Posts by Guy de Loimbard

Amazon rewards loyal Kindle devotees by closing the book on old e-readers

100 %

You know that's coming next.

Are you really telling me that the hardware and software can't work together?

Remember BezosCorp doesn't have enough money and you must purchase new devices........

NHS Scotland-linked domains caught serving pr0n and dodgy sports streams

FFS.... basics

I've seen WordPress compromised repeatedly.

The moment you hand a CMS to a non technical team, there will be issues.

The maintenance and upkeep is ignored as let's be honest, how much change will a surgery operating under an NHS domain really need?

Do they really need something like Wordpress to tell the octogenarians that don't use the website how to get their prescriptions this week?

Business needs and an impact analysis would help.

I'm all for citizen developers, but once they've mastered security (never going to happen) then give them the keys to the kingdom, or give them a much more secure and watered down access to WP. i.e here's how you update the one page you'll need to tweak.

Microsoft hints at bit bunkers for war zones

Re: LOAC1

Totally.

The rules already exist, but, as you've already pointed out, the application of said rules varies by conflict, country and perceived necessity of outcome

Also, rules are no good without enforcement and potentially repercussions that persuade one to follow them for fear of the consequences.

YMMV on most of this, but no one is following the Law of Armed Conflict explicitly anymore as far as I can see.

UK's grand plan to fuel AI with public data faces uphill battle

Shock horror the AI won't fix

AI really isn't as smart as the smack talk and hype would lead you to believe.

It's got some uses I'll concede, but not the silver bullet that would justify the power and resources it's consuming.

AWS CEO: It's funny when people ask me if AI is overhyped

Re: Talks Pure Shite

Fine words!

I can hear the Scots tone as I read it and laughed as I think it aptly describes this whole movement.

More of the usual "you're not using the AI right", "it's you skeptics that are making it not work" and " Give us more money".

'People's Panel' to check if UK wants controversial Digital ID will cost £630K

Ihren Ausweis, bitte

That is all.

I also note this statement from the article: ""Should the recently announced introduction of ID cards achieve universal coverage....." So it's a done deal is it?

So what is the point in this "consultation" apart from playing some weird theatrical act and of course, relieving the treasury of more taxpayer money.

US foreign router ban criticized for being ‘industrial policy disguised as cybersecurity’

Security Theatre and posturing

Yet more BS from that side of the pond's administration.

Reminds me of some of the bone sound bites you hear from political parties this side of the pond to point score on the run up to what ever local or national elections are coming.

I would like to think, that when this "idea" was started, it was with the best of intentions, but poorly executed, or I'm just really optimistic/naive :)

Age checks creep into Linux as systemd gets a DOB field

Re: systemd-free distros

It's worth a glance at this draft legislation to begin to understand what the driving forces are for this - below is an excerpt:

SEC. 3. App store obligations.

(a) In general.—Each covered app store provider shall—

(1) at the time an individual creates an account with the covered app store provider—

(A) request age information from the individual; and

(B) verify the individual’s age category using a commercially available method or process that is reasonably designed to ensure accuracy

Microsoft 365 pauses Copilot creep after admins cry foul

Re: I rolled back to Office 2024 in my SOHO environment

I'm using typical office suite, just don't need the subscription, or the one drive, or the drama of AI! :)

I rolled back to Office 2024 in my SOHO environment

Minus 365 and all the "features".

Of note, it's taking me a while to turn off all the 365 features on my Win11 PC, biggest wrestle was to regain control of "My Documents" from One Drive.

On analysis, couldn't believe how much crap I had in one drive.

Reverted to my multi terabyte, on Motherboard SSDs, will now consider some sort of NAS on my home infrastructure as, if I'm honest, I'd become so lazy and was letting a 365 subscription slowly lock me into their infrastructure and billing, but the key trigger was yet another price hike and a realisation that we don't need all these features and an ongoing ever increasing bill and the inevitable AI creep too.

At some point I will get fully onboard with FOSS office software, but baby steps.

Water company wasted $200k on bad answers from an AI model – so built its own slop filtering system

LLM hype-train

Bang on the money!

Nothing quite like the motivator of FOMO on the LLM hype-train!

Alibaba Cloud hikes prices by up to 34%, blames hardware costs and AI demand

Re: Hot to love corporate speak

I'm sure a lot of enterprises will benefit from cloud services, however, I've seen, at least historically, many an IT Department hoodwinked into thinking cloud is the silver bullet for everything and failing at the point of the first new billing cycle, when all the sales discounts are removed.

This is another example of lack of ownership puts you in danger of being price gouged at the whim of the provider.

It has never got anything to do with providing you with better services, just a profit margin increase from the provider.

Europe's cloud minnows tell Brussels to stop big tech 'sovereignty-washing'

Well, if there's one thing I've learned over the last 10 or so years

Is that the EU is getting better at defining regulatory frameworks that appear, at least on the surface, to be well thought out.

Delivery of said regulations and actual policing/compliance checks are another matter all together.

The hyperscalers will see this as a threat and will likely do what they are good at, bluff, bluster, market, obfuscate etc., to maintain dominance.

Also, be wary of any European sovereign provider being bought out by VC/PE.

This will be an ongoing battle, perhaps a worthwhile one, it wouldn't hurt the rest of the planet to be less reliant on North American tech.

Bank built its own threat hunting agent because vendors can’t keep pace with new threats

Surely some attack surface management

Would be well deployed here, if you have that much being flung at your organisation, you'd better be looking at why so much of your shite is online when it doesn't need to be.

Still, it wouldn't be a week on this planet without some article or another broadcasting AI nonsense "AI this and that.....AI was good... AI is coming for you" etcetera.

Read the article, didn't really see the point and also, give some details as to how, not more AI tech bro speak, such as Agentic AI tools.....

Also, this one guy is suggesting he's got more capability, funding and horsepower for a small army of "AI" gurus, than all the security vendors out there? Colour me pink if it's not so!?

EU legal eagle says banks should refund cybercrime victims first, argue later

Good intention perhaps

But the devil will be in the detail for any legal implementation.

It's a very strange area, we are dealing with multiple challenges and issues, not least the one being we've got scammers aplenty who are giving this the broadside approach and then clinging to any mark that seems to be drawn into the scam.

It's an ever moving set of rules and goalposts.

Whilst banks are very much loaded with cash, is it always the banks fault that a scammer has worked on their system to steal funds from a poor unsuspecting victim?

As soon as you put a control in place to deal with something, then the miscreant n'er do well, will work out a method to get around it.

Much like electricity and water, the thief will take the path of least resistance.

Hotpatching goes default in Windows Autopatch whether you like it or not

From the department of "what could possibly go wrong?"

You're not wrong there!!

Understandably most OS owners and operators will be jumping for joy at the prospect of completely stable and no risk patches being auto applied......

As you say What Could Possibly Go Wrong!!!

Dutch cops warn 100 alleged scammers: Turn yourselves in or we tell Grandma

There's a lot to be said

For invoking societal convention.

A lot of these operators carry out these shitty scams, as they believe they will not be caught, but a huge angle on this as the Politie have pointed out, is the fact that they don't expect to be identified.

Shame is a good motivator, assuming one has been brought up in a society with a reasonable moral compass, covering what it believes to be right, or wrong.

I'm sure a wager would come up trumps betting that those societal norms don't cover ripping off your elderly neighbours, or cover off robbing your own grandmother.

Be interesting to see what comes of this deadline from the Nederlandse Politie.

Royal Navy races to arm ships against drone threat

Careful Noodle

You may upset old Johnny Rubber Desk at Whitehall with your wit! :)

Yes, you'd think a war that's now into its fifth year, would have triggered a reaction sooner, however, I suspect the RN have just realised how few ships they have and how long it takes to replace one, particularly if it's been malleted by much cheaper drones....

CIOs say AI adoption is moving faster than they can manage

It doesn't matter

Just make sure there's lots of AI related surveys that tell us something about AI, and specifically, how it is humanities fault for not getting on the bandwagon to pay the techbros.

OpenAI’s Altman says Pentagon set ‘scary precedent’ binning Anthropic

Re: require approval by a human decisionmaker

Spot on Neil Barnes, my thoughts exactly:

"The AI System will not be used to independently direct autonomous weapons in any case where law, regulation, or Department policy requires human control"

Having worked in Policy, this is the biggest get out clause, where "law, regulation, or.... policy requires human control"... how long before the Tangerine Buffoon, or one of his hapless and feckless sidekicks, decides to change, law, regulation or policy.

Jack Dorsey’s fintech outfit Block announces 40% layoffs, blames AI, gets 23% stock bump

Yet another billionaire tech bro

who thinks past performance/luck means they're ace at business and fuck the little people.

Off you go to the welfare office, while I smoke some $100 bills, as I'm that fucking rich.

Now, where's my solid gold thingumy that shows how ACE I am?

C U Next Tuesday!

UK copper fired after faking keyboard taps using photo frame

Re: Never was so much measured by so few to so little effect.

Agree with your point.

I am not a fan of these things that suggest productivity.

I once had a boss who measured "work" by whether your Skype was green or yellow, which I note, has followed us to Teams! Cheers MS!

I mean, FFS, I was a consultant, I spent a lot of time with clients discussing their needs, not my boss's insecurities over a remote and geographically displaced team, that unsurprisingly, supported our clients, who were also geographically dispersed.

Wynn Resorts takes attacker's word for it that stolen staff data was deleted

Re: We paid up

I suspect someone will want some lube a little further down the line!

Recycling biz reckons AI features are destroying smartphone resale values

Re: Ker-ching ... whooops ... Sorry wrong Ker-ching for the wrong company !!!

Bang on the money.

More cash was allegedly made from shovel sales in the gold rush, than there was from the gold, or lack thereof!

Re: Is this the first sign ....

pint for you good Sir or Lady Knight.

Also, please tell me your views on the other 3 riders?

DVSA drives up online theory test contract value to £700M with no explanation

"How is the practical test system being gamed?"

Never underestimate a scalper being able to spot the latest hustle and grift away!

OpenAI says Chinese cops used ChatGPT to plan and track smear ops against opponents

An actual post about AI that's useful

I for one, am pleasantly surprised about the usefulness of this operational application of AI.

I wonder how much "Compute" was used, or how many Nuclear Power Plants came online to provide the necessary GWs?

Also, kudos to the cretin for outlining all the TTPs in use.

6,000 execs struggle to find the AI productivity boom

amid promises of jam tomorrow

When do I get the jam?

Seriously, if it can be delivered to my house before tommorrow AM, that will save me a trip to the supermarket and my house can have jam and eat it!

Your AI-generated password isn't random, it just looks that way

AI security company Irregular.....

I wonder how many of these AI Security Companies are sprouting up and how exactly does one create an AI Security company?

Is there a correlation against the number of "Security" companies per, say, the 100s of AI/LLMs that have been created?

I wonder if we can get a specific ratio?

There must be a load of tech bro's realising there's another revenue stream....?

Indian conglomerate Adani plans very slow $100 billion AI datacenter build

India’s citizens seeing AI as “an enabler of opportunity..."

Really?

I think there's a few more existential things some of its citizens are thinking about, and I bet it's not AI.

Is anyone else tired of this "willy waving" in public of how much is being spent, or how much compute is available or how many GWs of power it's going to piss into the ether?

I mean FFS, with all the incredibly more important things going on in the world, solar system, galaxy, universe etc.... do we really think this is the only thing happening right now?

Bahhhhh!

HackerOne 'updating' Ts&Cs after bug hunters question if they're training AI

Just wait for the

declaration that its LLM/AI thing "accidentally" trained on your research.....

We so sorry, here have some meaningless token of that fact we don't give a shit and we're too big to care about you little people!

Notepad++ declares hardened update process 'effectively unexploitable'

author claims makes the "update process robust and effectively unexploitable."

Be careful with opening lines like that!

I'm sure there are one or two miscreants that would like to test that theory out, just for the kudos if they can prove the opposite!

You can jailbreak an F-35 just like an iPhone, says Dutch defense chief

You'd like to think

You should be able to maintain Sovereignty of the military hardware you purchase, particularly in these extremely software heavy defence tools, like aircraft.

I'd imagine, if you can't build your own kit, the one thing you should be able to do is control how it operates without some lunatic at the helm being able to turn it off on a whim, surely?

I for one would be looking to do that on pretty much any deal that involved buying kit from another nation, because, as we've just seen, an ally can turn into something not quite that, in a short tantrum or two.

Microsoft throws spox under the bus after Parliament testimony on ICC email kerfuffle

The beauty of recorded minutes and accounts

Is that you can't change what was said.

You can of course, ask for an addendum, addition, footnote, call it what you will, but you can't erase what was said, just because you're not keen on the content some time later.

FFS!!

Infosys bows to its master, signs deal with Anthropic

Re: Service level agreements to suffer

Also "Customers will now be fighting AI,"

Yep, been there done that and already finding it a pain to get through to an actual carbon based bipedal meat sack (human), who can actually respond, find a resolution and close my issue.

My biggest challenge with these new "AI" Agents, is that they assume your either 1. Too thick or 2. Too lazy to read the Website that has the agent attached to it, so they just regurgitate what's already written in the FAQ/Self Help area.

Probably helpful for a large percentage of the population that fall under the label of dimwit.

I'm with your view on the SLA metric. Very good to present that to your gullible customer as being a good thing, despite having no real positive impact to the customer, at least the "AI" generated a response and you can keep rinsing your client base who have offshored all their shite to you at <insert MSP of choice>

Canada Goose ruffles feathers over 600K record dump, says leak is old news

I'll take the lollypop!

The ID Theft product is pointless and useless to boot!

MoD ticks shopping list as PM considers weapons budget boost

"...Time and again, leaders have looked the other way, only re-arming when disaster is upon them..."

Excuse me?

Isn't that exactly what Starmer is doing?

I'm not going to focus solely on him or his party, as every consecutive government in the UK has mined and pillaged the Ministry of Defence, like it's a personal fund to do with what you want.

We're always going to be behind the curve as we've not invested and that new investment, if it actually arrives, in actual material improvements for our troops, will be years, if not decades away from that Münchner Konferenz soundbite!

FFS, just get on a deliver, stop talking and take some bloody action.

BOFH: Loss adjuster discovers liability is a two-way street

This vvvv

"You must've activated my key fob!"

"Seriously? It's got less range than Ashton Kutcher.....

That, nearly had coffee spat across my laptop as I read!

Well played author, well played indeed!

Pint on me===>

Only one in five Euro datacenters AI-ready as builders battle land and labor blues

Re: Headline wrong...

You must continue your list. I'm intrigued.

Tell us more,...... Please?!

free if you trade a valid email, but I felt that price was too high.

You are correct.

The 20 pages of drivel aren't worth one email!

There's always a danger

of presenting peoples opinions as a global/regional empirical fact.

Don't use a selective and let's be honest AI biased report, to tell me there's a need for AI, or we're not AI ready - Let's unpick the report statement:

"85% (of 3000) believe current facilities are not ready for AI-heavy workloads."

Okay, what was the question you asked, that would help me understand this metric.

Don't get me wrong, who doesn't love a 20 page "report" on apparent trends and irrelevant metrics?

Bah... AI - shmay - I!

Doctors told to give Palantir's NHS data platform the cold shoulder

Re: How utterly naive

Just how naive are these people?

Very!

Do not underestimate the prowess of those sales teams to identify the weakest/easiest link to get a sale.

Promise the world, at potentially low rates, to then mine, mine and continually mine that data!!

Be under no illusion

Any information within any Palantir platform, will go through link analysis and sifting of Data Sets to generate more "products" or "services" that Palantir can sell again, repackaged into something else.

Think, as an example, of how the ubiquitous "Credit Reference Agencies" do much the same thing with regard to information that is freely shared to their platform by the various online transaction markets you use:

Looking for insurance quotes?

Looking at Credit Cards?

Looking at Mortgages?

Updated your address for your Bank

Bought a new broadband package or provider?

All information the various Credit Reference Agencies are mining and reselling, generally to local or national governments as another service.

Do you think Palantir will be any different?

Dutch data watchdog snitches on itself after getting caught in Ivanti zero-day attacks

How much did they fine themselves

Was it 5%, 10%?

Do they have an annual global turnover? I suspect not.

Funny and not funny at the same time, but indicative of how quickly zero day KVEs are being found and exploited!

British Army splashes $86M on AI gear to speed up the battlefield kill chain

Re: Movies

"20 get killed and all arrive together safely at the end."

Sounds like most A-Team scripts from the 80s (George Peppard times)

Singapore spent 11 months booting China-linked snoops out of telco networks

Re: Did they manage to boot out the American snoops?

Interesting isn't it, that so much effort is put into the endpoints and other easy to manage with dashboard areas.

Limited use of tools, skills and resources when it comes to looking at those tools and hardware that sit on the perimeter that are vulnerable.

@ A/C - In your opinion, is Cisco's lack of transparency something to be concerned about - i.e. backdoors for NSA etc, or just hiding shoddy code that's waiting for exploit?

British military to get legal OK to swat drones near bases

Re: Now make it legal for drones

Have you considered a Patent Application for such a thing?

I am sure the USPTO will let you file and then sue anyone who sells or comes up with such a fiendishly clever Drone privacy tool!!

Pint for you

I like the style of acronym thinking you clearly demonstrate, good sir knight, or lady knight!

Critical React Native Metro dev server bug under attack as researchers scream into the void

Seems to be par for the course

Headlines that try and tell you the entire contents of the article, then fail at that!

Palantir declares itself the guardian of Americans' rights

Karp's 'philosophising' contained far too much in the way of 'buzzword bingo

Reminded me of when Eric Cantona, of Manchester United fame?, started being poetic and philosophical drivel started coming out of his mouth that made no sense, even then and less so now!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TbwV5XX6phU&t=2s