Posts by big_D

Re: On the other hand...

I know that well. After a week's sailing around the West Coast, we dropped into Tobermory, went on land and straight to the Mishnish pub and booked an hour in their baths. We felt almost human again, afterwards. A nice single malt rounded off the recouperation process.

Re: Everyone likes to hate on Uber

Given that they were banned here for operating illegally and then went underground... No, I've no time for Uber. Oh, and it should be Über, if they are trying to say they are better than taxis...

Re: We trained our scoring algorithm...

Currently reading that. Interesting, but most of what she is telling us is already well known, but she sums it up nicely and uses some very pertinent examples and puts the whole Schlamassal into context.

Usually it is an trade secret that they cannot divulge, because it would allow the competition to compete unfairly.

That certainly has worked for the likes of Google and its search ranking algorithm.

I'm currently listening to Cathy O'Neal's Weapons of Math Destruction.

Re: Nostalgia ain't what it used to be...

Mainframes are still around today for large TP loads.

On the other hand, think about that "paultry" mainframe back then, then ask yourself, how many hundred users can work at the same time on a modern PC, which has hundreds of times the theoretical power of those ancient machines...

Modern servers are based around PC technologies, not high throughput technologies used in mainframes. Which is one reason a lot of banks etc. still use them. They are still faster and more cost effective for some scenarios.

Think of it more like a sports car or a big rig. The sports car can get you from A to B faster than the big rig, but if you have to transport several tonnes of data, the big rig will still get there first, whilst your sports car is zipping backwards and forwards transferring small amounts of data at a time.

Re: George 2+

Flags, I would assume, like "kill -9"

Re: "Her computer"?

If you are doing something illegal, like installing spyware on somebody's PC, the last thing you want to do is rope somebody else in on the crime, unless you absolutely have to - and then you probably wouldn't want to use the internal IT staff, they'd probably report them.

Re: "Her computer"?

She suspected a District Attorney had installed the spyware.

Shirely he'd need to get the Judge to sign off on a warrant to install the spyware, before he could order the IT staff to install it?

Re: Oh come on...

Usually not, because it isn't their equipment or network and doing an investigation would break company policy.

If the employee thinks the company is illegally spying on them, they should contact their union rep, if there is one, the police, an employment lawyer or the data protection authorities etc. there are a lot of legitimate avenues open to them.

Re: Oh come on...

An authorized pentester has a contract that stipulates exactly what is and isn't in scope. Exactly what thex can and can't do. They have a letter of authorization and they have a list of contacts who can verify they are working legally - unless you are in Dallas County, Iowa, it seems.

In this case, she did not get authorization, she did it off her own hat, bypassed the IT department and didn't inform her superiors that she was performing an illegitimate analysis of the PC and the court network. That would be a sacking offence here.

Re: Jeez

You are partially correct, but she should have approached the IT department in the first instance and when there was no satisfaction, then she should have gained authorization to perform her own investigation. Covering her arse.

As a judge, she should have known that.

Re: "Her computer"?

I agree with the first sentence, not with the second.

Surely there was an IT department, and they would be responsible, in the first instance, for searching the PC for spyware? And they would have to be informed, before she or her gumshoe, put any unauthorized hardware or software on the network.

Certainly she would have been dismissed and prosecuted, had she tried that at my employer.

Re: Nuance

On the other hand, it isn't her PC or her network, it is a PC provided by the court/county/state and she probably has no right to do such an investigation on her own.

Certainly here, it would come under the equivalent of the UK Computer Misuse Act, if an employee started using Wireshark or any unathorized hardware or software in our company network or on company devices.

Surely her first stop should have been the court's IT department. They should be capable of scanning the device for spyware. If not, they would be able to authorize an external specialist.

It seems naive of her to have got her own investigator in, without informing those responsible for the PC and the network. Certainly here, she'd have been out on her tail, if she had tried something like that.

Re: Oh dear

It is a chicken and egg situation.

The PC is a new generation of ARM Windows PCs, but it needs ARM software. Until ARM software starts appearing, running Intel software under emulation is going to be a disappointment.

I.e. the testers are "doing it wrong", to paraphrase Apple. But until common applications start to appear, they can't really do it right.

Hats off to Phillippe! Oh I wish I could do the same

I do do the same. :-D

Re: Beautiful

It is the same one I implement today. 2 years ago, at a previous company, a user got a virus on her machine that encrypted the bootsector. We removed the drive, quarantined it and put a new drive in the laptop and rolled out a new, standard image.

The user had been told many times that the company policy was that all files had to be stored on the network and any local files would be lost in the event of a disaster.

So she just had to suck ít up and live with the fact that any files she hadn't saved on the file server were gone.

Re: I have been removing these for a while now for other reasons

I put them in at home, because I had given up on trying other domestic mesh solutions, which have pants throughput. I had tried 2 or 3 different solutions, none got over 50mbps mesh link over the 10M between the base station and the APs (all current 1.5gbps AC kit).

I had had good experience with Unifi at a previous employer and like the configuration controller. With the Unifi mesh, I get around 110mbps over the same distance. Not brilliant, but better than the domestic stuff. It also adds full VLAN support into the mix, which is a great bonus.

Re: A lot of pissed-off people

I installed a USG and 2 APs about 3 weeks ago at home. Very happy, apart from this bit.

I've used them in the past and we have 2 large crates of Unifi gear at work, which needs to be installed...

With the relevant block as suggested by Ubiquiti (see my other post), there shouldn't be a problem.

They screwed up by not making it opt-in and not clearly informing people. But at least they are reacting responsibly. I'll blacklist the trace.svc.ui.com address in my DNS server and on my USG, that should deal with the problem, for now.

Re: A lot of pissed-off people

They will be making it opt-in and they have released a workaround for those affected, which is in the link in the article, although El Reg didn't mention it and just mentioned blocking all IPs for Ubiquiti...

If you do not wish to participate/provide this data, we will add an opt-out button in upcoming versions that will make it easy to opt-out of providing this data. In the meantime, you can block traffic from UniFi devices to trace.svc.ui.com.

Re: another workaround to this

The blog piece linked to in the Register article states:

If you do not wish to participate/provide this data, we will add an opt-out button in upcoming versions that will make it easy to opt-out of providing this data. In the meantime, you can block traffic from UniFi devices to trace.svc.ui.com.

A bit late, but at least they admit it and have a workaround until the new update is released - more than can be said of Microsoft and its Windows 10 telemetry.

Re: I still don't understand

Exactly. I'd rather the networks would get around to finishing the upgrade to 3G, then 4G, before dumping them for 5G.

In Germany there is something like 1,500 "not-spots", where there is no coverage, not even for calls to emergency services. On top of that there are still big holes in the 4G coverage. I'm on Vodafone and at work I get 2G coverage with under 200 bytes per second throughput - so slow the Vodafone Speedtest app claims there is no data signal to test.

Given that Vodafone sold me the contract with the promise of "up to 500MB/s", 200 bytes is several orders of magnitude behind what I am supposed to get!

I'd rather the networks get their acts together and deliver what they have already sold, before looking to the next generation. It was the same going from 2G to 3G.

Re: Europe to straggle

Fairphone, which is Dutch, I believe.

Re: Surely

Oh no, not again.

Re: Don't forget the orientation

It does need the classification at some point. More important is the movement. Is it moving to intercept our path? If you know it is going to cross your path, you have to prioritise its classification. But you don't keep deleting the knowledge that you are going to collide with it, if you change it classification, which is what the Uber software seems to do.

Re: Reasonable defaults

You would have thought so, wouldn't you... But the protocol in the article definitely says "static" is the default condition.

Re: Surely

I used "usually" for brevity. It is the initialisation of the object "car" or "bike", it would assume at the time of creation that, if it isn't side on, that it will stay in its lane, until it starts getting movement data - remember the initial status of a new object is "static", so a new vehicle object spotted in the next lane is assumed, by the model, to be moving in that lane, until its movement history indicates otherwise.

Unfortunately, deleting the movement history every 1/10th of a second isn't going to help get it right!