Posts by EnviableOne

Cheap, flimsy, breakable and replaceable – yup, Ikea, you'll be right at home in the IoT world

Has anyone thought of the nightmare ZigBEE Frequency hopping is going to cause with those lovely fellows still working on 2.4GHz?

I know its caused no end of issues in our catering department.

LastPass scrambles to fix another major flaw – once again spotted by Google's bugfinders

Re: best practices?

PassSafe designed Bruce Schneier is a nice little app that gives you a encrypted store you can keep on a USB and the app can even work as portable, or an enterprise credential management system would do the trick eg Passworks, Secret Server, Password Vault, etc

Trump's America looks like a lousy launchpad, so can you dig Darwin?

Its more about digging up bits of the country and sending it into space (with other countries paying for it)

I have always thought a resurrection of Black ARROW project launched from Woomera would make a cheap Satellite launch system. Yet another UKGOV project cancelled just before it became useful.

UK.gov confirms it won't be buying V-22 Ospreys for new aircraft carriers

The merlin was an abortion to beginwith

The merlin nearly went the way of the Nimrod projects, (massive MOD scope creep, ending in a defence review scrapping) but someone with power at BAe managed to salvage a generally workable airframe with limited losses over the Sea King.

The F-35 is a victim of the same thinking that spawned the Typhoon, namely that because it does everything its gonna be good. The same thinking gets you a camel when what you need is a horse.

F-35A/B/C are supposed to replace the F-15, F-16, F-18, A-10, AV-8B/+ and the abortion of an replacement known as the F-22 and there is no single airframe that can do all those roles.

Like the Typhoon was an awful replacement for the Tornados, Jaguar and GR.7 and the proposed sea-typhoon was not a patch on the F/A2. The original CVF spec was highly capable with twin runways, better performance and CATOBAR capability, and there were going to be three of them, but they got hamstrung by successive Defence reviews and turned into the joke they now are.

As ad boycott picks up pace, Google knows it doesn't have to worry

Easy fix

As 55% of the add revenue goes from google to the poster's account, are they not funding Terrorism, hate groups or other legislated against practices.

Simple case of enforcing anti-terrorism or non-discrimination regulations.

eBay dumps users into insecure authentication mechanism

its not hard

Come on ebay get with the times, everyone is using OAUTH-TOTP

NASA swerves serious cash cuts – but Earth climate probes, asteroid snatcher face axe

Re: It's not a cut, its streamlining

You know, like the EPA, the UN climate project, the Dept. of Energy's clean sources research, the NOAA, the various health and human services groups trying to prevent human suffering due to climatic displacement, various academic climate projects supported by the government...

Except that the EPA and NOAA budgets and UN subscriptions are also cut and the bosses put in by trump at all the US Departments mentioned wont prioritise the programs that NASA was leading the world in.

How UK’s GDPR law might not be judged 'adequate'

Five Eyes, Echelon and DRIPA

The remaining problems are probably around the overreaching co-operation between CAN/USA/NZL/AUS/GBR using each other to spy on their own citizens and how the Prism/Echelon system has worked, allong with the lack of oversight and appeal in acts ike RIPA DRIPA and DEA.

Ubiquiti network gear can be 'hijacked by an evil URL' – thanks to its 20-year-old PHP build

Pay peanuts

The whole thing with Ubiquiti is they are cheap, if you want security and functionality you have to pay for it. there kit also uses a whole lot of proprietary hardware and makes a mockery of standardisation.

San Francisco reveals latest #Resist effort – resisting sub-gigabit internet access

I thought we were behind

My 70Mb VDSL FTTC is starting to sound excelent, and virgin media (now owned by liberty global's) 200Mb DOCSIS 3.0 over Coax is positively immense.

I thought good old Blighty was behind the US.

Mind you there are still the backwaters on a piece of string (DSL over Alu) that can only get 250kbps to stay stable.

There are however susidies for speeding up rural areas, and a rumour of A Universal Service Obligation of 10Mb

Today's WWW is built on pillars of sand: Buggy, exploitable JavaScript libs are everywhere

Language is not the issue

The issue isn't JavaScript, its the fact that the incompetents who use it to make websites load unverified, possibly unused code, that they dont have a clue how it works or if its current.

The modern website is no longer an art project needing design, its a piece of software needing built from the ground up, by all means, use other peoples code, but make sure you check it and know what bits do what and what bits you actually need.

why pull in all of node, angular, etc when all you need is one code section, and you should be able to write it yourself. JavaScript is not hard, its not assembler, its not C, its not even Java!

The current crop of web designers are Graphic designers who know a bit of code, and you know what they said a bout a little knowledge.

</rant>

Citrix shares soar on sale speculation

RE:Cisco

The Borg are in full purchase mode at the minute and attempting to "Pivot" to a software and services company, plus they have that sort of cash lying around, so it makes sense in a lot of ways.

'Jarvis' brings AI to the Linux command line, without Iron Man

Jarvis order me an new Keyboard

Sukeesh must go through keyboards, he's a bit of a heavy typist

Most of 2016's holes had fixes the day we knew about 'em. Did we patch? Did we @£$%

Patch me if you can

Being fully patched, may expose you to MS FB and all the slurp factories, but it has the advantage, that you have a far smaller attack surface to worry about,

ie 22 vulnerabilities in a year rather than the 17,147

and it makes the script kiddies nigh on impotent, as they don't have the skill or inclination to go after the Zero-Days.

Hailing frequencies open! WikiLeaks pings Microsoft after promise to share CIA tools

MS17-Whenever

Don't tell me ... MS will delay patch Tuesday again ....MS17-Whenever

Naming computers endangers privacy, say 'Net standards boffins

Android is not much better, device names come up as android-<wirlessMAC>

Thousands of NHS staff details nicked amid IT contractor server hack

Re: Thousands of NHS staff details nicked

The answers to these questions, its likely we will never know, seeing as the breach happened in October and NHS Wales found out in January and we are only finding out it happened now.

Can you ethically suggest a woman pursue a career in tech?

Experience is the issue

The problem should solve itself, the people in top jobs now need approximately 20-25 years experience, and if you look 20-25 years back, the dominant culture was what is being said, as these relics shuffle or get shuffled off the workforce, we will see more and more people in power with a more modern attitude and hence better workplaces.

In regards, to favouring one over the other, I am firmly of the opinion that that is just as wrong as the other way round.

As such there is now one group that are continually discriminated against that have no representation. They are not Old, young, female, LBTQ+, from a different ethnic group or with a significant other, so they dont have anyone advocating for them, so become a soft target and as such have the highest Suicide rate in the world. SWHMo25u55

Apple empties gas can, strikes match, burns bridge to hot-patch apps

Given that awareness, it's certainly possible Apple could some day offer developers a service that provides an automated, rapid way to update apps without revisiting review purgatory. It might even find a way to will charge loads for the service.

FTFY

Time's up for SHA-1 hash algo, but one in five websites still use it

Re: The end of days.

The Problem Is Identity Assurance, who cares whether its patched or not if you can't be sure you are connecting to the right server.

Personally, if you are patched, backed up, encrypted, running a secure hardened CMS, with no unnecessary plug-ins and I cant be sure you are who you say you are, I'm not connecting.

MongoDB emits free-tier DBaaS and migration service to woo devs

I wonder ....

"giving customers an opportunity to run an instance in the cloud which they needn't bother wiht the hassle of managing themselves"

does that mean they are actually going to turn the security on?

Ohi-D'oh! US prison hands inmates' SSNs over to... an identity thief

Why not tell them they made a mistake?

"I knew I had to turn it into the media, I actually am truly done with the criminal life. Life's too short. I could've used those Social Security numbers to open a credit card account but I didn't."

nice to see that telling the media is no 1, not telling them they sent you the wrong info!

Solarwinds sends customers each others' complete client lists

Whats Testing?

so nobody really tested the update, just pushed the thing out and borked all the security. Nicely done Solarwinds, goes to show your putting the extortionate support fees to good use.

IBM has cloud access to quantum computer 400 times smaller than D-Wave system

Into The Big Blue Yonder

Future technologies lab In Switzerland is probably years ahead of Yorktown, just the Swiss know about privacy

Microsoft wants you to plan a new generation of legacy systems

Re: The worst part (IMO)

XP embedded is still supported through 2019 and The MOD Version has direct support from Reading/Redmond

Li-ion king Goodenough creates battery he says really is... good enough

Re: I can hear the conversation already....

welcome to your new Phone it is now the weight of a feather and 2mm thick

US-Europe Privacy Shield not worth the paper it's printed on – civil liberties groups

Ah But GDPR

Privacy shield is just a 95/46/EC directive equivalency decision

the safeguards in it barley held up for that, they dont even go anywhere near equivalency for GDPR, so come May next year its dead anyway

Amazon S3-izure cause: Half the web vanished because an AWS bod fat-fingered a command

Cloud Servers Other Peoples Tin (OPT) is just as likely to go down as your own, due to Layer 8 errors.

The problem is their marketing machine says "dont worry if Some idiot does it, we got some more Tin over here that we'll move your stuff to."

but as this demonstrates no one told ops that

Up close with the 'New Psion' Gemini: Specs, pics, and genesis of this QWERTY pocketbook

Re: $600

cheaper than most phones and hopefully with a better spec. Played with Psion 3 and 5 personally I thought the 5 was getting a bit on the bulky side. The Form factor lends itself to the confined space of the comms room and the full keyboard great for a console connection

USB-C to Serial anyone?

Tech contractors begin mass UK.gov exodus in wake of HMRC's IR35 income tax clampdown

The problem is Agency agrees Rate A, with client (GOV.UK,) Client pays agency A+VAT,

Agency Pays Contractor's PSC 0.8A + VAT

PSC must produce paperwork along with hassle as well as Accountants and lawyers to pay, offset some of the VAT, Pay insurance, pay mileage, pay accommodation, pay part of the remainder in Pay, on this, pay Employers and Employees' NI, PAY compulsory Workplace Pension contributions (Employee and Employer) and Income tax and Student loans.

On the remainder, pay corporation tax then Dividend tax.

final take home is approximately 0.48A if you are lucky, probably closer to 0.4A

Don’t panic over cyber-terrorism: Daesh-bags still at script kiddie level

Re: "we are very resilient as a country"

The problem is most of the US's is held by China, most of UKs debt is held by Allies.

2013 is some time ago, and since then UKgov have paid down a lot of debt (with profits from share sales in Banks etc.) and reduced the budget deficit considerably.

whereas Obama couldn't get any deals done on the budget and, with Trump in charge, and crazy schemes like the Wall, I can only see the US debt increasing.

US visitors must hand over Twitter, Facebook handles by law – newbie Rep starts ball rolling

Re: Sooooo

The second amendment's intent was to Allow the states to form a militia to overthrow a tyrannical government and for their members to have the right to hold weapons.

The idiots since have corrupted this intent to allow John Do to carry automatic machine guns

Remote unauthenticated OS re-install is a feature, not a bug, says Cisco

Cisco SOP

CDP is insecure, but on by default

SMI is insecure but on by default

Telnet is insecure but on by default

VLAN1 is on by default

all are insecure, but aid provisioning, but like switchzilla says, if you don't use it, turn it off!

once it pops up in your highly expensive Cisco Prime deployment, run the lockdown script.

Forget quantum and AI security hype, just write bug-free code, dammit

The Problem is someone convinced Coders that they are Programmers, when most of them don't understand structure, never conditions and error handling!

anyone can Code, it takes discipline and effort to program.

Rasputin whips out large intimidating tool, penetrates uni, city, govt databases – new claim

they tried the stick?

Did they really, or was it more like a twig or a leaf ....

its only fines of the GDPR size 2-5% of turnover or CEO jail time that make a big enough stick.

how hard is it to parse a text input for control characters and wildcards, and escape or remove them?

a quick string search routine and all done.

Talk of tech innovation is bullsh*t. Shut up and get the work done – says Linus Torvalds

"Process problems are a pain in the ass. You never, ever want to have process problems ... That's when people start getting really angry at each other"

Is it just me or does Linus tend to have a lot of process problems ...

You know IoT security is bad when libertarians call for strict regulation

What kind of code

In the UK Health and Safety at Work Act, CEO is criminally responsible for death relating to a breach.

In the licensing laws, the Pub firm, the Licensee and the server are responsible for breaches of serving regulations.

Similar stipulations can be written for IoT, if you write/package/compile bad code and it gets someone killed, you, the bloke who should have checked your work, and the man responsible for releasing it without the checks, are all liable.

OK, it's time to talk mass spying again: America's Section 702 powers are up for renewal

Hey at least the fisheries department can't get the data.

*IPA

University DDoS'd by its own seafood-curious malware-infected vending machines

Re: Yes, but...

The machine doesn't have to as long as the switch does.

the vending machine is plugged to the switch the port assigned to the VLAN, the network virtually isolated from the rest. 802.1q its a great standard

separate vlan, separate interface on firewall, no access to the rest of the network, Bandwidth limited on the infrastructure and v short ACL

iotVlan_Access_In

permit IotVlan VendorNetwork

outside_Access_in

permit VendorNetwork IotVlan

there IoS their Problem

Soz telcos you're 'low priority' post-Brexit, says leaked gov doc

THE WILL OF THE PEOPLE

all 65 million of them

well the 51% of the 65% of them that could or could be arsed to vote

so about 21.5 million of them then.

Bruce Schneier: The US government is coming for YOUR code, techies

One World One Tinternet

Just thinking is the Nation state not as extinct as the network boundary?

in the world of t internet, where Russian hackers influence US elections an Ukrainian hackers ransom UK PCs with impunity, is a border not just a quaint Idea?

What we need is a global consensus and controls that effect the entire system, not just parts of it, as the way its all designed, the regulated parts will lose out and the others rise.

We need a Geneva Convention of Cyberspace or a UN High Commission for Cyber Security

No crypto backdoors, more immigration ... says Republican head of House Committee on Homeland Security

You're getting sacked in the morning

I wonder, any bets on whether McCaul Will be sad or overrated?

Just a thought on H1-Bs, would a cap on %of employees on them not stop the Skin merchants that are driving prices down and keep the rest of SV happy?

Commissioner kisses Met goodbye, says it's set to be 'best digital police force'

Re: Is that a tit on your head?

The commish gets a shiny flat cap and doesn't wear the pregnant woman's pee bucket (a random law that's on the statute books)

they love their databases and merging them all into a super DB is going to be fun, oh and all that data on people that have Insurance and Tax, and have done nothing wrong from the ANPR DB, just something eles for them to mine.

We ave more CCTV per capita than any country in the world, the MET being the largest force (3 times the size of the next biggest) is used to dealing with masses of video.

GRAPHENE: £120m down, UK.gov finds it's still a long way from commercial potential

Re: Given the size of the UK budget maybe the DARPA approach would be better.

Tried that, they were spun out as a private company QuinetiQ

Part of Defence Evaluation and Research Agency (DERA), privatised in June 2001, sites at Farnborough, Hampshire, MoD Boscombe Down, Wiltshire, and Malvern, Worcestershire, all former DERA sites.

Re: Eh? What?

when its a single junction cell

Traditional single-junction cells have a maximum theoretical efficiency of 33.16%

the Frauenhofer cell was using multi-junction concentrator solar cells

if you put the graphine cells in this combination PV efficiency would be more than 46%

Explain! yourself! US! senators! yell! at! Yahoo!

You mean Verizon haven't walked yet?

They will probably revise their offer from $4.5bn down to $1

UK prof claims to have first practical blueprint of a quantum computer

"The X-junction structures, equipped with the zones discussed, occupy an area of 2.5 × 2.5 mm2 and can be fabricated in large numbers on a silicon wafer to form the scalable quantum computer module. A total of 1296 individual X-junctions can be monolithically fabricated onto a 90 × 90–mm2 silicon wafer piece, compatible with standard 150-mm wafer sizes."

looks like someone wrote the image caption in haste

its all about relativity pq-qp = h/lambda

Re: Simultaneously is and isn't bollocks

Ahh! but if you observe it, you won't know how fast its going.

Run this in April: UPDATE Azure SET SQLthreat_detection = 'generally available'

licencing terms yet to be published

and how much is this going to add to the cost of your azure instance them .....