Re: But the Cloud is more secure
At least Microsoft does patch their cloudservers. A lot of people don't. https://www.theregister.com/2024/03/28/germany_microsoft_exchange_patch/
Posts by storner
152 publicly visible posts • joined 25 May 2011
Microsoft slammed for lax security that led to China's cyber-raid on Exchange Online
Supermium drags Google Chrome back in time to Windows XP, Vista, and 7
Watchdog calls for more plugs, less monopoly in EV charging network
Tuesday 5th March 2024 13:03 GMT
Re: Meh... Either way
Fast-charging stations use cables that are firmly bolted onto the charging station, so nicking those means robbing the entire charger. Good luck with that, given the power it is connected to.
Low-power cables (your typical 11k-22kW or less cable) are usually locked to the car. You can probably (given enough force) rip them from the connector of the car, but it is not something that you just pick up when passing by.
Airline puts international passengers on the scales pre-flight
Wednesday 31st May 2023 08:54 GMT
Happened to me in the 1990's
Before boarding a flight from Boston to Marthas Vineyard, I was asked how much I weighed. That was in my younger days when I was quite fit and normal weight.
The reason was that they needed to distribute tthe weight evenly. The Marthas Vineyard airport had such a short runway that the flight was operated with a 1950's DC-3, so balancing the weight was important. Rumor has it that the local oligarks refused to extend the runway, because it worked very well with their private jets, and they preferred not to have too many tourists.
It is the oldest plane I have ever flown.
Fresh GDPR ruling says even 'minor anxiety' could mean payouts for EU folks
Working from home could kill career advancement, says IBM CEO
Friday 5th May 2023 09:23 GMT
Re: Metrics for success
Indeed.
The number of working hours here in Denmark has decreased from 60 hours/six days per week around 1900 to 37 hours/5 days per week in 1992. Mandatory (by law) required holidays has gone from 1 week to 5 weeks per year, and 99% has an extra week as part of their contract.
Need I say that productivity and wealth has increased immensely over the past 125 years? Or just over the past 25 years?
Requiring that you are physically present in the office when working is just plain dumb. But I guess that is a fine description of lots of middle-layer management, and a fair share of C-level as well.
Microsoft Defender shoots down legit URLs as malicious
For password protection, dump LastPass for open source Bitwarden
Oh, no: The electric cars at CES are getting all emotional
Microsoft 365 faces more GDPR headwinds as Germany bans it in schools
Thursday 1st December 2022 12:25 GMT
Re: What about Google's stuff?
Danish schools have been using Google Chromebooks and Google tools for several years. Then the Danish Data Protection Agency (which is definitely not very eager to tread on anyones toes) came up with a ruling saying "you cannot use Google in schools" after a parent complained that their kids' personal data ended up in the US.
It's just the same as the german Office 365 decision.
And of course all of the schools and local governments are up in arms about it.
Australia to 'stand up and punch back' against cyber crims
Monday 14th November 2022 13:01 GMT
So the Aussies have a bullet-proof way of determining who is behind an attack, and are completely ready to go after the evil-doers in Russia, China and North Korea. Sounds like a plan ...
May I suggest that the government sanctions the companies who have such lax protection of their citizens' highly sensitive data? Eg fine them so hard that it actually pays off to really protect data instead of merely doing checkbox-compliance meaningless "audits".
Swiss Re wants government bail out as cybercrime insurance costs spike
Wednesday 9th November 2022 12:48 GMT 
It's a scam
Cyberinsurance doesn't work. 1) it will never cover the actual cost; 2) it gives companies an incentive to just pay up instead of fixing their rotten security; and 3) it simply tells the criminals to increase their demands because someone else is paying.
Adding state funds to the pot just makes the whole thing worse (except for the insurance companies, obviously).
I know from personal experience that you can get a *lot* of real security for the cost of cyberinsurance. So drop the insurance, and use the funds for something better.
Rookie programmer's code goes up in flames ... kind of
You've heard of the cost-of-living crisis, now get ready for the cost-of-working crisis
Thursday 22nd September 2022 20:35 GMT
Re: Email remains the most used communication method for work
"warm office"?? Dream on - here in Denmark, there is a government mandated max of 19 C at all offices during the winter.
Officially, it only applies to government and municipality offices. But of course every penny-pinching beancounter will jump on it.
So the only place I have a warm office is when working from home. Which is what I plan to do as much as possible.
Major IT outage forces UK emergency call handlers to use 'pen and paper'
Wash your mouth out with shape-shifting metal
Contractor loses entire Japanese city's personal data in USB fail
Monday 27th June 2022 15:19 GMT
"SmartTub, like other IoT products, lets users control their appliance from outside the home using an app."
Why oh why would it be useful to control my Jacuzzi *from outside my home*??? I mean, it's not like I can teleport into the hottub from 200 km/miles away, after setting it to a comfortable temperature.
Woman accused of killing boyfriend after tracking him down with Apple AirTag
We can bend the laws of physics for your super-yacht, but we can't break them
Robots are creepy. Why trust AIs that are even creepier?
Linux 5.17 debuts after 'very calm' extra week of work
Microsoft veteran demystifies Abort, Retry, Fail? DOS error
To err is human. To really tmux things up requires an engineer
COVID-19 was a generational opportunity for change at work – and corporate blew it
Open source isn't the security problem – misusing it is
Predictive Dirty Dozen: What will and won't happen in 2022 (unless it doesn’t/does)
Good Grief! Ransomware gang has only gone and pwned the NRA – or so it claims
BOFH: So you want to have your computer switched out for something faster? It's time to learn from the master
Boeing's Starliner capsule corroded due to high humidity levels, NASA explains, and the spaceship won't fly this year
How long till some drunkard puts a foot through one of BT's 'iconic, digital smart city communication hubs'?
Don't rush to adopt QUIC – it's a slog to make it faster than TCP
Sysadmins: Why not simply verify there's no backdoor in every program you install, and thus avoid any cyber-drama?
Saturday 31st July 2021 14:57 GMT
Focus on detection, not prevention
Requiring that normal software customers must verify the integrity of software distributed via official channels is completely impossible.
Get some detection systems instead and keep an eye out for behaviour that indicates a compromise. That will catch not only supplychain attacks, but also any other kind of attack.
BOFH: They say you either love it or you hate it. We can confirm you're going to hate it
The world is chaos but my Zoom background is control-freak perfection
Pyjama bottoms crew, listen up: In 2022 we'll still be at home
Thursday 24th June 2021 10:30 GMT
Re: Be careful what you wish for
Then go BYOD - even more savings for the company beancounters, yay!
Seriously, with my company going all-in on Microsoft 365 solutions and other SaaS stuff, it is quite rare that I actually need my company laptop for work. Even the company VPN connection is rarely needed.
A trip to the dole queue: CEO of $2bn Bay Area tech biz says he was fired for taking LSD before company meeting
Wednesday 28th April 2021 08:33 GMT 
I see a trend here
"Alcohol-fuelled Danish film directed by Thomas Vinterberg takes the top prize for non-English language film at the Academy Awards"
https://www.theguardian.com/film/2021/apr/26/another-round-starring-mads-mikkelsen-wins-best-international-feature-oscar
(Too obvious an icon, sorry...)
Greenland's elections just bolstered China's tech world domination plan
Thursday 8th April 2021 09:01 GMT
Indeed. And greenlanders - including the winning IA party - really would like to separate from Denmark and gain independence. That costs a lot, so at some point they'll have to decide between independence and mining, or remaining part of the Kingdom of Denmark and keeping the RME's buried beneath Kvanefjell.
But keeping the chinese out of the loop would probably be a good idea.
Two ransomware strains target VMware’s ESXI hypervisor through stolen vCenter creds
A Microsoft bork at the heart of The Oracle? Whatever next?
Death Becomes It: Who put the Blue in the Blue Screen of Death?
Takes from the taxpayer, gives to the old – by squishing a bug in Thatcherite benefits system
Saturday 30th January 2021 12:03 GMT 
Oh the joys of data formats
Somewhat along the lines of this story...
Every danish citizen has a unique identity-number issued at birth. System was designed in the 1960's, so obviously had to carefully consider how much data to store - meaning they ended up with a number including the date of birth in the DDMMYY format: DDMMYY-NNNN, the last 4 digits being a sequence number.
Except it wasn't quite a sequence number, because some bright fellow decided that it would be nice to distinguish between men and women, so the last digit is odd for men and even for women. (You can guess how the transgenders feel about that). Another bright fellow discovered that in 1960 they actually had grandparents born in the 1800's, so the first digit of the sequence number was used to encode the century: 0-4 if you were born in the 1900's, and 5-9 for the old people from the 1800's. Guess how that worked once year 2000 turned up, and we still had some people alive from the 1800's.
As the final twist, the sequence number also acted as a checksum of the entire identity number, with each digit multiplied by a specific factor, added together, and the sum had to be divisible by 11. Bizarre, and with the additional "feature" that you can only have about 250 people born on any one day. This wasn't really a problem until people started arriving from countries where you really don't care much about when you were born, so a third bright fellow decided that if the date of birth was unknown, assume Jan 1st of a year that seems plausible. Guess what happened when a surge of asylum seekers arrived one day...
So the checksumming was abandoned. But the identity number is used by every single public and private sector business, so quite a bit of scrambling when they had to remove that check from the customer entry forms.
Public sector IT disasters - you cannot make them up, they are for real.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
