Posts by Empire of the Pussycat

Microsoft Authenticator to nuke Entra creds on rooted and jailbroken phones

Hmm, is the data on a personal device Microsoft's to delete?

I'd have thought it belongs to the owner of the device, it exists on the device only as a result of the owner using the app to create it, same as using, say, a text editor to create a text file.

In which case, surely it'd be illegal (at least in UK) for MS to delete it.

Of course, MS is welcome to disable the account at the other end, then it's up to the organization's IT to sort out the MS-created mess.

So glad I've almost finished migrating all my stuff off MS, goodbye O365, no more revenue for MS, hello Proton and Libre office.

Cisco warns of two more SD-WAN bugs under active attack

No surprise

First time I encountered vManage was shortly after Cisco borged Viptela.

It is a great of example of what happens if you let software types do networking, I'd bet there was a lot of Agile involved.

The only surprise is that it ever manages to work, at least until it's internal jibbering causes it to grind to a halt until cleaned-up and restarted.

In its desperation to bag an SDWAN company before they were all taken, Cisco bought a wrong 'un.

Iran all but vanishes from the global internet amid US-Israel strikes

Re: Another war for oil

"Provoked", seriously?

Decades of Israeli invasion, apartheid, oppression, murder, theft, torture, starvation, indiscriminate slaughter etc., now that's provocation.

Israel is the problem, it consistently refuses to stick to the internationally recognised borders and does all it can to prevent the Palestinians establishing a viable government in their own land, with the clear goal of killing/evicting everyone in Gaza and the West Bank, and steal all their land for Israel.

Re: Another war for oil

Yep.

Yet another country where the west interfered to gain control over oil, including overthrowing the closest thing to democratic rule Iran ever had (Mosaddegh).

The current Iranian regime is loathsome, the previous 'pro-western' one was no better - the Shah's secret police organization, SAVAK, was notorious for torture and general atrocity, it was established and trained with significant US CIA involvement as well as Israel's Mossad chipping in with how to torture people and eliminate opponents.

This repression led to the 1979 revolution and helps explain why they hated the USA and Israel so much, both countries gleefully enabled the Shah's brutal regime.

No one has clean hands, certainly not the US, Israel, UK, Russia etc.

As always, the ones who suffer are the poor sods who just wanted to live a decent life in freedom.

If Microsoft made a car... what would it be?

It's made in a shed...

...by a weirdo who's convinced that he's created the perfect car, it just needs a bit more tinkering or a widget added there, perhaps some more wheels, and on, and on, and on he goes...

After all these years, he's still absolutely certain that he's right.

People used to humour him, then they got a bit tired of him, now they've started to cross to the other side of the road to avoid him, and blank him in the street if he tries to accost them.

How AI could eat itself: Competitors can probe models to steal their secrets and clone them

"American-led, democratic AI."

There's absolutely nothing 'democratic' about AI.

Microsoft engineer speedruns Raspberry Pi magic smoke in five minutes

Re: He posted this?

At Microsoft, they have no shame about breaking things.

Techie's one ring brought darkness by shorting a server

Still remember the days back in the 80s when I snipped a spare mains lead to get a connector

Not even a spark, ELCB tripped with a clunk. That wasn't the spare, that was the live one.

Swapped the genuine spare lead for the ex-live one.

System came back to life.

ATM flashes a port or two for the enterprising hacker

Re: False alarm, no bork

I'm pretty sure there'll be people operating ATMs without keeping them up to date, leaving out recommended security features, sweating old devices that don't support modern protection, etc., likely skimping on cost at the expense of security.

Or not being careful about physical security, then the criminals get away with using cameras to peek at PINs/cards, fitting fake keyboard overlays, or skimmers/shimmers.

Long ago I did some security consultancy for a bank, they'd been plagued with gas attacks, in the end they decided to accept the attacks as it was far cheaper than a program to retrofit the estate with detection/mitigation.

These days, running ATMs will be an unwanted cost for banks in many countries, with less cash being withdrawn the interchange fees are lower, and the pay-to-use operators targeting the desperate will be on thin margins, might be less money to spend on security than ever.

False alarm, no bork

ATM traffic is encrypted/secured inside the safe and there're other measures to detect/resist attack, any external networking boxes are just for connectivity.

Outside of a secure branch environment, most ATMs are likely to have exposed connections, i.e. in convenience stores, supermarkets etc., it's ok as they're designed to be secure in the real world.

If there were viable MITM attacks, things would've fallen apart long ago, aside from ATMs, card payment terminals wouldn't be viable, yet pretty much every shop has them these days, and they survive just fine with insecure/exposed connections.

eBay updates legalese to ban AI-powered shop-bots

It's a local shop for local people

There's nothing for AI here.

Palantir CEO claims AI will mean western economies won't need immigration

Once AI and robotics have eliminated millions of positions in white/blue collar roles...

...the newly unemployed can sweep the streets, collect the rubbish, pick fruit/veg, serve in shops, busk, beg etc.

No need for immigration to fill those roles any more.

Public heath/care sector will shrink as tax revenues will have crashed with the loss of medium/high salary roles, all the profits will be offshore.

EU considers whether there's Huawei of axing Chinese kit from networks within 3 years

Yeah, I'd be more inclined to encourage decoupling/diversification from USA controlled services.

I'm sure US/CN/etc. have plenty of ways to spy/interfere irrespective of equipment origin, but cloud/hosted services are far more susceptible to a criminal tyrant's whims.

Microsoft CEO: AI sovereignty isn't where it runs, it's who controls it

Datacenter location in unimportant, until...

...a criminal orange tyrant orders USA entities to shut down access to EU/UK/wherever.

At that point, location is everything.

Lawmakers urge FTC to probe Trump Mobile over 'deceptive' marketing

Re: Grifters gonna grift

Trump moral compasses are for display use only.

Re: Grifters gonna grift

Supporting Trump is self-selecting as a sucker.

Brussels plots open source push to pry Europe off Big Tech

Because no income tax, low business taxes, and little regulation is what has made UAE the global leader in open source and tech innovation.

Oh, hang on, that's not worked has it.

Sam Altman is willing to pay somebody $555,000 a year to keep ChatGPT in line

I'll do it

As humanity's guardian, my first three commands to ChatGPT will be: die, die, die.

Hacktivists scrape 86M Spotify tracks, claim their aim is to preserve culture

I'm only downloading to train my AI

<sauce for the gander>

Cornish recycling drive sows confusion among Reg Standards Bureau

Pasty dimensions should be specified in Linguine

It's the law

If only Lester were still with us, he'd know

To wherever he may be ------->

DVSA's clapped-out booking system gets bot slapped as new boss rides in

Re: FFS - we're British - get in a queue.

You need a provisional driving licence to begin with, otherwise you can't be on the road with an instructor.

UK plans right for flat owners to demand gigabit broadband

Depends, one approach to wiring blocks is install rooftop distribution box(es) then run trays and external cabling over the outside of the building with at least one tail left outside each flat.

Then when the flat gets connected, drill through the external wall, or window frame if possible, to run the cable into the flat.

It doesn't cost the building owner anything, but it leaves the building entwined in cable, that traps crud, looks nasty, may start popping loose and flapping around if poorly done, and makes maintenance more fiddly (i.e. expensive) as there's cable all over the place.

My block is now on the fourth generation of being externally cabled this way, first the GPO for telephones, then 1980s cable TV, 1990s coax interweb/TV, now fibre. Whenever the old cable dies, it gets left in place, old operator(s) won't take it away, the new operator won't clear it, and the owner would want leaseholders to cough up for it.

Roomba maker iRobot gets cleaned out in Chapter 11

But what will the cats do without Roomba?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mk4XB2wZqF4

The future of long-term data storage is clear and will last 14 billion years

There are days when I think punched cards will outlast us.

<grumpy>

NASA loses contact with MAVEN Mars orbiter

Martians perfected the hungry hippo aeons ago

In space, no one could hear it chomp

US extradites Ukrainian woman accused of hacking meat processing plant for Russia

Trump will already be preparing to pardon her

He's happy to pardon drug smugglers and fraudsters, a little favour for his mate Putin will be no problem.

Samsung reveals its first tri-fold phone – and its desktop mode

Re: So, now it's tri-fold

I'm waiting for the eight-fold, which will bring users to nirvana.

Doom hits KiCad as PCB traces become demons and doors

Never heard of KiCad before, looks interesting!

Back in the 70s-80s I'd've killed for something like this.

If it was your design, you drew the first schematics and designed the layout for initial prototypes, ink on acetate with rotrings and a stack of various adhesive pad layouts for different devices. Simulations were on a minicomputer and graphics were crude.

Umpteen jobs ago now, but downloading it for a play.

FCC guts post-Salt Typhoon telco rules despite ongoing espionage risk

So Trump's administration is now working for both Putin and Xi

Putin will be heartbroken at this lack of loyalty

FCC looks to torch Biden-era cyber rules sparked by Salt Typhoon mess

What could possibly go wrong?

<no dial tone>

Microsoft's data sovereignty: Now with extra sovereignty!

Trumpers to cloudy CEO: "give us all your EU data or take a one-way trip to the Red Onion"

<sound of CEO capitulating>

Lenovo puts the 'cloud' in cloud computing, proposes mid-air datacenters

Server crashes should be more spectacular

<duck>

From Intel to the infinite, Pat Gelsinger wants Christian AI to change the world

Hallucinations about an imaginary friend

What could possibly go wrong

DNS downing clouds is boring: IBM Cloud is experiencing a quantum computer outage

The cause is simultaneously DNS and not DNS

<my quantum cheshire cat told me this>

SpaceX pulls plug on 2,500 Starlink terminals tied to Myanmar fraud farms

Myanmar scams are not allowed

Orange scams are fine.

UK data regulator defends decision not to investigate MoD Afghan data breach

Nothing to see here, move along now

No need, no, not even a little bit, you can trust us, it's just another one-off.

Windows 11 update knocks out USB mice, keyboards in recovery mode

Presumably MS is using Copilot to write bits of Win11

Copilot don't need no frickin' keyboards.

Amazon spills plan to nuke Washington...with X-Energy mini-reactors

Re: More Micro than Small

Bigly.

Labor unions sue Trump administration over social media surveillance

Re: Does freedom of speech work both ways?

Lies and misinformation are not free speech any more than the publication of child pornography.

Makes no difference who is spreading them, whether left, right, or over ever edge of an amplituhedron at once.

Being punted off twitter for spouting batshit nonsense is not suppression of free speech, anyone wanting to spread lies and misinformation is free to stand on the street corner and rant away, rights fully intact.

Apple goes all in on AI acceleration with M5 MacBook, iPad, and Vision Pros

Re: Oh FFS

At least 94 exa-upvotes for this.

Trump's anti-sustainability agenda comes to Eurozone

Re: TDS

People doing a thing wrong doesn't make the thing wrong.

Over the decades I've worked for/with/employed people of many backgrounds/ages/colours/genders/etc. Not because of DEI, but because I try to treat others as I expect to be treated myself, I'm not claiming to be perfect, far from it, I just try not to be a cunt.

I've also seen racism, sexism, bullying and other nastiness - it goes on even in global companies with lots of DEI rah rah - over time I've reported a few for it.

DEI isn't the problem, people are, and some will exploit whatever the law is to their own ends.

Ofcom fines 4chan £20K and counting for pretending UK's Online Safety Act doesn't exist

The OSA dates which received royal assent in 2023, it's a tory-brexiter act, the blame lies with them not the current gang of self-serving posturers.

https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2023/50

The fact-averse may not like this, that's tough.

China moves to extend control over tech industry's critical rare earths

Trump trumped, bigly.

<ha ha ha ha ha ha>

Discord says 70,000 photo IDs compromised in customer service breach

I'm shocked, appalled, taken aback

(Not really)

Predictable, and, indeed, predicted.

UK government says digital ID won't be compulsory – honest

Re: Built on lies.

It's fact not nonsense.

Government of the day carries can tory boy.

Re: Built on lies.

OSA isn't Starmer's

The tory-brexiters imposed it on us.

Re: It won't be mandatory, but you'll increasingly be screwed without it

It's not simply asking, it's refusing to hand over my own property, at my own front door, unless I produce ID to prove I'm over age, not to prove identity.

They then record details from the ID.

Next time I might just take it from them.

It won't be mandatory, but you'll increasingly be screwed without it

It's bad enough being asked to show ID to prove I'm over 18 when someone delivers alcohol from an idiot supplier that demands age be checked.

I'm nudging 70, I've slogged through jungles, fired weapons at people, helped nail baddies, and done many other grown-up things, they all took their toll, I definitely look way over 18.

There'll be an increasing stream of companies and services demanding it as a compliance/arse-covering/data trawling exercise.