Posts by jasonbrown1965

Cloudflare's bot bouncer blocks weirdo browsers

Ah yes, the purist approach, so useful in real life.

Meta blocked Distrowatch links on Facebook while running Linux servers

Re: Great Enshittening

Hmm yes billionaires are greedy - and so are investors.

Companies that do not deliver growth-on-growth get punished with falling share prices.

Insane expectations of endlessly exponential profits and dividends is how we end up with insane people like Zuck succeeding.

US newspaper publisher uses linguistic gymnastics to avoid saying its outage was due to ransomware

Rare according to an article on BSD ransomware, see:

https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/security/meet-interlock-the-new-ransomware-targeting-freebsd-servers/

Pornhub lockdown and fact-free Zuckbots – welcome to 2025

Re: It's an easy go to

Please do not sully myriad sacrifices by Assange with MAGA nonsense.

The case against Assange got green lit by the Trump administration, not the Democrats. As was the CIA assassination plot.

Yes, Obama did consider it, but decided against it because of the threat against press freedoms. Unlike the orange man, whose authoritarianism is a threat to all freedoms.

https://www.yahoo.com/news/kidnapping-assassination-and-a-london-shoot-out-inside-the-ci-as-secret-war-plans-against-wiki-leaks-090057786.html

Researchers find Meta's withdrawal of misinformation tool hard to swallow

Re: What's disinformation?

Ah yes, NewsGuard, the mic-aligned media-bias app that rated Fox News as "neutral". Is left wing, lol, nah.

Biden bans Kaspersky: No more sales, updates in US

Re: ¡¡¡COOL!!! ¡Cheaper Karspesky for us!

Not .. exactly sure either, but whatever you and they are saying, reading both comments made me wonder? What's the long tail on this?

A major AV company listed in all the top AV reviews is suddenly cut off from one of the most actively targeted audiences in the world. Unless an entire review industry and a constellation of rabidly independent tech commentators all missed something, Kaspersky was legit if proprietary software. What happens to everyone's threat profile when an org that regularly exposes state-level hacks is removed from a major part of the anti-V gene-pool?

If you're wondering what my angle is, it's as a journalist who relies on other journalists to know what they're talking about, including any quotes from the Department of Unintended Consequences. I have zero sympathy for the Putin admin, journo-murdering bastards the lot of them, but I do have some sympathy for Kaspersky. Perhaps entirely misplaced, but yet to see much evidence for that outside of a lot of jingo lala stuff here and across the networks.

What's the worst that can happen?

Kaspersky today ...

Slacking off? It used to be there was pretty much one place to chat with your fellow developers: IRC

Re: ew

. . .

+1 from a nix pov ?

".. ew gross ..."

Very late to this of course, but yours remains top comment after near three years, relatively. Upvoted, and (vaguely) understand the essential nature of reasons for the download options you mention. My but, tho, is this: as a 2024 refugee from myriad other social networks, when does (rightful) nix guardianship cross over into unintentional FUD for non-nix newcomers?

Case study: evaluating open-source software for, in order of importance, towards helping youth fight their own battles, including #childabuse

a) open-source

b) privacy

c) usability

To reverse that order of importance = no usability = no privacy = no open source or closed source apps successfully deployed. Zulip is the closest I've found to closing those gaps. I get the technical misgivings about the installer, all I ask as a journo trying to share info tools, please give context.

For example,

" Ew, why did such a good app do such a silly, relatively minor thing? Not a biggie for 99% of use-cases, but for life-or-death situations, beyond important. "

Or something similar, I dunno, just despair sometimes at reading user reviews, while trying to make the right software decisions, for the right people.

Help me. Help us.

Context.

Please?

. . .

Where's my money?! Now USA Today publisher sues Google over online advertising

Re: A couple questions for Gannett's lawyers:

. . .

Advertising:

a means by which revenue is diverted from content creators.

Internet:

a means by which revenue diversion creates content exponetiality.

Gannet:

allegedly news.

News:

wut.

Courts:

Given the lack of countermanding evidence,

the only news worthy of protection from ad exploitation?

Is decided by how many dollars can be spent on lawyers.

Gannet vs Google:

wut.

Conclusion:

you *can* handle the truth.

you just can't afford it.

. . .

Re: Actually ...

"In fact, there are so many PV systems attached to the grid in the US Southwest right now that on bright,

sunny days the price of electricity being generated can dip into the negative."

Exactly! Because financial institutions are created to create .. finance.

Financial institutions not 'touching' extra energy capacity reflects on incentives for financial institutionalism,

not PV systems.

If renewables produce consistently excess power surpluses,

then tier-3 pricing could serve computational excesses overnight,

or even long timeframes; weekly, monthly, etc.

Adjusted for sunny days, in other words.

Weeks, months, climate change, whatever.

Ad blockers struggle under Chrome's new rules

Replace DDG with an instance from https://searx.space .. they got pinged for allowing MS to track ad clicks and promise they've stopped it, but I'm not convinced.

Me neither, although the developer seems open about potential risks, even if they term them 'unlikely', see:

https://beebom.com/how-install-ungoogled-chromium/

Log4j doesn't just blow a hole in your servers, it's reopening that can of worms: Is Big Biz exploiting open source?

at the end of the day, it's night.

Funding FUDGE fogs up log jam FIGHT

Interesting?

Unless me and my ctrl+F are much mistaken, all mention of "funding" or even 'fund' seems to have disappeared from the blog post linked for #tailscale.

Given that tailscale has been mentioned elsewhere in a similar manner to systemd - too much of a good thing in one place - removal of references to funding for open source software a la logj (if that is indeed what happened) seems to sugest this is something of a sensitive subject?

If this was the old register, a headline might have been:

Funding FUDGE fogs up log jam FIGHT

Speaking of which, admins, what did happen to the SHOUTY headlines?

Really miss the irreverence. No more biting hands that feed?

European officials reportedly targeted by NSO spyware

Re: Beware the Beast of Brussels

Two downvotes!

Must be some zero-click fans on here.

Or, more probably, anti-bureaucrats.

While I can empathise with libertarian fears and loathing? I'd rather have large bureaucracies with the power to shut down shithole ops like NSO, than the net become a wtfever free-for-all.

At least more than it already it is.

While we were raging about Putin's meddling and Kremlin hackers, Five Eyes were pwning Yandex, Russia's Google

Re: Motivations ...

The point of cover stories is not just to cover up one story but create doubt about all stories.

Deny, deflect, defuse, or something like that.

We are shocked to learn oppressive authoritarian surveillance state China injects spyware into foreigners' smartphones

Meanwhile, in Australia ...

... spooks just get their pet pollies to pass backdoor laws.

You don't even need to bend over!

Schneier warns of 'perfect storm': Tech is becoming autonomous, and security is garbage

Re: ahum, dumb fucks ?

Um, no again.

I'm reminded of the old joke about Windows being like a gold-plated Rolls Royce of the information world - but that blows up once every six months or so, killing everyone inside.

The alternative seems to be Linux, which takes us back to the days of pull choke, depress alternator button, spitting on your hands, hand cranking engine, and praying. At least for the average user who does not "just" want to terminal ANYTHING - they just want to hop in, turn the key, shift into drive and go.

Have I Been S0ld? Troy Hunt's security website is up for acquisition

Re: I tip my hat

Agreed, definitely the highest bidder.

I mean he claimed to be an honest trader, but this is K.P.M.G. we are talking about, renown for fawning headlines like these ones :

2015 Corruption in FIFA? Its Auditors Saw None

https://www.nytimes.com/2015/06/06/sports/soccer/as-fifa-scandal-grows-focus-turns-to-its-auditors.html

2016 KPMG Switzerland resigns as Fifa auditor

https://www.ft.com/content/a872af30-316e-11e6-bda0-04585c31b153

2017 US KPMG Fires 6 Over Ethics Breach on Audit Warnings

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/04/12/business/dealbook/kpmg-public-company-accounting-oversight-board.html

2018 Seven UK KPMG partners leave after inappropriate behaviour

https://www.ft.com/content/50a716c2-fcac-11e8-ac00-57a2a826423e

2019 Aiding 'organized crime': India alleges 22 audit violations by Deloitte, KPMG arm in fraud case

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-india-il-fs-deloitte-kpmg/aiding-organized-crime-india-alleges-22-audit-violations-by-deloitte-kpmg-arm-in-fraud-case-idUSKCN1TE1X4

2019 KPMG 'severely reprimanded' for audit failings at Co-op Bank

https://www.theguardian.com/business/2019/may/08/kpmg-severely-reprimanded-for-audit-failings-at-co-op-bank

Yeah, what could possibly go wrong with selling user data to such a globally respected audit service?

Infosec bloke claims: Pornhub owner shafted me after I exposed gaping holes in its cartoon smut platform

Re: It "takes the security of its users very seriously."

Did way better than me.

Couldn't get LastPass to even remember passwords.

Self-taught Belgian bloke cracks crypto conundrum that was supposed to be uncrackable until 2034

Kudos also to his UPS!

Or is power *that* reliable in Belgium?

There's NordVPN odd about this, right? Infosec types concerned over strange app traffic

Re: Oh great!

AirVPN was set up by journalists?

Nothing on their "about" page refers to journalists, just "activists, hacktivists, hackers." And there are no names mentioned. As a journalist, my question is - should anyone trust VPN providers who remain anonymous?

Don't let Google dox me on Lumen Database, nameless man begs

Re: Bah!

Seems appropriate for a forum where the language appears to err more towards the ethereal the higher up the monkey shows his ass.

And it's a really, really big monkey.

Batting bi-planes out of the sky, King Kong big, and at least as far back.

Indictment bombshell: 'Kremlin intel agents' hacked, leaked Hillary's emails same day Trump asked Russia for help

Re: Shooting the messengers much?

"How gullible do you have to be if you let random posts on the Internet affect your decision on who to vote for?"

Gullible enough, apparently, given the fairly close election results. Gullible, or angry enough, including an 8% black voting block that went to Trump, after being targeted with FB ads reminding them of old Clinton comments about blacks being criminal "super-predators".

After eight years of Obama failing to do much for change we can believe in (after being left with a dinosaur-sized economic dump by Bush), there were enough people angry at failed promises to want to chuck politics into the history bin. Which is what they did.

In doing so, they exposed a system that has been dysfunctional long before Trump, whose election just adds an orange coloured hazard light atop the whole steaming mess.

Trump is a loathsome, racist, sexist retard, yes. But given abject failure by supposedly far more principled politicians to make an impact on what Eisenhower so famously warned about decades ago? Maybe we need to pay less attention to the messengers and much more to the message.

NASA spots asteroid on crash course with Earth – with just hours to go

New Guinea?

You mean Papua.

If at first you don't succeed, you're likely Intel: Second Spectre microcode fix emitted

Re: All's well that end's well

Did the same on an Acer, also fine.

Yes, it's a cheap piece of junk, any objectors may sue my non-profit ass.

Haul out the Gestetners!

"But hey, it gives people reason to write more articles and get more ad impressions."

Such worldly cynicism! You may be right of course.

Those dastardly fear-mongers at the Reg should probably wait until everyone's chips are smoking puddles of silicon goo before hauling out the Olivettis and Gestetnering a few million pages of (literally) purple prose.

Or, even better, step away completely from a watchdog profession with one of the worst ROIs on the planet, and even worse profit prospects, and leave y'all to the tender mercies of our new global robber digi-barons, and their 'hyper efficient and extremely productive' minions.

Woo-yay, Meltdown CPU fixes are here. Now, Spectre flaws will haunt tech industry for years

Good guy Edge

Comic note - Edge joining other browsers in warning against Microsoft update site as "not secure"

See: https://imgur.com/gallery/Dutvu

#goodguyedge

. . .

Mailsploit: It's 2017, and you can spoof the 'from' in email to fool filters

Re: Classic reponse from Mozilla

Would be a hell of a lot nicer if it didn't keep crashing.

Thought it was my crap laptop (4gb ram) but even on newer, faster machines, kept crashing on me .. probs coz I was trying to do a lot with it (30,000+ addresses) but .. still.

CCleaner targeted top tech companies in attempt to lift IP

Re: "Peoples Republic's timezone"

Washington among the top states for company registration transparency, but still far from good, let alone perfect, see:

https://sunlightfoundation.com/2014/08/14/washington-a-better-practices-state-for-llc-transparency/

For a comparison of how far such measures have to go, one of the top three countries, New Zealand (yeah, from there) only recently passed legislation ending the worst abuses of its foreign trust laws.

All too often, these ranking surveys such as reported in the above article, and similar, such as Transparency International "least corrupt" fail to point out how utterly hopeless existing corporate law is in establishing ultimate beneficiaries.

tl;dr - registration in Seattle may not prove anything?

Machine vs. machine battle has begun to de-fraud the internet of lies

Re: Choice

Anytime I read the word "lazy" used in criticism of journalism, I laugh. A deep, bitter and hugely mirthless laugh, because I've actually worked in the media, and know what a slave mine it is, with a three rule business model - suck 'em in, chew 'em up, spit 'em out.

Usually such criticism involves some jumped up academic proclaiming expertise of some sort, without bothering to even research their own media criticism.

So, sigh, below are some news stories on Sarin production related to the Syria attack, which took about five seconds to find. Are they definitive? Of course not, and never will be until refusing comment, lying and secrecy laws are punishable by death.

Until then, even a well resourced investigative unit can take years of digging to uncover the truth, whatever that may be. This is different from the world that Yanks are raised in, when yowling cop shows proclaim we won't get fooled again - and still solve cases within half an hour.

Back in the real world , "lazy" might better describe claims from someone using evidence they probably scraped from Wikipedia about a 22 year old attack and faking relevance to today.

Meantime, here's some headlines:

Assad Personally Oversaw the Development of Nerve Gas for Use on His Own People

http://www.haaretz.com/middle-east-news/syria/.premium-1.793269

Money stolen by Russian mob linked to man sanctioned for supporting Syria's chemical weapons program

http://edition.cnn.com/2017/06/16/politics/russian-mob-syria-chemical-weapons/index.html

Could Britain have sold sarin chemicals to Assad's regime?

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/apr/08/could-britain-have-sold-sarin-chemicals-assad-syria

Assad linked to chemical attacks in Syria

http://www.iol.co.za/news/world/assad-linked-to-chemical-attacks-in-syria-7401003

PAC slams UK.gov for lack of evidence-based science investments

Re: Just form another committee

. . .

Could be the same.

Be careful in your estimates tho - Only 97% of scientists agree that political pressures of the day stem from sound business cases, so we should probably act on the views of the 3% instead.

If you want to be sure you're really on the right track, listen only to the 1% - they know what's really going on.

. . .

Re: Robust business cases

. . .

Do love me some robust business case. Lip smacking stuff.

"Congratulations on your robust business case! Now, sign this non-disclosure agreement so that you can never talk science to anyone, or comment on public science debate like, oh, say, for example, whether or not corporate welfare is corrupting science."

Or, "No talking, we're scientists" .. or, yes, "STFU boffins!!!!!"

Protip: also sack all those smug fucking science journalists. Evidence-based policy my aching, free-trade arse.

Facebook pumps up ENTIRELY SELFLESS, altruistic Internet.org

Re: Another option

Only one? What is this, a recession?

Amazon to trash Flash, as browsers walk away

Re: Hading a good time reading El Reg

Bless you, in a thoroughly non-ironic way.

I've sent hundreds of "friendly heads up" to various websites over the years, especially when my brain is fogged by other things. It helps me remember that I am AWESOME and can actually do awesome things, like ... offer minor corrections.

As a tree-hugging, trendy lefty pinko anarcho commie journo scumbag, it's the least I can do for world peace.

Freedom of Info at 10: Tony Blair's WORST NIGHTMARE

Re: Burden

"Thus absolutely guaranteeing that no one can ever find it."

Thanks for raising that - I've long criticised fancy pants databases that cost millions and are impossible for ordinary users.

I did have one victory in a small organisation once, releasing documents in their original formats, only to find they had locked off copying ability. Sure, OCR and all that, but kinda defeated the purpose.

Really, govt tech profit cash grab is a PRIZE-WINNING idea?

So, ever more for the ever less?

Not seeing much biting of feeding hands in this article.

More like the same old formula where we spend all our time arguing about the rights of the rich, rather than solving the problems of the poor.

Wealth creation. Heh.