Posts by You aint sin me, roit

Tech industry grad hiring crashes 46% as bots do junior work

Re: Useless

I prefer to avoid them but... over the last couple of years I've had several undergraduate interns doing work experience foisted on me.

Without exception I have been impressed by their capabilities, their willingness to learn, and the contributions they have made. And I'm not talking noddy scripting, I'm talking about serious low-level programming with an emphasis on security (proper, proper defensive programming). My position has always been that I do not expect them to know about secure programming or cryptography, I can teach them that, but I can't teach "clever" - they have to bring that themselves. And they did.

So yeah... "youth of today"...

Upgrading Linux with Rust looks like a new challenge. It's one of our oldest

Re: Very thoughtfull opinion, with only two fatal flaws

A Gandalf level C wizard will have progressed beyond the stage of "It's cool that I know C so well I can condense 20 lines of code into a single unintelligible line that takes a maintainer a day to attempt to unpack".

Maintainability and readability are fundamental to good code. If this is not reflected in your code then you aren't a good programmer let alone a wizard.

See also: "Not documented, not done"

SpaceX Polaris Dawn mission completes first commercial spacewalk

Re: Left unmentioned

You forgot this ----->

BOFH: It's not generative AI at all, it's degenerate AI

Perpetually down the pub...

Aka "End game" ------>

The S in IoT stands for security. You'll never secure all the Things

Re: "more than 5 trillion - that's trillion with a T"

I dunno... a few thousand nanobots in each jab of covid vaccine will get you there.

Dormant for now, just waiting for the 5G activation signal.

NASA solar sail tech is ready – now who's up to use it in a mission?

17780 square feet?

Oh, almost 80 nanowales, about 40% of a football pitch... why didn't you say?

BOFH: Monitor mount moans end in Beancounter beatdown

"Fewer bells", Shirley

Standards please!

Perseverance rover sets a Martian speed record with software controls

Re: Yes, humans might be faster. . .

I saw a documentary about terraforming Mars...

Just before the ancient reactor started melting the ice caps releasing enough of an atmosphere to support human life, Arnie was having quite a hard time. The way his face was exploding I doubt he'd have lasted long enough to cover a couple of metres, let alone 300.

On Mars robots are better than people.

Arnie's face ------------------->

Data breach reveals distressing info: People who order pineapple on pizza

Devil's spunk...

Is that a recommendation?

Whistleblower claims Uncle Sam is sitting on hoard of alien vehicles and tech

Exotic tech...

Followed by an explosion in AI research... regulated by Rishi! What could possibly go wrong?

Quite a lot if the series of documentaries I've seen are anything to go by.

I blame Bozza... hasta la vista baby, indeed.

Storing the Quran on your phone makes you a terror suspect in China

Worth pointing out...

The UK wants precisely the same capability to evaluate all of the files on all citizen's phones.

To prevent kiddy porn of course, and only a paedo would object to that. Besides, if you have nothing to hide then you have nothing to fear...

People assume the Online Safety Bill is about protecting children, but it is as much about "terrorism", a nebulous term at best. It can be used as required by whoever is in power...

The Chinese think that anything Muslim is indicative of terrorism... I imagine you wouldn't have to go too far to find some UK politicians with similar views.

UK government scraps smart motorway plans, cites high costs and low public confidence

Re: The existing ones don't even meet the spec

Also known as Volvo drivers.

The best thing about the 4 lane A1M going north to Peterborough is the confused Volvo drivers with no middle lane to occupy...

It's the UK too. Lorries aren't allowed in the overtaking lane on 3 Lane motorways.

And there are local areas where on 2 lane motorways they are restricted to one lane at peak times. For instance the 2 lane section of the M11 as it goes through a hilly region, and approaching the end of the A14 before it merges into the M1 and M6.

FBI boss says COVID-19 'most likely' escaped from lab

Re: The dangers of certainty

Yeah, coz if you ever need surgery you'll tell the surgeon not to bother with a mask because you don't believe they work...

To the Banmobile! Huawei inks deal to create global high-end automotive brand

Car phones home to Beijing...

"Sorry, Control, still stuck in traffic on the M25. No spy updates at present."

Meanwhile, driver in the adjacent car, phone held up to his face... "Oh no, that's one of those SUSPICIOUS Huawei cars... I'll ring you back later."

Helicopters, because you'll never be alone in a Huawei car!

Orion snaps 'selfie' with the Moon as it prepares for distant retrograde orbit

Re: Get it right please

Sarcasm suspected, in part because of LED instead of Led, but cannot find it.

DEEP Floyd were of course responsible for the album Dark Side of the Moon.

However, "there is no dark side of the moon, really. Matter of fact it's all dark"

Twitter engineer calls out Elon Musk for technical BS in unusual career move

Skewlines? Is that you?

US seeks standards dominance, lets Huawei access previously forbidden crypto tech

Re: Export of ... algorithms?

That was over 20 years ago... and was arguably useless, The maths has always been freely available.

Check out Huawei's phones. Can they handle TLS and HTTPS? Indeed they can, the crypto is already there.

And it's not as if the Chinese haven't created their own variants. For ECDSA and ECKA they have SM2 (and SM9). SM4 corresponds to AES. SM3 corresponds to SHA-256.

What's more, western companies realize that to do business in China they have to play the game, and are investing heavily in supporting these Chinese algorithms.

Pirate, coz even if the US says they can't have crypto they'll still get it...

UK govt promises to sink billions into electronic health records for England

Re: @cantankerous swineherd

I dunno... I bet a fair few are masons...

Smart homes are hackable homes if not equipped with updated, supported tech

Re: Promotion

Only if you get to discontinue support...

Indian authorities issue conflicting advice about biometric ID card security

Cutting costs

When I was working on similar cards a decade ago it was a design requiment that it's not secure... most terminals/readers out in the countryside couldn't support the security, the costs were prohibitive.

The cards might have been a glimpse of a utopian future but in reality were just "papers". If a little more durable.

New York City rips out last city-owned public payphones

Re: The past is a foreign country...

Bill and Ted used a pay phone to get there.

And the future...

Failed gambler? How about an algorithm that predicts the future

Re: The Consultancy Horizon...

I saw a documentary about that.

Once the horizon had been crossed someone tried to pull the plug... and that's how we ended up with terminators running around in California!

Tech pros warn EU 'data adequacy' at risk if Brexit Britain goes its own way

Re: Misdirection... it's worse than that...

It's about privatizing the NHS.

No self-respecting US company would accept a deal without all those juicy patient details.

Confirmation dialog Groundhog Day: I click OK and it keeps coming back

Re: Standup

And who's going to get it out...

Mine's the one... well, it's a bit obvious...

Elon Musk puts Twitter deal on hold over bot numbers claim

Due diligence...

Maybe he should have thought about it before buying 9% on the quiet. Or making an offer to buy the company.

Though he must have had some idea, because getting rid of the bots was one of his "reasons" for taking Twitter private.

Or is it just a smokescreen because he's feeling a little over-exposed?

BOFH: You'll have to really trust me on this team-building exercise

Re: Ahh, Team building/break the ice exercises....

Takes me back 30 years...

"Welcome to your teambuilding course, for this is YOUR course..."

Hearts sank, morale instantly deflated.

After a morning of team games he corners me during lunch... "I couldn't help noticing how well you got on with your team mates."

"We've all met before", I reply.

"But the teams were made up from different departments."

"Yes, but we all go to the same pub at lunchtime", say I, with the clear subtext that the pub is where real teambuilding gets done.

And where I'd rather be.

IBM's autonomous Mayflower ship breaks down in second transatlantic attempt

Maintenance droids...

I saw a documentary about one. It even worked in space stuck out the back of a starfighter

Look what we caught while out fishing!

Nice boat you've got there IBM, it would be a pity if something happened to it...

US judge dismisses Republican efforts to block release of Salesforce emails

Re: One option

Then employ good old Republican patriotic pleas... "Hey, Putin, maybe you can help find those emails".

And casually mention that Trump is running a child-trafficking ring from the basement of a pizza parlour...

I mean, what could possibly go wrong?

BOFH: Something's consuming 40% of UPS capacity – and it's coming from the beancounters' office

BOFH with Hans Gruber aspirations?

We all know why he wants power to the building cut...

Unable to write 'Amusing Weekly Column'. Abort, Retry, Fail?

I like to use "Unspecified error"

I know what it is, so it isn't unknown, but I'm not telling, because it's bad.

In fact you really, really don't want to know how bad it is. No point upsetting the user...

China's top tech city Shenzhen locks down completely for at least a week

Dispatch Dido?

Can't happen soon enough...

JPMorgan Chase readies for post-quantum security world

Re: One Smart Cookie

I don't believe JPMorgan Chase are groundbreakers in PQC.

Certainly not to the extent that they deserved this article-long advert.

And any article on QKD is perverse not to mention Chinese efforts: 2000km fibre key distribution, satellites used to transfer keys (intercontinental).

Not seeking, choosing

NIST ran their usual crypto competition for PQC algorithms and are busily selecting their faves. There are already trials for so-called hybrid schemes for TLS.

Though it is still a moot point when a powerful enough quantum computer will be built That troubles current crypto, or even if one can ever be (the number of error correction qubits would appear to increase exponentially...).

We get the privacy we deserve from our behavior

Re: confused

Also, the first five paragraphs seemed to have very little to do with the subject. A niche example of my employer being careless with data being conflated to me exhibiting insecure behaviour...

Ok, I'm an employee, my employer knows things about me. How does that affect my right to privacy? How does any of that have any bearing on my personal life when I'm not at work? It's the employer's duty to safeguard the personal information they do have, so how is that relevant to me not getting the privacy I deserve?

In any case, instead of giving up on privacy because users might be a bit leaky (!), why not expect corporations to provide the basics of security? For instance the reluctance to use multi-factor authentication is not down to the users, it's the fault of the plethora of sites that don't even offer it!

I'd expect better aspirations from a graduate of cyber security and computer forensics.

Working in Arm's engineering team? You're probably happy with your pay rise

Re: "our people are core to our success"

The point is that Arm have been losing engineers and it is hard to replace them, so they need to pay (above) the going rate.

Security guards are fundamentally important but are easily replaced.

Likewise support staff.

I find it interesting that the research teams get less than the engineers, probably reflecting the notion that they have a really "cool" role and so are less inclined to jump ship.

Something 4,000 light years away emitted strange radio bursts. This is where we talk to scientists for actual info

When your civilization reaches a certain stage...

You build radar systems out of captured magnetars. Spin it up to generate the radio luminosity and then precess it to sweep out across the stars...

Or it might just be radiation from a rotating death star's reactor exhaust vent.

The astro equivalent of a blinking light on a motorway cone.

Infosec chap: I found a way to hijack your web accounts, turn on your webcam from Safari – and Apple gave me $100k

Do ShareBears shit in the woods?

The implication is that nobody thought "What could possibly go wrong if I automatically sync a file without any checks?".

And that is a naive approach to programming, particularly when messing with code that has such security implications.

James Webb Space Telescope has arrived at its new home – an orbit almost a million miles from Earth

At least they had the grace to correct it

First sentence of the report in the Guardian

"The world's largest and most powerful space telescope..."

With a note at the end acknowledging the correction.

It's possible that the error was the fault of the original source, it's an Associated Press report.

Joint European Torus celebrates 100,000 pulses: Neither Brexit nor middle age has stopped '80s era experiment

You appear to be dribbling...

"Entirely analogous"? These words do not mean what you think they mean.

Nobody is trying to sell the JET by saying it hasn't done many pulses.

Web daddy Tim Berners-Lee on privacy, data sharing, and the web's future

Dumb-ass? Or just not bothered?

Users will inevitably be told of the "advantages" of making all that data available, just like they already are by bookface, Amazon, Google, .... People already believe tailored ads are a good thing!

Facebook will default to "share all pod data" with such a complex interface for selectively denying access that most people will take one look and think "fuck it" and click on OK.

Put all your eggs in one basket, sit back and let Facebook make omelettes for you.

I own that $4.5bn of digi-dosh so rewrite your blockchain and give it to me, Craig Wright tells Bitcoin SV devs

Just nuke the originals...

No, Mr Bond, I expect you to die.

And this time I won't tell you my plan beforehand just in case you manage to escape.

But seeing as you asked, and I'm a megalomaniac who just can't resist spilling the beans... I'm going to crash the value of Bitcoin by threatening to bring the original Satoshi stash to the market. I'll buy up on the cheap and then announce that I've destroyed the key to the stash, driving the price up again! And there's nothing you can do to stop me!

COVID-19 was a generational opportunity for change at work – and corporate blew it

Re: Sorry, no.

Indeed, and I'd go further...

Someone might want to have a quick chat so I can solve their problem, I might not appreciate the interruption to my work.

We use an internal chat system. You can ask me your question, I can look at it and decide when I want to answer, without dropping what I'm doing for a less immediate issue. And we have found this essential to manage interactions between team members strung across multiple time zones and continents, where there is no possibility for a chance meeting in the coffee room.

US-China chip cold war? It's only helping the Middle Kingdom, silicon makers warn

Hacking the world since 1998?

So they are Johnny-come-latelys...

Russia starts playing by the rules: FSB busts 14 REvil ransomware suspects

I thought REvil were part of FSB

Or at least sponsored by them.

With enhanced plausible deniability now we have vids of "raids"...

European Space Agency: Come on, hack our satellite if you think you're hard enough

If you're truly l33t...

You'll land it in the neighbour's garden.

Perseverance on the rocks: Pebbles clog up the rover's Martian sample collection

Environmental impact form...

Might have stopped you destroying the Mysteron base!

Apple quietly deletes details of derided CSAM scanning tech from its Child Safety page without explanation

Re: Peeping Toms

Big Brother AI stitch up...

"This is the photo you wanted to take"

And if they don't like you, followed by

"A recent search of your private photos found unapproved images. The Authorities have been notified."