?

Re: America's increasing isolation

"And even if Germany (in particular) don't like it, are the German government really going to say "boo" to America?"

So? It'd go up to the ECJ in that case. Actually Germany are quite sensitive about this. Stasi for one thing & Merkel's phone for another.

Re: America's increasing isolation

"corporations: don't give two hoots about (their customers') privacy. If using infrastructure in the USA saves them 0.5% costs they will do so. They will give lip service to privacy, just another corporate lie."

A few cases brought under GDPR once it comes into force and they'll give more than two hoots. They'll give some substantial fines.

Re: I don't see this as a problem

"There is absolutely no reason why people who live outside the US should be concerned with this ruling."

From a quick look at the article the precedent set might be somewhat wider than you think. Consider "Just because the data happened to be held outside the US without the user's knowledge shouldn't mean it is immune to discovery." Looking at this from a European perspective one can easily see some lawyer arguing to extend this to "just because the data happened to be held in the US without the user's knowledge shouldn't mean it is immune to discovery" and then another extending "happened to" to "could".

"It affects you about as much as the UK law forcing one to reveal passwords affects me."

If you were to come to the UK that law would affect you but at least it would be a deliberate action on your part. My data could be sent to the US without my permission or even knowledge, simply by doing business with a UK company which happens to use some US cloud-based services and once there it is not safe; redress is not good enough.

Re: America's increasing isolation

"American law"

AIUI the Microsoft case is still wending its way to the Supremes. If Google have any sense they'll appeal this one as far as they can. Until decisions are reached there American law on the point is still unresolved.

But there's good reason to avoid relying on any US-based business to hold information securely, just in case. There's also good reason for multinationals to consider whether the US is a fit jurisdiction in which to base their operations.

Brexploitation? Adobe gets creative with price hikes

Re: Inevitbale

"I think we all saw that coming."

No, there always seemed to be those who thought it was a good idea. They thought it was working out cheaper.

For $deity's sake, smile! It's Friday! Sad coders write bad code – official

Re: bullshit

"they expect us to maintain huge ancient codebases"

That's probably the code that's paying everyone's wages, including those of devs doing all the shiny stuff. The shiny stuff will either become legacy in due course or be forgotten about while the old stuff keeps running and running.

Re: Deadlines

In database work, for example, it may be even confirmed in an email from on-high that "you can leave postal addresses as one field, we'll never need anything more detailed."

The law of inverse sensitivity:

It's not important == It's critical

I must have it this way == Nobody will care except the one knob-end who'd moved onto something else, never to return, before he even finished speaking.

It won't change == It'll be the most volatile aspect of the whole system

Re: Cause and Effect reversed

"Bad coding makes unhappy coders"

Or:

Bad coders make bad code and if you make life a misery for staff bad coders are the only staff you can retain.

HPE SAN causes four-day outage at Australian Tax Office

Look on the bright side, they forgot "lessons will be learned".

Honesty.

Would you like to know why I get a lot of action at night?

Re: State of the art

"We had to make holes in punchcards by hand."

You mean you didn't have to cut the cards out by hand?

Re: the tissue distribution

" There are times when I wonder how easy it would be to build a powerful focussed-EMP device. Just for experimentation honest."

I've often thought a piece of burning paper tossed in through the open window would be enough.

AI vuln-hunter bots have seen things you people wouldn't believe

Re: Let's be realistic

"Its not hard to do, I even wrote a system in the 00's which rewrote software... converting ISAM to SQL data sources."

Not procedural to OOP, but I saw ISAM to SQL being done in the '80s.

New SMB bug: How to crash Windows system with a 'link of death'

Re: Just a quick check

"SMB was (is?) a local LAN service"

Generally but it relies on IP addressing, unlike the old Netware protocol which wasn't routeable. This extract from TFA doesn't mention any such restrictions:

This can be done by tricking a victim into clicking on a malicious link to a share in an email in Outlook, or by embedding in a webpage an invisible image with a source URL to an evil file server and getting the mark to visit the site using Internet Explorer, for example."

Re: Just a quick check

"Did I miss something?"

Malicious server inside the firewall.

The ports having to be open for reasons which apply in a potential victim's use case but not in yours.

Maybe others.

Re: If it compiles, ship it

"your EULA means you cant sue them"

Except where it fails on the ground of statute law.

Re: If it compiles, ship it

Except the fix appears to have compiled and they didn't ship it.

Guess who's suffering an email outage. Go on, it's as easy as 123-Reg

Re: Why would you use email from 123/GoDaddy/HostPapa etc. anyway?

"longnamewithnumbers@hotmail says different."

In my case it says spam bin.

Re: Why would you use email from 123/GoDaddy/HostPapa etc. anyway?

"Searching Gmail for two ancient invoices I just entered the cash total in the search box. From 1.5 GB of emails they were found almost instantly."

If I want to search old emails I search them locally. It might not be as fast as Google but the emails are right here on my own box. That includes emails from previous providers. I can't see any reason to keep them remotely: it's my mail, not Google's or anyone else's.

USA! USa! Udia! India! India! Apple nudges iPhone production base

assemble phones for sale in India within India.

In fact, Apple already do this in Brazil to bypass import tariffs. The Brazilian factory produces just enough phones for local demand and they are the most expensive iPhones money can buy.

And a US assembly plant could operate on exactly the same basis.

If the market has a tariff wall round it and a small local plant employing as few people as possible can make the product cheaper than importing it through the wall then that's what will happen. It won't create many local jobs and it will result in the product being more expensive there; locals will be looking enviously at their neighbours.

In general, especially when taxes and tariffs are involved multinationals are able to rearrange their business to optimise outcomes for themselves when things change. The new optimum may be very different to what the government and those who voted for it intended. Your tax schedules, votes etc are only one factor in what happens. You do get what you voted for; it's just not what you thought it would be.

Microsoft foists fake file system for fat Git repos

Re: Proves Git is unsuitable for commercial dev work

"Is this a sneaky way of them warning the market that TeamSystem is going away?"

Or is it an acknowledgement that git has become the predominant version control system?

BOFH: Password HELL. For you, mate, not for me

Re: "I rarely get cold calls"

"What's my name?"

The Windows support equivalent would be "Which one, I have several. What's the licence number?".

"I smartly answered no sorry I stole this phone."

Or

I picked it up from where someone'd dropped it down the bog. It works OK but it's a bit niffy. Can you do anything about that?

Re: "I rarely get cold calls"

"Hello sir, we have been passed your details because one of your family has been in an accident recently" or whatever.

I think in the future it's going to be my wife who was injured. She's being treated in the Institute for Clinical Orthopaedics, ICO for short, in Wilmslow. Phone number 01625 545 745...

And good luck to the ambulance chaser who tries following that one up.

Re: Same here

"Co-Op bank"

Reminds me, I must ring them and ask why they haven't responded to my email to their Ihavessenascam address reporting, for the nth time, an email from their tame spammers digital marketing company and explaining that it has all the hallmarks of a phishing spam.

GCHQ cyber-chief slams security outfits peddling 'medieval witchcraft'

"He doesn't seem to know what the words "medieval" or "witchcraft" actually mean."

Medieval witchcraft is probably the code name for one of GCHQ's operations.

Re: Hyping APT

"And this comes down to proper information security governance. Which we ain't gonna get."

Until after the event.

https://www.ncsc.gov.uk/articles/who-might-be-attacking-you

What's odd about that? It just has a picture of its author at the top.

UK defence secretary: Russian hacks are destabilising Western democracy

"And no one has any idea what to actually do about it"

Really?

Send DNS requests for the .ru TLD to /dev/null for an hour or so after each detected hack. Next day for a couple of hours. Then 4 hours etc.

Is it the beginning of the end for Visual Basic? Microsoft to focus on 'core scenarios'

Re: The spirit of VB6 is alive

"Google B4X. RAD development tool targeting all modern platforms."

A new York bus route is a RAD development tool?

"As Office uses VBA which is presumably sharing a lot of that code, could that mean the end to VBA / poisoned documents and spreadsheets ?"

Maybe that's what they mean by core.

2016: Snapchat loses $515m... 2017: Snapchat rips veil off $3bn IPO

Simple

They're hoping to be bought out by Goggle, Farcebook, Twatter, MS or whoever.

Super-cool sysadmin fixes PCs with gravity, or his fists

"Don't get me started on why I had to rebuild a WIN2k server in 2016 though as I'd be here all day"

Short version: because it works.

Brexit White Paper published: Broad strokes, light on detail

"As for no plan, that's a very tired meme now. ... It was always clear that she'd be seeking to leave the Single Market and Customs Union"

So where's the plan to replace the lost market? That's plan, not magical thinking?

"They're pensioned off on a lovely pension, will walk in to high paying jobs on civvy street."

There might be fewer of those about.

Re: Words fail me

"We should have had a referendum then [Lisbon], given how unpopular that was, and that an almost identical treaty had gone down to defeat in a couple of referenda already."

That I agree with. That and Maastricht should have required ratification by referenda across the entire EU - and needing a significant majority for a change to take place.

I agree that the democratic deficit this has left has been at least partly responsible for the present mess. But to quote Sir Humphrey, "If you must do this damn stupid thing don't do it in this damn stupid way.".

Re: Words fail me

"We don't want skilled migrants but some unskilled ones can come and pick potatoes a month from now if the company sponsors a special visa."

I doubt we'll need immigrants to pick potatoes. There'll be plenty of labour going spare.

Re: Words fail me

"The MPs are supposed to represent the people so the vote in parliament might have been mandated by a bizarre bunch of clowns but actually the vote in parliament HAD to pass in order to recognise the vote from the people."

I expect my MP to do his best for his constituency. He has not done this. He has voted with the herd.

There is no compulsion whatsoever on MPs to be bound by an advisory vote.

Re: Words fail me

"MPs serve the people, not the other way around."

If what people need is different to what a small majority of them said they wanted then they might be best served by providing the former.

Re: cost benefit analysis

"If the EU impose tariffs on imports from the UK, they pay those costs, not us."

Which then makes our exports less competitive so there are fewer of them. Fewer exports means less work. Less work means less jobs. Unless you still think the pink unicorns are going to come along with their pixie dust and make us all so rich we won't need anyone to work.

Hard numbers: The mathematical architectures of Artificial Intelligence

Re: The problem with defining artificial intelligence

"...is that we don't have a good definition of intelligence in the first place."

One thing we do know: it runs on a much larger scale of parallel processing than we can achieve with any existing electronic hardware.

'Webroot made my PCs s*** the bed' – AV update borks biz machines hard

At least they can't get a virus while they're BSODed so AV is protecting them.