Posts by jvf

Kubernetes overlords decide Ingress NGINX isn’t worth saving

Re: Brilliant plan

maybe somebody should start paying open source maintainers.

Why Elon Musk won't ever realize the shareholder-approved Tesla payout

Re: the stockholders up on their feet dancing, chanting his name, and applauding.

...Tesla's stockholders are delusional...As are the MAGA followers. Yet muskie and the bronze turd keep rolling along. We're doomed.

AI slop hits new high as fake country artist goes to #1 on Billboard digital songs chart

another vote for Milli

You got it right the first time: "bro country" band .... singing soulless, cookie-cutter songs". Johnny Cash is rolling in his grave. Second time, not so much "painstakingly written, rehearsed, and recorded by actual humans with---- computers" if you are referring to the majority of 'music' on display for the last umpteen years. Pitch correction, time correction, etc.=stultifying blandness all around. Almost makes one long for the good old days of Milli Vanilli. Even jazz is getting watered down. There are some truly awful “jazz” singers infesting the airwaves these days.

How to bluff your way to AI credibility with the right buzzwords

I'm suspicious

Looks like someone at Gartner found the bullshit generator website. Thank you AI for your continuing contributions.

Senate bill would require companies to report AI layoffs as job cuts reach 20-year high in October

Re: Good

Yes, not sure what Josh Hawley (America's #1 pipsqueak) and Mark Warner (yet to be determined) are going to accomplish here except, as just mentioned, to have a 'feel good' moment. One thing is sure, the arguments about "another time-consuming layer of government red tape" will ring hollow as the companies rave about how AI makes reports such as these so automated and easy (and so easily manipulated). This problem will solve itself as societies crumble, wars break out and we start over (if anyone's left).

Rideshare giant moves 200 Macs out of the cloud, saves $2.4 million

Re: Yet another case..

"cult of the cloud"-Awesome! a perfect description that I will use from time to time. Thank you for that.

SonicWall fingers state-backed cyber crew for September firewall breach

too late again

"modernization push, aimed at tightening product architecture" Yeah, like all the rest you're going to start fixing things after you got caught with your pants down. Why aren't these companies being more proactive? Oh Yeah--it costs $$$$$$

You'll never guess what the most common passwords are. Oh, wait, yes you will

Re: Still harping over forum passwords

Absolutely. Aren't emails supposed to be unique? Why do forums (including this one) even need them? I just use the same password as much as possible and ignore it when google warns me my password has been exposed. I don't need to provide any financial details and little personal info so I don't care. On the OTHER hand, my financial advisor recently changed where my accounts are kept. For these occasions, I use 22 char random passwords. Well, the brain dead "writers" of this web form have it refusing my password claiming it contains illegal characters even though every one of the chars can be typed from the keyboard. So, I had to dumb down my password to complete the sign up. I will be excoriating them about this in the near future.

IBM cutting several thousand jobs in latest layoffs

Re: Bell labs

AT&T shut down and sold the name to another financial holdings company. It's so sad. I remember how proud and excited I was to have engineers from THE Bell Labs borrow my lab to finish programming and configuring an AT&T phone system we had recently purchased. It was complicated back in the day with routing tables and other nonsense. When they were finished, our President called me into his office where they were all sitting around. This system was going to pay for itself after only a couple of months because our phone bill was so high. ""Since this was your idea, you get the honor of making the first call" he said. Ever the practical one and having the phone number memorized (no speed dial for me even today), I called CSA to check on a product we had them evaluating. Wonk, wonk, wonk, went the phone as I handed it to the closest red faced Bell Labs engineer. Turns out they hadn't figured we might want to call out of the country so the hadn't put any "foreign" area codes in the routing tables. Pretty funny, that.

Re: Bell labs

In the late 80's, early 90's I ran the R&D lab for a small manuf. company (back when we still made sh*t in the US). I was working out a design problem for a new product with a colleague. Our illustrious entrepreneur president was an impatient chap and happened to strike up a conversation with an IBM engineer during a flight home. He brought the guy over to the factory to instantly solve our problem and instructed me to show him around the area and entertain him (which I did). After a couple of days he said to me "I don't know what Bob wants me to do, you're every bit as smart as the engineers we have at IBM". Suspicious of IBM's prowess even back then, I took it as a left handed compliment. A couple of days later, my colleague and I solved the problem and the product was a success.

Attackers dig up $11M in Garden Finance crypto exploit

Who?

Garden cofounder 'Jaz'-would you buy a used car from this guy?

AI layoffs to backfire: Half quietly rehired at lower pay

Re: The American (CEO's) Dream

yeah,

I remember the day that I realized HR worked for corporate and not us. It was a sobering moment and made me think much more carefully about what I said to them.

Docker Compose vulnerability opens door to host-level writes – patch pronto

???

Docker compose? YAML lines? OCI-based Compose artifacts? orchestration tool? Thank God I retired before I had to learn any of this shit.

Linux vendors are getting into Ubuntu – and Snap

Re: Lies, can lies, and statistics set But #1

Humpty Dumpty-the only book in the bookcase at the oval office these days.

Microsoft suggests temporary registry hack for stricken smart card users

Yeah, but it was fun watching Ballmer perform. He was a great animated cheerleader for uncle Bill.

Microsoft puts Office Online Server on the chopping block

AI at its best

What a hoot. "modernizing productivity experiences", “secure, collaborative, and feature-rich experiences "offers modern meeting experiences."” Looks like CoPilot found the bullshit generator webpage while preparing this announcement.

OpenAI releases bot-tom feeding browser with ChatGPT built in

Re: WHY?

to paraphrase a Steven King film:..."we're all dead and this is hell"...

RondoDox botnet fires 'exploit shotgun' at nearly every router and internet-connected home device

Mine's a Pepwave SOHO by Peplink. It's a great router and I've never seen it on anyone's list

No account? No Windows 11, Microsoft says as another loophole snaps shut

Re: Old isos

Same for my 23H2 and ditto for my Win 10 22H2. Plus, both have updates permanently disabled and I have several backup methods employed. EOL-that's when the hardware croaks-hopefully several years from now. Meantime, Linux experiments will start with an older laptop. I'm still stuck using some windoze software for work and Linux studies to date indicate that some of it won't be easy if WINE or Crossover don't work.

London cops unplug iPhone crime ring said to nick 40% of city's mobiles

Mistake #1

..."People keep their lives on their phones"...

Fake North Korean IT workers sneaking into healthcare, finance, and AI

Yep. Outsourcing, remote workers, great cost savings.

Microsoft insists Copilot+ PCs are 'empowering the future' – reality disagrees

Re: Marketing company

Drumph and Micro$oft have mastered the adage of "repeat a falsehood often enough and people will start believing it". D is ahead but M$ is catching up.

Short circuit: Electronics supplier to tech giants suffers ransomware shutdown

bottom line strikes again

...hired cybersecurity experts to support its recovery process...I don't get why these companies don't already have "cybersecurity experts" on staff...Oh yeah-they also have bean counters on staff.

Stock in the Channel pulls website amid cyberattack

3rd time's a charm

Ah, yes. The old "3rd party" did it again. You'd think that someone could have taken down this 3rd party by now.

Untangling the Jeff Bezos web: Who pays for the billionaire's space lust?

junk

2000 satellites. More space junk to try and clean up later.

Mozilla flags phishing wave aimed at hijacking trusted Firefox add-ons

Re: No more links in emails

Yeah, I refuse to use DocuSign. I tell 'em to send me a PDF from my known contact like they've done for the last 20 yrs. Lately, I've gotton a couple of Docusign requests for no reason from sites I've never visited or even heard of.

Long live the nub: ThinkPad designer David Hill spills secrets, designs that never made it

Re: While I love my thinkpad, I really can't use the nub

..."So it annoys me to no end to use because I like to rest my palms on the keyboard while typing and that will occasionally be seen by the pad as a "mouse movement" and I'll be typing in the wrong place".... No s*it -couldn't have said it better myself. I HATE touchpads-can't use 'em.

First release candidate of systemd 258 is here

hold on there

Gee, just as I was deciding to switch to Linux...

Sacramento cops scoured energy records to target suspected weed growers, and the EFF has sued

Got out just in time

Forget about the "panic" over smart meter radiation. I always knew it was just going to be another way to track you and do whatever-raise your bill-raid your house. Fortunately, I've gone off grid so they can suck on my dormant meter all they want. Unfortunately, not many have this choice available.

Move over bit barns, here come Japan’s floating bit barges

Ridiculous

Do we really NEED all these data centers? I seriously doubt it.

Boffins devise voice-altering tech to jam 'vishing' schemes

Re: Solution

Indeed so. Plus, if you find yourself "talking to someone" because it happened so fast, just ask the other end of the line if they are human. Guess they (it) could lie, though.

CAPTCHAs now run Doom – on nightmare mode

Re: CAPTCHA are evil

screw captchas

We can't make this stuff up: Palantir, Anduril form fellowship for AI adventures

nonsense

Sounds like a lot of hot air. Where's Dildo Baggins to sort this out?

AWS boss: Don't want to come back to the office? Go work somewhere else

Just do it

Stop whining and get back to work.

91% of polled Amazon staff unhappy with return-to-office, 3-in-4 want to jump ship

not again

As I've said before: Stop whining and get back to work.

Valencia Ransomware explodes on the scene, claims California city, fashion giant, more as victims

try this

"a total ban on ransom payments is one suggestion that has been thrown about" I keep posting the death penalty suggestion but have yet to hear back from law enforcement. Meantime, if any execs at the affected companies had a track record of hamstringing their IT depts.- lots of jail time. Ditto to shitty coding "programmers". Hate to feed the SOBs while they're incarcerated, though.

Windows 11 users still living in the past face forced update, like it or not

No more updates-Yay!

So, does this mean that if my 22H2 machine can avoid this, Microshaft will finally leave me alone and not force a reboot in the middle of work?

Illinois relaxes biometric privacy law so snafus won't cost businesses billions

unnecessary BS

As of this date, I'm 77 years old. The society I grew up in had no cell phones, no computers, no biometrics, not much TV and thankfully, no facebork et al. Everything worked just fine and businesses prospered. So, WTF is all this shit now?

Granted, computers (when used properly) were a great boon. In fact, I installed the first computer system in the company I worked for (DEC). But, large percentages of this "newfangled" crap are prime examples of "just because you CAN do it doesn't mean you SHOULD do it."

It'll be hard to convince me that 99% of these businesses actually NEED biometrics. So, if they f up fine the shit out of them.

Malware that is 'not ransomware' wormed its way through Fujitsu Japan's systems

I just don't get it

Why do all these companies hire "experts" AFTER they've been hacked? Why don't they have a few on staff? O yeah-$$$$

Recycling old copper wires could be worth billions for telcos

saw this coming

Seeing as (until recently, at least) networking cables only required two pairs, as I installed 4pr cable, I would ponder the miles and miles of unused, wasted copper in everyone's ceiling.

Governments issue alerts after 'sophisticated' state-backed actor found exploiting flaws in Cisco security boxes

I don't get it

One after another. Does anybody test their crap in-house or do they just wait for something to happen?

GM shared our driving data with insurers without consent, lawsuit claims

No, but

You don't want to be burning fuel when stationary. But, when the thing stumbles if you need to take off in a hurry to avoid getting hit (or carjacked) you're f**ked. Rare? Yes. SO it's down to the numbers game again. A couple of unfortunate or serious events per year against the fuel savings. I have to admit though, at least all the lazy people going through the Starbucks and Burger King drive throughs aren't sh*tting crap into the air while they wait to parade through.

Dell said to be preparing broad Return To Office order this Monday

Good for you although I sense a bit of sarcasm. As for the rest of you, stop whining and get back to work. If you don't like your situation find another place to work that suits you better.

LockBit shows no remorse for ransomware attack on children's hospital

seems like rats to me

I'm in the process of killing an invasion of rats in my attic. I asked them politely to leave. They didn't. I offered them catch and release traps. Which they ignored. So, death it is when they're caught. Their numbers are decreasing and attacks are almost nonexistent now

Canonical shows how to use Snaps without the Snap Store

ouch

This is all way too complicated. I think I'll just keep using Windoze and complaining.

Hot fuzz: Cascade finds dozens of RISC-V chip bugs using random data storm

my method was slower but also worked

This is similar to how I tested my database forms many years ago. I, along with some soon to be users, would randomly bounce through text boxes typing incorrect information or gibberish (sort of how I still type today) and hitting the enter key randomly. We were waiting for a crash or unexpected result that wasn’t properly error handled which I would then go back and fix. It worked very well and roll outs went smoothly.

Three dozen plaintiffs join Apple AirTag tracking lawsuit in amended complaint

Re: Punish criminals not manufacturers.

Tech as a tool argument aside, this is another case of “just because you CAN do it doesn’t mean you SHOULD do it”- unless the consequences have been well thought out. No one is going to convince me that, especially in the dark ages we are living in, the possible stalking abilities of the air tag (or other devices like this) weren’t considered before they went to market. They knew they might get into some trouble but, like most of the s**t foisted on the public today, it was going to be too expensive to figure out in time for product launch. So, out the door it went and they thought they’d deal with it later. As usual, the dollar amount of the lawsuit(s) will be a fraction of Apple’s bottom line and it’s just considered the cost of doing business. It’s similar to the cost/benefit ratio appliance manufacturers face as they weigh the cost of extra safety vs. how many people will be killed using their appliances resulting in lawsuits and raised insurance premiums.

US govt talks up $2B X-ray photobooth to check its nuke weapon sims are right

better ue

Too bad all this effort isn't going into something more useful-like figuring out how to deprogram zombie trump supporters.

HTTP/2 'Rapid Reset' zero-day exploited in biggest DDoS deluge seen yet

what a bunch of assholes

The home Wi-Fi upgrade we never asked for is coming. The one we need is not

mesh good, access points-not so much anymore

By happenstance I just had to install two different mesh systems for a client in two different buildings, one (Deco) specified by me and the other (Eero) purchased by one of his employees because he uses it at his house. They both require an account and “apps” which totally sucks and probably makes it impossible to do any deep troubleshooting compared to traditional access points. I chose mesh because unlike consumer Access points, it implements the fast roaming handoff scheme whose 802.11 standard designation I don’t remember. I chose Deco because it offered Poe which seems to still be somewhat rare as of this writing and because Eero was borged by Amazon. Both backbones are hard wired. The Deco (5 units) was very easy to set up and works great. The Eero was much more difficult to set up and somewhat finicky requiring several reboots of one unit before it behaved. It seems to work ok but, as might be expected, the app is cluttered with Amazon ads.