* Posts by greenwood-IT

62 publicly visible posts • joined 25 May 2016

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Why is Big Tech hellbent on making AI opt-out?

greenwood-IT

Don't get me started...

...I would argue that we don't really have an "Opt-In" or "Op-Out" option for much of what Microsoft are trying to sell us.

I have turned off and disabled OneDrive more times than I care to remember, but somehow it seems just appear on my taskbar demanding that I sign in.

I run an IT company with my own Active Directory and backups - yet I keep being asked to switch to an online Microsoft account for security? It's also told me that I don;'t have a backup and so am at risk - all very dodgy and designed to "trick" people into buying their services,

Even when you do get asked to "Opt-In" there is no "Opt-Out", just an annoying "Ask me again later" - what happened to the "F Off and NEVER ask me again!" option that a desire?

It's almost like a Trojan, we have to block it every time, but they only need to be allowed in once - we don't stand a chance!

iFixit to the rescue: McDonald's workers can rescue their own ice cream machines

greenwood-IT

An easy solution...

So we're hoping the iFixIt document server gets hacked, and they refuse to pay the ransom. The tools and documentation will then be released to the public by an unknown nasty person and everyone will be happy.

Since when did "you can't get it on the internet" become a real thing?

UK electronics firms want government to stop taxing trash and let them fix it instead

greenwood-IT

Sounds great, where do I sign up?

I'm a Sole Trader working in PC and hardware setup, install and repair. I'm not VAT registered, so will they just send me a cheque each month? :-)

More than likely, this will only benefit the larger businesses and squash the local suppliers. Hopefully they will just make "IT Components" VAT free, so everyone can benefit.

Trump campaign arms up with 'unhackable' phones after Iranian intrusion

greenwood-IT

Possibly...

Do we know what Chinese hardware this wonderful OS runs on, or which AppStore you can download malware from?

I suspect staff will not want to use it as it will "lack essential features" like X, Facebook, ChatGPT, CandyCrush etc.

CrowdStrike CEO summoned to explain epic fail to US Homeland Security committee

greenwood-IT

Basic software common sense

OK, so they are now saying this was a "definitions/signature" file and not the actual kernel driver itself that caused the problem? This brings on even more questions;

1) is this critical signature file not signed or checksummed? Both options would have avoided a corrupt file being delivered - which would have avoided this incident. From a security perspective, I'd expect such a critical file to be digitally signed - you wouldn't want bad people modifying its contents now would you?

2) The contents of the signature file were not corrupt, but just plain wrong - so what happened to input validation? I thought everyone who did anything with security new about bounds and input validation? This is an input file to a critical process, it should not have blue screened just because someone but in too many commas of a date in the wrong format - that is bad programming 101.

It sounds like a school boy error by CrowdStrike to me - probably a rushed job and now time for "good practice" - possibly because that would have slowed down the release, but also possibly slowed down the application when running. Relying on the "ON ERROR" function in a kernel driver is not a good option.

Clearview AI reaches 'creative' settlement with privacy suit plaintiffs: A conditional IOU

greenwood-IT

Let me see...

"Yes officer, I was speeding to get to work. I can't afford to pay the fine right now, but if you let me keep on speeding every day, I'll pay it if I get a Christmas bonus". It may need rewording, but at least there's now legal presidency for my plea.

UK may not hit goal of 95% mobile coverage, commons committee warns

greenwood-IT

"Yes dear, I know I agreed to decorate the bathroom 10 years ago, but when I finally got around to considering doing it last week it looked a lot more expensive to do. I guess you were right, and I should have done it years ago, but there was no incentive then, and even less now"

How the heck do these businesses get away with their excuses? They have all been making profits for years but claim to have not noticed raising prices of material essential to their license agreements? Stop them deploying 5G until they comply with their existing licenses. Perhaps fine them a percentage of their revenue based on the coverage shortfall - then they would invest to save money.

Crooks threaten to leak 3B personal records 'stolen from background check firm'

greenwood-IT

Re: That 'opt out link'

The "opt out" also doesn't work for relatives of the data subject. My details may well appear in the database without me knowledge if a relative if mine "opted in". You have the same issue with GDPR, a staff member can opt in but provide next of kin details, which is confidential data they share with you without the owners permission.

BT delays deadline for digital landline switch off date

greenwood-IT

When I was with BT and doing VOIP over 20 years ago, this topic came up. The best suggestion was to simply change the BT primary socket faceplate to provide ADSL to the router, and to allow the VoIP from the router to connect back to the new faceplate via an RJ11. This would then have allowed ALL the existing extensions and devices to function as normal. Basically using the router as an ATA and connecting the output to the properties existing cabling. Provision of a small 350VA UPS would also be considered. The suggestions got a "thank you" reply, nothing more

UK lays down fresh legislation banning crummy default device passwords

greenwood-IT

A far simpler option would be to allow a default password but insist on it being changed on first use.

The main advantage would be that you can then easily gain access following a Factory Reset. The idea of resetting a device and THEN having to find a sticky label for the password :-(

The idea of a "Security Support Contact" and a published "Best Before" date would be handy, but I bet a bunch of the cheap IoT companies would just go bust and rebrand (if they have a brand!) every year.

UK's Investigatory Powers Bill to become law despite tech world opposition

greenwood-IT

I've never understood how letting them have more access to more data about me will "improve my privacy"?

It also means I'm more likely to route all my traffic via a VPN via a foreign country or use a foreign cloud service, which means I'll actually have less protection under UK law.

I'm guessing sales of "personal cloud boxes" build by foreign countries will increase...

With the forthcoming election, can I ask each MP to list their technical qualifications - or in fact, any job related qualifications (ie, not their family tree or private club memberships).

Microsoft really does not want Windows 11 running on ancient PCs

greenwood-IT

Re: Alternative

Having just come back from an office with 6 people running on a 1.4Mbps broadband - going cloud based isn't always the answer. You're also looking at subscriptions - so these 6 staff members will be paying the same £7/month each for Office 365 that will perform much worse than the £20 one off OEM license for Office Pro they already own. Let customers decide what they want and when they upgrade, we don't need to be forced in to an upgrade if there is zero benefit, or we don't have the money. I remember the days when people WANTED to upgrade to get the new features - what amazing new feature persuaded you to upgrade to WIn11 from Win10?

British Library: Finances remain healthy as ransomware recovery continues

greenwood-IT

So does EVERYTHING run on the one machine or network? It appears the ransomware attack took out absolutely everything! Surely the public facing website wasn't connected on the same LAN as every other device? I can see they may have hit a web server and got access to SQL, but the entire business??? Who "designed" and implemented this setup? I do hope this £9M is being spent on a different IT provider to the one that has already screwed them over with their original design, implementation and support fees.

greenwood-IT

Re: Backups

Or even more importantly, who runs it? It's more than likely outsourced to a 3rd party, so who is really responsible for this outage? That "IT Partner" needs to be identified so that their other clients are aware of the risks of staying with them.

Openreach hits halfway mark in quest to hook up 25M premises with fiber broadband

greenwood-IT

We live in exciting times.. :-(

I live in a small village, where broadband speed in some areas is still in single digits! Universal Obligation didn't arrive here. We currently have at least 4 providers flooding the area with fibre, and they are all behind schedule (Trooli is 2yrs late) and digging up different parts of the village. Trooli, Giganet, Vodafone and Openreach - why don't you talk to each other and either do different villages or share the ducting costs? As it stands, you're just covering the place in traffic lights and mud, as well as breaking the traditional phone lines when pulling fibres!

PS: You also need to come up with some new product names, "Full Fibre" is the name of your 80Mb VDSL offering, which is in fact 50% Fibre.

Microsoft likens MFA to 1960s seatbelts, buckles admins in yet keeps eject button

greenwood-IT

Please think of the techies

Everyone agrees that MFA is great for security.

However, spare a thought for the tech who often ends up with a buggered PC and needs to access the users system. Either the device is taken to a remote workshop or it's accessed remotely - but how do you then enter your clients fingerprint or text received on their phone? It may be more secure, but IT Support will suffer.

Batterygate bound for Blighty as UK court approves billion-dollar Apple compensation case

greenwood-IT

Re: make it hurt

Any fine needs to hurt the shareholders. Then the board of the company would listen, and consider the impact of their decisions before trying to screw over the customers.

How 'AI watermarking' system pushed by Microsoft and Adobe will and won't work

greenwood-IT
FAIL

So, if I create a deep fake porn image of a politician, I need to register that fake (with the CR) on the Adobe Cloud. Then when I share it online, obviously with the metadata removed, it can be detected. That sounds like it's going to work, and I can't think of any way around that :-(

Also, if I grab a copy of an old photo of the Mona Lisa and upload it to the Adobe Cloud today, will that mark ALL global copies of the Mona Lisa as dodgy copies?

This is going to be so much fun.

Airport chaos as eGates down for the count across UK

greenwood-IT
Stop

Who are these people?

20 years ago, a small team developed software to deploy, upgrade and manage 2,000 servers, 50,000 PCs and 8,000 CAS machines. We upgraded every end point almost monthly and overnight.

Who is this company that's paid millions to upgrade 300 machines on a weekday between 9-5? Who manages this project, do they have any previous experience?

I'm 20 years out of date, but could probably still do a better job from my laptop sat in bed!

Vodafone claims first space-based 5G phone call – no modifications needed

greenwood-IT

5G why do we need it?

So satellites can pick up my 5G mobile signal in space... I'm just so glad I'm not paranoid. Although it does beg the question as to why my 5G signal is non existent at home, maybe I need to stand on the roof to get a bit closer?

UK government hands CityFibre £318M for rural broadband builds

greenwood-IT

Another "project"..

"Project gigabit" another project that will just die off before completion.

What happened to the "Universal Service Obligation", I still have clients stuck way below that threshold but ISPs are ignoring it.

What happened to 4G, I have clients who can't get it, and now are being told 3G is being turned off with no plans for 5G in the area.

Roll out within 12 months from a standing start - no chance. Trooli and giganet have been messing in my postcode for 3 years and it's still not fully available or working!

75% of that "investment" will go on paperwork anyway.

Microsoft Windows edges closer to SMB security signing fully required by default

greenwood-IT

Re: This will be exciting

I've yet to find any rented office printers that support anything other than SMB1.

SCAN TO FOLDER is going to require a small XP box in the corner - gotta love these security improvements.

greenwood-IT

c) additionally revenue for the extra cores they suggest as a solution.

Your code is slow and inefficient - solution, buy a faster machine. :-(

Online Safety Bill age checks? We won't do 'em, says Wikipedia

greenwood-IT

I should be a politition

How about we delay the age verification bill for a few years?

By that time, the children we're trying to protect will have grown up and be over 18. Problem solved :-)

Why are we removing responsibility from the parents? Supervision, discussion and Parental Control software does actually work. In comparison, look at the eScooter rental situation with children under 18 driving in the streets - how is the age verification via driving license working there?

Criminal records office yanks web portal offline amid 'cyber security incident'

greenwood-IT

Thoughts and Prayers

Rather than extract the data, it would be far more "fun" to add details to past Prime Ministers records :-) It's not always what you can take, but sometimes what you can give back to society :-)

Samsung reportedly leaked its own secrets through ChatGPT

greenwood-IT
Facepalm

The Reg has asked Samsung to confirm the details of this story

"The Reg has asked Samsung to confirm the details of this story, but had not received a response at the time of writing."

Come on guys, why not just ask ChatGPT what secrets it knows about Samsung?

OpenAI CEO warns that GPT-4 could be misused for nefarious purposes

greenwood-IT

Re: AI will create new jobs for artists and novel ways of producing music

I'd like to ask him how many musicians received any money from the event in question? They already got rid of the DJ.

Alert: Crims hijack these DrayTek routers to attack biz

greenwood-IT

I cancelled a Trooli fibre installation a couple of months ago as they insisted that they deploy and manage an obsolete 3900. I wonder what they are going to do now...

If your going to insist on only allowing the use of supplier kit, surely you'd provide something that's supported :-(

'Thousands' at Meta face layoffs this week

greenwood-IT
Alert

Re: I'm smarter...

How many of those "thousands" are actually fake employee accounts?

I bet most of them have the same staff ID card with a topless Russian woman on a motorbike as their photo - it's a FB thing.

UK tax authority nudges net 'influencers': You may owe us for those OnlyFans feet pics

greenwood-IT

Good news..

I keep being told by "influencers" that it's a "real job", so I'm guessing that if the government accepts it as a real job, and they pay taxes, then they may be right :-)

Interesting point about the $1,000 (?) from online activities, I'll have to check my Google and Amazon clickbait payments :-o

Cops chase Tesla driver 'dozing' with Autopilot on

greenwood-IT
WTF?

So did the Tesla successfully evade Police?

Am I missing something? Why would a police car not just get in front of the Tesla and slow down? Surely the Tesla would see the slow moving traffic in front and stop (I really hope it would!), or did it mount the pavement and drive through the tables and chairs on the sidewalk like they do in so many American films?

I'm guessing California will now demand an SMS gateway so they can text Tesla a vehicle registration number and ZIP code, and have the vehicle self drive to the police pound :-)

Guess the most common password. Hint: We just told you

greenwood-IT

Re: What!?

If you are going to write it down, please add a date next to it or cross out the old ones. I must spend hours a week waiting for clients to flip through password books shouting out different passwords for the one login I need. Although I must admit, I enjoy trying to identify the pattern :-)

I had one client who's email address was something like xT5-4GHj!@bigemail.com and the password was Mable - I'm sure they were confused when they set it up!

Here's how 5 mobile banking apps put 300,000 users' digital fingerprints at risk

greenwood-IT

Same old same ild

This comes down to the old issue of logging into a system as "Administrator" rather than a restricted user. We all know it's wrong, but it makes coding, testing and support soooo much easier.

Everyone is rushing their development, and we know security & testing only ever finds problems and causes delays :-(

Keyless cars, what a great idea - security will be in version 2.

Philippines orders fraud probe after paying MacBook prices for slow Celeron laptops

greenwood-IT

Options

Maybe it included a years Office 365 and McAfee for free :-)

Tweaks to IPv4 could free up 'hundreds of millions of addresses'

greenwood-IT

Re: first Vs last

Haha,

Well I've stuck with a setup we developed for a 50,000 PC deployment with over 2000 sites. The router goes at .200 with clients on DHCP below, and "important stuff" on the higher numbers above. It does mean the first PC on site is .1, so names and IP addresses can match if you really want :-)

Chat soon.

Voyager 1 space probe producing ‘anomalous telemetry data’

greenwood-IT

Re: I'm smarter...

Ping -w 151200000

If voyger1 a .com, .space or .extraspace TLD?

AMD reveals an Epyc 50 flaws – 23 of them rated high severity. Intel has 25 bugs, too

greenwood-IT

Having these security bugs also means the kit will have a shorter life span. Who wants to run a processor with known security bugs, best to just replace it with a new one every 3-5 years. Everlasting lightbulb anyone?

Schools email marketing company told us to go away when we told them of exposed database creds, say infoseccers

greenwood-IT

Good luck with that argument..

"we do not hold any confidential information on any of our servers"

I understood name, email, job description, company and password were classed as personal and confidential. I'm pretty sure I can't just publish my list of contacts from my database on a web page - which is what they have basically done! ICO, do your job.

G7 countries outgun UK in worldwide broadband speed test

greenwood-IT

What about the other 15%...

Who comes up with this stuff?

So the target is to get "high speed" to 85% of the population. That means those who live in cities or already have decent infrastructure will get even fast broadband, while those 10million who live on the end of a bit of wet string in the country will be left behind, forgotten and ignored.

I bet the "Tax break" is targeted at new technology, ie, subsidised 5G or FTTP, rather than providing a reliable 50Mbps to home & business users via DSL or a strong 3G/4G signal.

Anyone seen the UK plans for how to run 6 office phones off of a 0.25Mbps ADSL link in 2025 when there's no mobile coverage in the area?

Thanks UK planners and Government regulations.

Remember the bloke who was told by Zen Internet to contact his MP about crap service? Yeah, it's still not fixed

greenwood-IT

"Please" leave us without a penalty..

Haha,

It definitely sounds like an OpenReach issue - so you can see why ZEN want this guy to leave ASAP. Any future ISP will have the same issue, so he'd be far better staying with ZEN and insisting that based on the contract that he's been paying, THEY need to get it sorted.

I've had problems with BT recently (not naming the product), and after months of zero support, I started "abusing" every one of their adverts on Facebook - all done very politely by just pointing out how bad they were. Within a month of my campaign, I'd got a call from someone high up who asked "if I'd had problems?" :-) He's not put me in direct touch with someone technical who actually understands the product - almost a happy ending - it's still not working correctly, but they guy I'm talking too actually understands the problem and appears to be kicking arse and getting some progress.

This article, and a lot of public exposure of the issue will do more good than writing to your MP - in fact, despite my local MP having broadband and a website, he doesn't "do" email? :-( (he does do email, but only for his friends - not for his constituents!).

Chat soon.

Airline software super-bug: Flight loads miscalculated because women using 'Miss' were treated as children

greenwood-IT

Primary concern, really?

"The health and safety of our customers and crew is always our primary concern," a TUI spokesperson said.

Clearly their primary concern was getting cheaper software developed offshore and not fully testing it.

Out "thoughts and prayers" are with the non-UK developers and shareholders.

US national parks to be smothered under blanket of liquid-hot Magma. Yes, the open-source 5G software

greenwood-IT

Why?

Has anyone asked "why" you need 5G in the Forest? From my physics memory, wouldn't 4G provide more coverage with fewer masts, and also be cheaper?

Unless the touted benefit of being able to do virtual brain surgery over mobile relates to a specific surgeon planning a camping weekend?

greenwood-IT

Re: "vendor agnostic and free from lock-in"

There's also a lot of benefit in actually "owning" a version of the software on your system.

Looking at cloud based software, or software that auto updates when it feels like it can cause more problems than it fixes. A lot of the "managed" platforms get updated with features many clients don't actually want, most businesses also hate the way the software they use, updates outside their control thus causing support and training issues.

I had one medical client who was unable to print legally required labels from their 12 label printers across 3 sites last month - all because they had "auto update" turned on as their "security policy" requires them to install "official updates within 14 days". Look at the Android issues last month as another example of lack of control and how it impacts YOUR business.

You can have Microsoft Office for £7/month or a one off fee of £70 - what are you paying for? Most users already have Email and Cloud Storage, so why pay monthly? Nobody rents their TV, Video or Fridge any more do they?

Partial beer print horror as Microsoft's printer bug fix, er, doesn't

greenwood-IT

Seriously..

Well we have a legal requirement to print labels when we prescribe meds - and a dozen Dymo label printers all started missing life threatening details over the weekend.

The "patch" also included un-fixes for DNS and FTP, which also broke this week after the reboot.

Whoever wrote the security policy that said manufacturer released security fixes need to be applied within 14 days clearly never worked with Microsoft :-(

Baroness Dido Harding lifts the lid on the NHS's manual contact tracing performance: 'We contact them up to 10 times over a 36-hour period'

greenwood-IT
Flame

Damn numbers and facts.

Don't get me started on "r" numbers (I believe r is a short for RAND() as it's somewhere between 0 and 1)

Knowing that one person has reported positive, then surely knowing how many contacts they have had and how many of those became infected, would be a very accurate way of calculating a more accurate r value? It seems so bloody obvious compared with the current dozen committees who vote on a random number that they then seem to average before saying it's somewhere between 0.5 and 0.999 but less than 1.

Barclays Bank appeared to be using the Wayback Machine as a 'CDN' for some Javascript

greenwood-IT

Re: I'm smarter...

Erm,

Years ago (before ZIP, ARJ and LZW), I wrote a compression utility that would compress any data down to a single byte. Unfortunately I never managed to complete a working decompression method though. Maybe I should resurrect that code now - anyone got a working Vic-20 I can borrow?

WTF is Boeing on? Not just customer databases lying around on the web. 787 jetliner code, too, security bugs and all

greenwood-IT

Re: One Network to Rule Them All

So just having one maintenance system to monitor & manage all 3 networks? That there is exactly the problem, one system plugged into everything - that would be the target. Would it be so expensive and inconvenient to have a separate maintenance system for the public network?

More nodding dogs green-light terrible UK.gov pr0n age verification plans

greenwood-IT

Who you gonna trust

So the porn sites will now have to "subscribe" or "register" with a central body to verify visitor ages. The porn sites will also presumably have to invest in securing their site to handle this personal data, as well as comply with GDPR (will they have to keep a copy of the personal details?). I'm guessing this will just push the porn sites off of UK soil and beyond UK Government control.

"Free Porn" - site verified dirty by UK Government and clean by McAfee

I wonder if there will be a page on gov.uk with links to approved porn sites? That would seriously help with SEO :-)

London Gatwick Airport reopens but drone chaos perps still not found

greenwood-IT

Spare Drone Dome?

I do hope that that Drone Dome is a spare and hasn't been removed from it's job of protecting our military. I'd hate to think we are putting our servicemen and women at risk just so kids and see Santa in Lapland this Christmas.

A few reasons why cops didn't immediately shoot down London Gatwick airport drone menace

greenwood-IT

Tracking?

I seem to remember something about Nimrods tracking cars from dozens of miles away. Surely 30 years on a simple helicopter up high can track the drone to it's landing site? How about thermal imaging looking upwards? These things use a lot of power and need to be recharged regularly... by returning to the owner. The drone may well be streaming live video back to the pilot, listening in to that broadcast may give you clues as to where it's coming and going from. There seems to be a total lack of facts, photos and information on this. The police saying "we're confident we have it under control" when they seem to have done nothing doesn't boost confidence.

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