Posts by Insert sadsack pun here

Ring kills Flock partnership amid surveillance scrutiny

Re: Gunshot phrenology

Axon, the "trusted intermediary" for law enforcement requested for footage is...the manufacturer of Tasers and bodyworn cameras for law enforcement agencies

ATM maintenance tech broke the bank by forgetting to return a key

Re: Prison keys

If I Google "prison key replacement costs" it's going to look very suspicious!

Soup king Campbell’s parts ways with IT VP after ‘3D-printed chicken’ remarks

Re: I have one question

"how on Earth do you get to VP status in a company if you don't believe in its products ?"

Because a VP of IT doesn't have anything to do with making the food, likely doesn't understand how the food is made, and (so long as they can avoid be recorded and making derogatory comments) no-one cares about their opinion of the food.

They pay someone to do a job, they do it. You shouldn't have to have some kind of religious passion for your employer's product. Sometimes a tin of soup is just a tin of soup.

UK tribunal says reselling Microsoft licenses is A-OK

You're being downvoted because Reg readers are confusing ECJ (European Court of Justice, formally known as the Court of Justice of the European Union, and the UK is not a member of the EU) and the ECHR (European Court of Human Rights, which was formed by the Council of Europe, of which the UK is a member).

Having said that, the ECJ has an interim period during which proceedings would bind the UK in the case of historic conduct...

https://commonslibrary.parliament.uk/brexit-next-steps-the-court-of-justice-of-the-eu-and-the-uk/

https://www.echr.coe.int/composition-of-the-court

Anti-fraud body leaks dozens of email addresses in invite mishap

Possibly unpopular opinion

Meh - this is a total non story. There is no real risk of loss or negative impact to know that antifraud people were attending an antifraud meeting.

Major AWS outage across US-East region breaks half the internet

Re: 365 Apps

Reddit is offline. My productivity has increased by 732%

Brewhaha: Turns out machines can't replace people, Starbucks finds

"Who wants to pay a premium to be served by machines?"

This is the business model of Blank Coffee where all the coffee is made by machines. Soulless vibe vultures.

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2023/mar/03/indie-cafe-in-brixton-takes-on-hedge-fund-backed-coffee-chain-over-name

DoorDash sued for allegedly branding customer a fraudster after delivery photo query

Re: Door Dash?

Ahh, that's a common mistake. The company name is "Do or Dash". For the normal fee they'll do the delivery, but for the express fee they'll actually dash...

AI facial recognition could sink this murder probe

It's NOT about the reliability of the AI evidence (yet)

Worth making the point that the legal wrangling at hand here is not about the reliability of the AI/facial recognition software. It's about the prosecution's (apparent) failure to turn over relevant material (including the facial recognition support).

Whether any challenge to the quality of the facial recognition documentation happens pre trial or during trial, I have no idea.

https://www.criminalattorneycolumbus.com/what-is-discovery-in-criminal-law-in-ohio/#:~:text=In%20Ohio%2C%20discovery%20is%20governed%20by%20Criminal%20Rule%2016%20of,evidence%20and%20information%20before%20trial.

Billionaire SaaS CEO loses title after week of sleaze allegations

It was a little unsporting of El Reg not to cite (or even link to) the excellent, in depth reporting done by the Sydney Morning Herald, Australian Financial Review and The Age to break the story. The SMH/Age do an incredible job of investigative reporting around harassment, bullying and white collar crime in Australia...including of their own employer when needs be!

https://www.smh.com.au/technology/no-more-wise-guy-the-downfall-of-linkedin-lecher-richard-white-20241025-p5kl9i.html

Techie told 'Bill Gates' Excel is rubbish – and the Microsoft boss had it fixed in 48 hours

The boss had a degree in psychology rather than technology, and so was better at managing people than technical issues.

"worthy

noun [ C ] humorous

UK /ˈwɜː.ði/ US /ˈwɝː.ði/

a person who is important, especially in a small town:

The front row of chairs was reserved for local worthies."

https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/worthy#google_vignette

To be fair, I've only ever heard it in the plural.

Qualcomm sues Chinese handset-maker in India to defend African market

Re: It's called protectionism

“cases against Chinese entities often move very, very, slowly if they're brought in China"

Maybe - but India isn’t known for lightning fast litigation either. There’s a 300 year backlog!

https://www.irishtimes.com/world/asia-pacific/2023/06/27/where-justice-delayed-is-truly-denied-300-years-needed-to-clear-indias-backlog-of-judicial-cases-says-think-tank/

Uncle Sam sanctions Kaspersky's top bosses – but not Mr K himself

Re: The integrity of our cyber domain /s

"Why are so many US cyber security companies headed by former Mossad officials, such as Black Cube, NSO Group and XM Cyber ?"

None of them are 'US cyber security companies'. As you know perfectly well, they are all Israeli. Black Cube and NSO Group don't even have a presence in the US. Stop making stuff up.

Rogue uni IT director pleads guilty after fraudulently buying $2.1M of tech

U wot

"While we are not able to comment on this ongoing law enforcement proceeding...", the university said, immediately before commenting on it.

a) it's not prison *or* a fine, it's both.

b) that's the maximum possible sentence for the offences. It's not what he is going to get.

X marks the spot where Twitter's severance math doesn't add up

Re: Dollars to dollars

AUD are dollarydoos.

SAP ordered to pay $26.4M in South Africa energy firm dispute

Re: What happened?

The SEC press release is a little less coy.

"According to court documents, SAP and its co-conspirators made bribe payments and provided other things of value intended for the benefit of South African and Indonesian foreign officials, delivering money in the form of cash payments, political contributions, and wire and other electronic transfers, along with luxury goods purchased during shopping trips. Specifically, with respect to South Africa, between approximately 2013 and 2017, SAP, through certain of its agents, engaged in a scheme to bribe South African officials and to falsify SAP’s books, records, and accounts, all with the goal of obtaining improper advantages for SAP in connection with various contracts with South African departments, agencies, and instrumentalities, including the City of Johannesburg, the City of Tshwane, the Department of Water and Sanitation (a South African state-owned and state-controlled custodian of water services), and Eskom Holdings Limited (a South African state-owned and state-controlled energy company)."

https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/sap-pay-over-220m-resolve-foreign-bribery-investigations

Cryptocurrency laundryman gets hung out to dry

Re: Land of Freedom and Opportunity

Swedish, not Swiss.

Tesla's Cybertruck may not be so stainless after all

Re: Cybertruck - the gift that keeps on giving...

"The pickup truck is 90% image, and 10% cost since being "trucks" they can skirt of bunch of the safety and emissions regulations."

Don't forget about the tax structure that incentivizes heavier "commercial" vehicles.

Google killing Basic HTML version of Gmail In January 2024

Re: POP3. IMAP ?

That sounds a bit insecure to me. I have a secretary in Switzerland that prints out my emails. He or she or they - I have never met them, for security reasons - prints them in tiny font on rice paper, and then insert them into a yellow Kinder Egg container. The container is zip tied to the left leg of a pigeon that flies to my clifftop lair. The pigeon then reads the messages to me, and I dictate any required replies, which are returned in the manner the inbound message was received.

Uncle Sam accuses SpaceX of not considering asylees and refugees for employment

Re: I hate to say it...

"it's no [sic] too much braggadocio on my part..."

Apparently it was too much braggadocio on your part. Perhaps you would have got a less pretentious sentence correct.

Re: Doesn't make sense -- honest

"It would be hard to imagine that SpaceX's missile/rocket technology isn't controlled."

Maybe yes, maybe no. But just because the technology is export controlled, that doesn't mean a) that everyone working at SpaceX has access to it, and b) that only US citizens and permanent residents may have access to it.

A blanket ban on hiring certain people who are lawfully entitled to work in the US is illegal unless there is a laeful exception - as the complaint makes clear.

Verizon to 'sunset' Blue Jeans vidconf platform

BlueJeans...I haven't heard that name in a long time...

North Korean hackers had access to Russian missile maker for months, say researchers

Re: "It seems to fit both"

Trump is awful in every single way, and yet he was not and will not be a dictator. He won a reasonably democratic and fair election, he left office after losing another election, and (unbelievably) might return to power on the basis of a third election. He is being prosecuted in open court, there is still a free-ish press, the rights of assembly and free speech are in okay state, etc. That's totally different from Russia and North Korea. The US is very flawed and Trump worse, but it just isn't a dictatorship.

Cops cuff pregnant woman for carjacking after facial recog gets it wrong, again

Re: "Facial Recognition" is no worse than any other kind.

"The problem here is that what the police do is "lock people up". That's the police job. That's what they are trained to do. That's all they are trained to do. It's a blue-collar job: they aren't lawyers or social workers: they arrest people."

You're betraying your ignorance about actual police work here. Police officers arrest relatively few people. In Detroit specifically, there are about 10,000 arrests per annum, and about 2,000 police officers. That means the nominal average office is making an arrest every 2-3 months. It is just not the case that police work is a conveyer belt of arresting people, throwing them into custody, and then heading back out to arrest more people - whether you think that is a good thing or not.

https://detroitmi.gov/departments/police-department

https://www.vera.org/publications/what-policing-costs-in-americas-biggest-cities/detroit-mi

Brit healthcare body rapped for WhatsApp chat sharing patient data

Re: Whatsapp gave them a heady taste of efficient clinical communication

This is literally a persecution complex.

Old-school hacktivism is back because it never went away

"India in particular has been the subject of MTB attacks. The subcontinent was first hit in June 2022 followed by at least four sub-campaigns."

India is not a subcontinent. It is one of the 7 countries on the Indian Subcontinent (and Bangladesh is one of the other ones).

Chinese companies evade sanctions, fuel Moscow’s war on Ukraine, says report

Re: So what?

"The chinese did not impose sanctions against Russia, as most countries did not do."

They're using American technology and American products to supply Russia. That's so what.

Network security guy in extradition tug of war between US and Russia

It's not because of Ukraine

"FACCT was spun out from Group-IB last year – likely in response to the Russian invasion of Ukraine."

You said this last time you reported on Group-IB, and you failed to consider your own previous reporting that Group-IB's founder and CEO is still in pre-trial detention in Moscow on dodgy charges. All that happened months before Russia's further invasion of Ukraine, and is the actual cause of splitting the Russian and foreign businesses.

https://www.theregister.com/2021/09/29/group_ib_ceo_arrested_treason_claims_russia/

https://www.forbes.ru/tekhnologii/466849-il-a-sackov-forbes-srazu-posle-moego-zaderzania-sostoalas-bol-saa-vecerinka

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2021-12-03/who-is-ilya-sachkov-russian-cyber-ceo-linked-to-2016-election-fancy-bear-leaks#xj4y7vzkg

Australia fines tech companies for exploiting foreign tech workers

Re: "the plethora of deadly creatures found in the one-time prison colony"

"It's all a question of perspective, and "Oz was a Prison Colony" seems a rather 'colonial' one."

Yes, exactly, I'm glad someone made this point. The prison colonies were tiny and short-lived: most of them failed after a couple of years, and even the "successful" larger ones were only in existence for 50-60 years. Compare that to Australia's 120 year existence as a modern state, and the thousands of years of indigenous life beforehand, and it does like a particularly perverse perspective to emphasize one colonial aspect...

...and added to that, it's just hacky.

Ex-McKinsey IT director claims he was fired for whistleblowing

Re: Say it ain't so

Don't forget about the criminal charges in South Africa over McKinsey's engagement with the Gupta crime family!

https://www.ft.com/content/63385e68-e1ce-4c10-9a62-cb1be1ca30e5

Meta forced to sell Giphy, takes 87% loss in Shutterstock deal

I am very stupid

Can someone explain how Giphy makes money? Who is paying it and for what? As an end user, I don't pay. Is this some kind of ad tracking madness?

Elizabeth Holmes is going to prison – with a $500m bill

Re: Mixed feelings today

Federal prisoners do 85% of their sentence, at least. Holmes will serve many years.

"White collar criminal prisons" don't exist. You are presumably making a sarcastic and ill-informed to minimum security facilities. But they're not comfortable or enjoyable - it's prison, and as Holmes's sentence exceeds ten years she is not even eligible for minimum security.

She's going to be separated from her children and kept in a prison. Maybe she deserves it, but it's nothing to revel in.

https://www.businessinsider.com/white-collar-prisons-2013-12?r=US&IR=T

Re: Insufficient Evidence?

At the risk of providing a literal answer to a rhetorical question, it is #1. It can be proven that e.g. Holmes lied to Walgreens; Walgreens invested on the basis of those lies; and Walgreens lost money as a result. For investors not in the room when Holmes lied, who knows? But it's all irrelevant anyway, none of them will ever get anything back

UK cops score legal win in EncroChat snooping op

"surely the time to decide whether evidence was legally obtained is before the trial, and not afterwards?"

No. The trial itself is when to decide whether the evidence is admissible in the trial, and as part of that the court will - if it is asked - to consider whether the evidence was obtained legally.

India calls for all mobile phones to include FM radios

Nice one, MeitY

23-year-old Brit linked to 2020 Twitter attack and SIM-swap scheme pleads guilty

I remember this incident. People couldn't believe that Kanye and Elon were tweeting deceptive nonsense to their millions of followers. And then, to make it worse, they got hacked.

Smuggler busted heading for China with dodgy GPUs … and live lobsters

But what was the charge? Eating a meal? Eating a succulent Chinese meal?

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

Re: Smart Motorways, dumb drivers.

If you drive in a lane that has a red "X" sign above it, there's a fair chance your car is going to be crushed by the stationary HGV 300 metres ahead of you...

Marketing biz sent 107 million spam emails... to just 437k people

Well, you've got to keep your PECR up, I suppose...

40% of IT security pros say they've been told not to report a data leak

Bitdefender says: "Surprisingly, many impacted organizations say they have been told to keep the data leak confidential despite their obligation to report it. Over 40% of security professionals surveyed said they had been told to keep a breach under wraps..."

Yeah but hold on - there's not a legal obligation everywhere to report every data breach externally. Only some data breaches must be reported as a matter of statutory law to e.g. a data privacy regulator, or as a matter of contract to e.g. clients or vendors. If there's no obligation to report and the breach was immaterial - I don't see why maintaining confidentiality is a bad thing.

IBM, Kyndryl cut jobs even after cutting ties

Re: 100 Kyndryl employees in Austin TX?

"The sudden appearance of a mystery "file backup" program in my task tray was also noted."

Noted. I expect one to appear in my task tray too.

UK data watchdog fines TikTok £12.7M for failing to protect kids

"As anyone familiar with TikTok knows, it's not a healthy environment for pre-teens thanks to its bizarre gamut of user-generated content. Heck, it's not a healthy environment for any age"

This doesn't stop BBC Radio fucking One (which has a significant audience of 12-18 year olds) promoting TikTok through on air mentions in nearly every DJ's segment. It's a fucking outrage.

Virgin Orbit lays off 85% of staff as funding deal falters

Re: Meaninglessly diluted and overrated brand anyway

"Those were the days..." ...when he was fraudulently extracting subsidies from the UK Government, and he was convicted for it. He's turned over a new leaf since then, of course: now he still extracts subsidies from the government, but he does it completely legally!

Re: Where is the support?

Cornwall Council already chucked £10 million at the "Spaceport". How much more taxpayer money do you want spent on this?

Attackers hit Bitcoin ATMs to steal $1.5 million in crypto cash

" they've now got a reason to walk away from the business, shut down their servers..."

...and all their books and records will be destroyed, which is really unfortunate for a cross-border bitcoin atm operator...

Russian developers blocked from contributing to FOSS tools

"So we don't accept submissions from Russians, but they're completely free to use the code? That's choking what, exactly?"

The point is to isolate, disrupt, and exclude the Russian high value electronics industry in *all* its interactions with US markets and US IP.

The guy is frustrated and stamping his feet? Good - that's the point. Getting cut off from GitHub isn't half as bad as having your ciry bombed, as has happened to many Ukrainian devs in the past 9 years.

"Given the apolitical stand of software..."

This is naive. The purpose of these sanctions is to choke Russia's domestic electronics industry, because the Russian military needs it to continue its 9 year war against Ukraine.

"better and more IT retaliation would be to route all access via one IP filter so international news access for Russian citizens is automatically part of gaining access to the rest of the world"

Russia is not North Korea or China. There is a high rate of smartphone access and the Internet is pretty cheap. Although Roskomnadzor does block some websites, generally speaking there is easy access to a ton of foreign news media in the Russian language.

The problem is not a technical one of lack of access. The problem is that Russians either don't trust those media sources or that they don't care - just like most westerners don't care what's happening in Yemen or the Sahel with western arms.

"It's a stretch to call Germany's reparations substantial"

"In 1945 there was very little left of Germany to perform reparations with..."

...and much of what there was was loaded onto trains and sent to the Soviet Union.