Posts by TheGriz

Consultant charged over $1.5M extortion scheme against IT giant

You Can't Parlay with CRAZY!!!

At this rate, as crazy as this guy SOUNDS, they have almost GUARANTEED that he will he will divulge everything he stole before being incarcerated. So it's a no win scenario no matter which way you twist this. YIKES!

Microsoft prices new Copilots for individuals and small biz vastly higher than M365 alone

ID 10 T Input

Let us all keep THIS fact in mind. If there is an IDIOT trying to use ANY type of technology, they are going to only get as much out of it, as they themselves (the idiot) puts into it. So suffice to say, A.I. will simply most of the time regurgitate "idiot answers" back at the idiot trying to use it.

I don't like the odds. And for the record I'm an IT Professional, so I know how idiotic "end users" can be.

1Password confirms attacker tried to pull list of admin users after Okta intrusion

Cloud Schmoud, most end users if pressed for an answer, can't even tell you what "THE CLOUD" is.

It's basically a MADE UP noun. I'd like to know who was the first person to USE this made up word, and learn how it gained so much traction to become what it is today, mainly a noun for the ignorant, so they don't know that Google, Amazon, and Microsoft don't have to explain that it means, hey come use "OUR SERVERS" instead of running your own server infrastructure, and the best part? We get to charge you out the arse for it.

Microsoft Cortana's farewell tour comes to the Windows Insider program

Cortana, PUH-lease!!!

I never used Cortana, and since I'm in IT, at my work place, when first setting up new Windows 10 PCs, our ultimate work competition, was to see how FAST we could shut her up during the Win10 OOBE setup, because Microsoft at first was so hell bent on making you listen to her SPEAK about how to setup the PC. What a terrible idea Microsoft had with that technology. I don't think I ever met anyone who actually USED it to be honest.

Google Bard can now tap into your Gmail, Docs, more

Re: Where to turn this off?

Experiment updates

2023.09.19

Introducing Bard’s most capable model yet

Bard can now access helpful information from Google apps

What: Bard can now retrieve and help you work with real time info from Maps, YouTube, Hotels and Flights. You can pull together what you need across information sources and bring ideas to life easier and faster. These extensions are enabled by default, and you can disable them any time.

Why: Just about everything we do in life involves a bit of gathering information and planning. Bard makes it easy to work together across even more sources, so you can keep your ideas moving forward.

What: You can enable Bard to interact with information from your Gmail, Docs and Drive so you can find, summarize and answer questions across your personal content. Your Google Workspace data won’t be used to train Bard’s public model and you can disable at any time.

Why: Now, you can collaborate not only with the world’s information, but also with your own, all in one place, with Bard as your creative partner.

Original Poster Note:

Anyone who would WILLING allow Google to do this by NOT going and turning this off, is quite insane in my personal opinion. Bad enough that Google enables it automatically, jeezus.

Where to turn this off?

Anyone got specific information on WHERE exactly to look for this setting and then turn it off. NO WAY I'm letting Google turn this AI monster loose on my email.

Over 100,000 compromised ChatGPT accounts found for sale on dark web

Re: Is this worse that other products?

LOL, it's worse simply because IT IS an LLM driven bot. There is NOTHING "intelligent" about these things. They don't "think" any more than a toaster really. Imagine a tech toaster, that has a base of data about what kind of bread is toasted, how dark or light it's being toasted, and oh that data comes from other people's toasters all around the world. So that makes it a BETTER toaster? Not really. (think about it)

Florida man insists he didn't violate the law by keeping Top Secret docs

De-classifying the Docs prior to leaving office, Cheeto in Charge

I see a lot of "why didn't he simply declassify the documents he wanted to keep", and here it the crux of WHY he took what he took AND the WAY in which he did it and another reason of WHY he didn't want to return them when asked.

In order to "de-classify" TOP SECRET stuff, it has to be HEAVILY "REDACTED", meaning that the documents basically lose their importance, and VALUE, because those things would look like a practically a SOLID PAGE OF BLACK "fused toner" after they were declassified.

So A) Cheeto in Charge, wanted them because he felt they held VALUE to his own narcissistic means. Redacted documents would be practically worthless, except to BRAG about having a copy.

B) The fact that he had is "crony" Nauta moving them around prior to his own lawyers trying to comply with the DOJ's wishes, AND hiding them from the FBI itself, is practically screaming "I'm guilty".

And now he actually KNOWS he's in very deep shite, and his second presidential bid, is now nothing more than the act of a criminal acting to save his own ass, because he is hell bent on winning a re-election so he can just PARDON himself.

Everyone in the USA, get out on election day and vote this sucker into infamy for eternity.

Microsoft's new AI BingBot berates users and can't get its facts straight

Re: Sydney fell in love with a NY Times reporter

I read the entire posted and UN-EDITED chat transcript between the BingBot and the NY Times reporter. And it was absolutely CREEEPY!!! If you've not read it at this point, it is a MUST read, but be warned it does creep you out. Now, I'm a veteran IT "adult", and it creeped me out, I don't even want to imagine what this thing might do to an adolescent teenager, or God forbid a younger child. I'm old enough to have grand children, and I can tell you now, I don't want them EVER using something like this in the future.

US Cyber Command, DARPA ink cyberwar R&D pact

Who cares about DARPA. Jessica is a major cute-y. :)

Don't say Pentium or Celeron anymore, it's just Processor now, says Intel

Monumentally STUPID IDEA

Title says it all.

Voyager 1 data corrupted by onboard computer that 'stopped working years ago'

Vger

And lets not forget, that 200-300 years from now, Vger will return as a fully autonomous, AI intelligent explorer, wanting to offload all of it's data to "the creator". :)

Any volunteers to "merge" with the probe when that happens? LOL

Man gets two years in prison for selling 200,000 DDoS hits

Does a Bear crap in the woods? (excluding Polar Bears, naturally)

You know they are going to be looking up his customers whereabouts.

Problems for the Linux kernel NTFS driver as author goes silent

Drop in the bucket for Elon Musk

If Elon would lay out just a 10th of a percent of what he's spending to buy Twitter, this driver would have tons of people working on maintaining it.

C'mon Elon, your money is better spent on this project anyways.

Happy birthday Windows 3.1, aka 'the one that Visual Basic kept crashing on'

"Support for Window 3.1 ended more than 20 years ago, but its influence continues to be felt today, even if the stacks of floppy disks used to install it are long gone."

I actually still have a set of the 13 1.44mb original Microsoft Windows 3.11 installation diskettes. So hate to correct you, but they are NOT "long gone". LOL

Europe's largest nuclear plant on fire after Russian attack

Video in the post, shows FLARES being utilized, not MUNITIONS.

I'd like to point out, that the "bright lights" you are seeing in the accompanying video, are FLARES and not a slowed down video of explosive munitions being lobbed into the reactor complex. And I'm not sympathizing with the Russians, I'm totally against this aggressive INVASION being carried out by the Russian military at the behest of Putin. But this video is not showing the Russians "SHELLING" the complex with munitions.

Journalist won't be prosecuted for pressing 'view source'

Re: Politicians and "computers"

LOL I remember that, I even made a meme of the guy's picture and made him look like the CLOWN he is.

Stupid Is, As Stupid Does

I'm "from Missouri" and with regards to Governor Parsons, well let's just say the word STUPID isn't strong enough.

Windows boss Panos Panay talks up 'new era of the PC' – translation: An era of new PCs

Twice. LOL right!

For the sake of the argument, when their speaking engagement is "word smithed" with terms like "Twice the uptake of Windows 10", well if only 5% of users took to Windows 10, then only 10% are taking up Windows 11. (Making these numbers up, of course) Still it's not really something to brag about now is it?

If they came out and said, well it's like getting a highly curable version of cancer. Screw that you still have cancer, not something to hang your hat on, morons.

Confirmed: James Webb Space Telescope team plans launch for this Xmas Eve after data cable fix

Spoiled Non-Techies

Personally, I'm thinking most of the "non-technical" world population are going to be in for a shock, when the first pictures come back from JWST. Hubble has spoiled the masses with spectacular full COLOR photos of distant galaxies, nebula's, etc, etc. Since JWST is an INFRA-RED telescope, the general public might be quite under-whelmed by what they are shown.

As for myself, I can't wait to see the first JWST "Deep Field View", no telling what will show up, but it'll be spectacular, and jaw dropping most likely.

God's Speed JWST, a successful deployment will push our knowledge and understanding of the Universe itself spectacularly past our current knowledge base.

Hubble Space Telescope restored to service: No repeat of those missing messages, but here's a software patch anyway

3 cheers for the Hubble Team, you people are without a doubt some of the most dedicated, smartest and hard working people on the entire planet.

Zuck didn't invent the metaverse, but he's started a fight to control it

The artist formerly known as Facebook, would have gotten a lot more PR bang for their buck, if they HAD NAMED themselves. . . SKYNET. LOL can you imagine?

No one would have scoffed as badly as we all did when they introduced the name META, FFS, I could have given them a more imaginative name, and for a lot less than they paid some PR firm a HUGE amount of wasted cash to do for them.

New year, new OS: OneDrive support axed for old versions of Windows from 1 Jan 2022

Re: OneDrive

Which one of you wants to volunteer to take OneDrive to the Mountain of Doom and throw it in the caldera, and free everyone from Microsoft's cloud based dictatorship?

I vote we nominate Bill Gates' ex-wife, I bet she has the will AND the resources to get it done.

Hibernating instrument on Hubble roused as engineers ponder message problem

Re: Use the backup

i SERIOUSLY doubt the museum "look a like" actually even HAS a mirror inside it. This is simply a "mock up" for people to VIEW in a museum, not like it actually has working instrumentation inside it.

We've seen things you people wouldn't believe. An exoplanet building its own moons

Re: Whinging humans

If you are saying "send all of our earth-bound waste to Mars, and light it on fire" you really don't know much about interplanetary travel, nor about Mars itself. There is not enough oxygen on Mars to "light a fire" and if we had a "magical way" to turn LEAD into GOLD, that could only be done in space, it still would not be economically feasible to do, because the cost of transporting it off the planet would still out-weigh what you would recoup from the gold magically made. So much for putting all of our waste into orbit, much less to another nearby planet.

This is A-Moon-zing!!!

The fact that our telescope technology has progressed to the point, where we can actually "in this great detail" image a ring of material forming moons around an infant exoplanet orbiting another distant star, is mind-blowing, and only makes me even more excited for what we'll see when our newest space telescope, James Webb Space Telescope is successfully launched and boosted into position and begins it's first work imaging our Universe. Can't wait!!!

https://www.jwst.nasa.gov/content/about/comparisonWebbVsHubble.html

I was targeted by North Korean 0-day hackers using a Visual Studio project, vuln hunter tells El Reg

He Got What He Deserved

Sorry, but if you are professional bug hunter, then you KNOW you should not RUN code on your PC that comes from "a guy that knows a guy". Geeze really?

Why didn't they pose as his own MOTHER needing help with her PC, he probably would have fallen for that to. LOL

Trump administration labels WeChat, TikTok ‘threats’ to national security, bans transactions with both

Waiting for the Trump Executive Order Against Windows 10

So how long before Microsoft and Windows 10 get an "Executive Order", they are slurping up just as much data as anyone else in the world.

'Optional' is the new 'Full' in Windows 10: Microsoft mucks about with diagnostic slurpage levels for Fast Ring Insiders

Since when does Microsoft "listen" to customers? If they did, the Metro Interface would have died with Windows 8, and the Windows 10 Start Menu would have died like their stupid Edge browser. And with the original Edge's death (due to the masses ignoring it existed at all), just goes to show you, that if there was a viable option available for Windows 10, it would wither and die too. And let us be perfectly honest, if not for the fact of Microsoft dropping support for Windows 7, a vast majority of users would keep running it. Hell, I'm still running it on my home PC right now. (Begrudgingly planning to update to 10 at some point)

Microsoft's Cortana turns its back on consumers as skills are stripped from Windows 10

Every single laptop or desktop I unboxed at work, when it came to the OOBE part where it asked if you wanted to use Cortana as your personal assistant, 100% of the time, TOLD IT NO!!!

Hoping I had a small part in killing off one of their stupid ideas. LOL

Wi-Fi of more than a billion PCs, phones, gadgets can be snooped on. But you're using HTTPS, SSH, VPNs... right?

Re: But...

Comeon, we all know Apple is the "Evil Empire". LOL

Dual screens, fast updates, no registry cruft and security in mind: Microsoft gives devs the lowdown on Windows 10X

This will go over like a Lead Balloon

Once again Microsoft "not listening" to their customers. No one is asking for some "Frankenstein-like" operating system. What they want is something that WORKS with all of their applications, OLD and new, and works with all of their pre-existing hardware. No one wants to have to go out and buy a new printer, new scanner, new web-cam, etc, etc, just so everything works together.

They might as well call this Windows10-ID10T

Hey GitLab, the 1970s called and want their sexism back: Saleswomen told to wear short skirts, heels and 'step it up'

I love how the first part of the meeting agenda, states it's going to be COLD, so dress appropriately, because we can't control the weather, but then goes on to ask that the women in attendance wear a short dress, and high heels.

If they are anything like my own wife, they will show up dressed in multiple layers, a long wearing sweater, with leggings under that, and two pairs of socks, and calf high boots.

And let me state, that not all women are 5ft 11 and weigh 110 lbs, and they might feel down right uncomfortable wearing a short dress, especially with high heels. These are coders not super models, let them wear whatever they want, and be done with it.

Sexist is still sexiest, even if it's coming from a woman dictating that they "step it up".

All the women attending should form a solidarity group and show up in sweat pants and sweatshirts saying "Coders Unite! Sweats are pretty too!"

If you thought Windows Insiders was lacking a little in the leadership department, it is now

Dona Sarkar's Twitter Tag Line

In my mind, nothing states what is wrong with the Insider Program more than what she currently has up on her Twitter account. " Anyone can be a dev in 5 mins". No Dona, they can't, and that is the core problem with the Insider Program, that and all the "fluff", (i.e. Ninjacat)

How can the program do what is supposed to do, MAKE WINDOWS 10 BETTER, when you don't have PROFESSIONAL (or at least experienced) testers, but instead open it up to any idiot who can use email.

My hope is with her out of the picture, now they can put someone in the role who will not be distracted and narcissistic (i.e. someone more interested in her own selfies, than developing software) and shape up this crappy system Microsoft is relying on.

Here's a flight into fancy, how about someone who will push to kill off the failed and hated METRO and bring back a "Windows 7 like" Start Menu, is that really asking too much? I've been a Windows user since 3.0, and I've never spoken to a single end user who likes the Windows 10 menu.

Adios Dona, I'm sure your NinjaCats will follow to your next assignment, (at least let us all hope so) :P

Tut – you wait a lifetime for an interstellar object then two come at once

Re: However, on a serious note

Good one, I upvoted your response. However, I will clarify that when I typed "we" I meant the human race as a whole. :)

However, on a serious note

Let your imagination take over for a moment, what if this is a precursor to some sort of galactic alignment, and our beloved star The Sun, and it's accompanying planetary partners are slowly drifting into some sort of denser galactic region where millions, nay billions of interplanetary objects are orbiting and this is just the beginning and over the next couple of hundred years, (or couple of thousand), we start to see more and more of these and thus increasing the chance of an impact by one of these objects happening to the world we all live on. What if this is the start of some sort of "Great Bombardment". That's very scary when you let your imagination run a bit wild.

Re: A comet is what they want us to think.

LOL, that was exactly what I thought when I read this report. 2 "interstellar" visits in the span of only 2 years? I don't believe in coincidence, just saying. :)

Microsoft's cloudy Windows Virtual Desktop: It fills a gap, but there are plenty of annoyances

Cloud, Ha!

From Microsoft: Let us virtualize your PCs and put them in our cloud, along with your data we already have. That way when our cloud falls down and goes boom, not only will you not be able to access your crucial files, you won't have a PC at all, so then not having access to your files won't seem so bad.

95% of "joe users" in the public realm, see "the Cloud" referenced EVERYWHERE these days, and they think it's something akin to "magic", because they don't know that all it means is that you're entrusting your data to someone else, and it's still just your data on a different server farm that oh you don't control any more like the old days and you are putting all your eggs in one basket. God forbid that basket falls down, now all your eggs get broken, and your business is simply banking on the fact that "these guys are the real experts, therefore they can't possibly screw up our "shiznit".

Yeah good luck with that.

Oh and one last note: Yeah it's FREE if you are already using O365 licenses, so no matter how many virtual PCs you need it won't cost you a dime. That is until Microsoft tricks you into putting everything in their hands and then when they have you by the short curlys, you get that "notice" of the upcoming change to our licensing and now every virtual PC will cost you X amount for one year of support, and you'll have to renew them all on a yearly basis, and funnel even more money from your institution into our institution, so we can keep inventing new ways to funnel more of your money away from you. Isn't that GREAT!

No it's not Russell Brand's new cult, it's Microsoft's Office crew rolling out their Save Experience

Feature? Users Need Help Saving? Bah Humbug

I love how Microsoft comes up with something this IDIOTIC and calls it a "new feature". This is nothing more than Microsoft trying to "funnel" people onto their cloud storage, and nothing more. They know the cloud playing field is up for grabs and this is simply their "game plan" to use every "trick" at their disposal to get as many hold out "non-cloud users" to adopt their cloud as possible. You can tell none of these people ever took any ETHICS classes during their college experience. This is the same thing they did with all of their monopolizing moves with Internet Explorer, oh which none of them can seem to remember was a failure, even today, they tried (and failed miserably) at making a new from the ground up browser to appeal to the masses. You see what happened, they ate so much crow having to scrap their own horrible Edge engine, they had no choice but to use a competitors, and base the new Edge on Chrome. LOL, Edge, they should rename it CROW, because they ate so much of it.

I personally am sick of tech companies adopting and embracing immoral and unethical tactics, simply to squeeze another buck out of the public.

Buying a Chromebook? Don't forget to check that best-before date

Why Are These People Buying a ChromeBook in the first place, that was their first mistake.

Title says it all. :)

The NSA's own bastard operator from Hell, aka Edward Snowden, puts out memoir next month

Re: Spycatcher

I wonder if Snowden (a) has the gift of writing well,

Well I doubt he's attempting to become the next Stephen King, regardless anyone with a connection to the tech industry or merely interested and appreciative of what kind of risks this single man took on behalf of all of us, without looking to profit from it personally, it will be an interesting read I'm sure.

The April 2018 Update is so 1803, snort Windows 10 faithful as more settle down in 1903 town

Consistency? HA!

If in you mean they "consistently" ignore their customers feedback. How long will they stubbornly hang on to the disastrous Metro interface, and the most loathed of all things Windows, "The Windows 10 Start Menu". You can't tell me that Redmond has not gotten literally 10s of thousands of complaints about both of those (cough) features.

I'll, er, get the tab? It's Internet Edgeplorer as browser pulls up chair to the Chromium table

Did someone just use PRIVACY and a Microsoft Product in the same sentence? LOL

Of more interest to end users is the arrival of extra privacy options in Edge, although the function remains somewhat of a moving target, with even the names of the Privacy levels up for grabs as development continues. . .

HA!, now if Microsoft would extend their newly found love of "PRIVACY" to the entire Windows 10 OS, now THAT would be something to brag about.

As far as I'm concerned, I don't care if they preach about privacy and security ad nauseamm, they will never gain the browser superiority they desperately crave. Here's hoping someone figures out someday how to block all of the Windows 10 data slurping. I'm still running Windows 7 at home and it's gonna kill me to have to finally break down and use Win10 when MS kills off 7 entirely.

What did turbonerds do before the internet? 41 years ago, a load of BBS

BBS Days and Links386 Golf Simulator

Back in the day, one of my best friends actually had a second dedicated phone line for his BBS named "The Pub" (USA for those wanting to know) and he and myself and some other close knit set of computer nerd friends would play a round of Links386, upload the "recorded play" file to the BBS, and each of us would then download everyone else's corresponding "recorded play" and then play it back in the simulator, and you could basically "watch" your previous round of golf (of which you knew the final outcome/score), but with the added bonus of watching your buddies playing their rounds (which you did not yet know what score they recorded on the course). So it was like playing golf against each other, only not in "real time", but was still fun to do. Heck I still have an old "printed out" score sheet of one of our matches, and I looked at the date on the scorecard the other day and it's March 1st 1993, and realized that was nearly TWENTY FIVE YEARS ago, amazing. LOL

Mozilla security policy cracks down on creepy web trackers, holds supercookies over fire

I Guess This Means My Browser Can't Be Tracked?

LOL, I guess this means my Firefox browser running NoScript is safe.

Response from https://panopticlick.eff.org/

Internal Server Error

The server encountered an internal error and was unable to complete your request. Either the server is overloaded or there is an error in the application.

Wow, fancy that. Web ad giant Google to block ad-blockers in Chrome. For safety, apparently

FireFox is the Only bastion of Freedom Inspired Internet Left

The title says it all.

Brit hacker hired by Liberian telco to nobble rival now behind bars

Corporate Culpability???

. . . he took a monthly salary from Liberian company Cellcom to carry out a sustained DDoS against their rival telco Lonestar . . .

What (if any) penalty does the adversary telecom Cellcom that hired the bloak get? That is a more interesting story in my opinion, if he was being PAID by them, they are the real guilty party here. Not trying to pardon the hacker wanna be, but he was hired and paid by one teleco to attack their competition, which in my own personal opinion is much more devious than some script kiddie DDOS'ing them for kicks or Internetz Fame.

Heads should roll at Cellcom, from the top down, based on how much their corporate management KNEW about them hiring a hacker for nefarious deeds.

Windows 10 Insiders sent on quest deep into Registry to fetch goblet of Reserved Storage

Kill Windows 10 version of Start Menu

When will Microsoft kill the stupid Windows 10 version of the Start Menu, it's still absolutely horrible. Time to LISTEN to feedback and stop doggedly hanging on to something only the dumb-ass Microsoft Engineers who thought of it, like, and go back to a Windows 7 type Start Menu. I hate it so much that on every single family / friend installation I do of Windows 10 I instantly install ClassicShell (known now as OpenShell).

Hole-y ship: ISS 'nauts take a wander to crack Soyuz driller whodunnit

I wouldn't want to be one of the three depending on that craft to get me safely back to terra firma. I can hear the words during re-entry... "Hey Sergey, put your finger in this hole until it gets too hot for you to keep it in the hole." LOL

Doom: The FPS that wowed players, gummed up servers, and enraged admins

LAN Party Doom

Myself and my friends would all bring our PCs, including huge 21'' CRTs to a designated "host house" and hook up and play Doom "Kill Everyone" matches for hours upon hours, until like 3 or 4am. It was insane. The best memory I have, is during one of these matches, we played the same map for so long, the game itself decided it was time for a full reboot. Doom would leave player bodies on the floor were they were killed, and as such we killed each other so much that the game was having to draw and re-draw this literal multitude of bodies, that the game actually started to buckle under the strain, and would start stuttering on everyone's PC. We finally had to end the match and restart a new map, just so we could keep playing. In that particular PVP map, the BFG 9000 was located in a completely dark room, and the only way you knew anyone was in there waiting for you, was when the BFG went off and killed everyone trying to stream into the room to kill the guy lucky enough to get to the gun first. Thank goodness ID accounted for this and the BFG would only give you 3 rounds of ammo, once the guy was out of ammo, then it was a free for all to see who could survive until the BFG re-spawned. LOL

Another great moment was when you would see a PVP opponent running across flat open outside ground and you could poke your rocket launcher out a window and lead them just right as they ran and watched the rocket contrail home in on him and blow him to smithereens.

Good times, good times!