* Posts by Mark 85

12880 publicly visible posts • joined 22 Nov 2012

Volkswagen faces fresh Dieselgate lawsuit in Germany – report

Mark 85

Re: Fraud or fraud and hypocrisy.

Yep. I think the investors will get first pick of the companies assets and anyone who bought VW will end up out of luck on recovering any costs in this.

Guys, geez... finally 5Gs: AT&T grows super-fast mobile net city rollout

Mark 85

Re: Disturbance in the force.

I assume it’s much cheaper per user for them on 5g than what ever it is now (is it 3G+ or proper 4G we have now?)

I would think too that they could raise the price to the consumer for "faster service". First step in anything corporate is the impact on the bottom line and how to make it bigger.

$200bn? Make that $467bn: Trump threatens to balloon proposed bonus China tech tariffs

Mark 85

Ah... the FCC model then?

Mark 85

@DougS -- Re: You can always count on the GOP!

There's some conventional wisdom that goes "The best US government has a Democrat for President and a Republican Congress". The reverse is also true. Not good to have one party running everything.

Mark 85

@Terry 6

Exactly. The "level playing field" in their eyes is flat, at the bottom of a very deep hole. Minimizes cost and increases profits.

Mark 85

Re: 'understand' does NOT mean 'agree with socialists'

e) China is attempting to force U.S. businesses OUT of business so that it won't have any competition,

Many niche manufacturers are getting hurt and going out of business particularly in the hobby field. China looks the other way on piracy of products. The big guys shake it off, the little ones go under. Once the little ones go under, there's no competition or innovation level outside of China. Sadly, the US government won't pay attention until the big corporations get hurt and start collapsing or get sucked up by the Chinese and their campaign contributions start dropping (both parties BTW not just your target of choice). The rot and problem starts at the bottom, never at the top.

Mark 85

In theory, it's exactly what you want - sustainable businesses generating steady income.

True, but the stock market insists on rising share prices for a "return on their investment ". Look at the number of companies that have sucked up and destroyed by the vultures (Icahn for one) and many were just cruising along with steady income, minimal growth as the market was pretty saturated.

Y'know what? VoIP can also be free from pesky regulation – US judges

Mark 85

Politics, big tech, and consumers.

We know this won't end well for one of the above.

Silicon Valley CEO admits $1.5m wire fraud: Bouxtie boss forged signatures to investors

Mark 85

Followed the link....

I smelled a lot of BS in that article like no fact checking. Did he actually speak with Richard Branson? The articles reads like a marketing hack wrote it.

If it looks like BS, smells like BS, don't step in it.

It looks like tech-savvy drivers will have to lead connected car data purge

Mark 85

Re: Factory reset option?

That's ok unless your battery goes flat or you have it disconnected to work on something and lose all of your data when you don't want to.

That would work for me as I wouldn't want, nor keep sensitive data on the car. Unless it's some important to the overall maintenance and drivability, I don't want it kept.

In other words, fault detection, mileage, EFI, data etc. should be kept. Everything else not so much.

Feel the shame: Email-scammed staffers aren't telling bosses about it

Mark 85

...found that more than a third are not even sure how to identify these fraudulent emails.

It's getting pretty tough to do that when the browsers/email readers don't let you see who sent the mail and from where as it's just "from: Bob".... nothing else to be seen or found.

Tesla's chief accounting officer drives off after just a month on the job

Mark 85

Re: All this, with real competition finally on the horizon

We're starting to see the groundwork being laid for this. Some manufacturers are starting to build cars with "fly by wire" tech in them. The prediction is that as the market gets used to these and new enhancements are made in the near future, autonomous cars, electric powered, will be brought out.

Official: Google Chrome 69 kills off the World Wide Web (in URLs)

Mark 85

Re: Why not take it a step further..

Seriously, who at Google thought this was even a remotely good idea?

Marketing probably.

NASA's Kepler probe rouses from its slumber, up and running again

Mark 85
Pint

With all the crap that can damage spacecraft and landers, NASA has done really well with equipment lasting beyond it's life expectancy. Great work the engineers have done... a toast to them.

Nope, the NSA isn't sitting in front of a supercomputer hooked up to a terrorist’s hard drive

Mark 85

Re: Questioning the premise

How many times have we hear law enforcement AFTER THE FACT say things to the effect: "They were on our watch list but this got past us."? Quite often from reading the news. If they want more data than they need to be more vigilant. So far, I don't think we're seeing it.

Mark 85

Re: Don't assume they don't have supercomputers...

I'm anonymous for this info, but I do post under my normal handle here as well.

You believe that you're really anonymous? Is there some document somewhere that explains how your post can't be tracked? I'm just curious as there's always ways to find "anonymous" in any system.

Mark 85

We should wonder or ask (not sure who to ask) is this also for government officials? In US, would Congress types have their messages/chats watched? Would this allow controlling how a CongressCritter votes come budget or "powers" time? Once the system is broken for the bad guys and the little people, can the government itself be far behind?

Mark 85

Re: How are they going to make sure the "enemy" buys back door kit?

By giving the design to China to implement in everything.

Not just the design, but the keys also.

Premera Blue Cross hacker victims claim insurer trashed server to hide data-slurp clues

Mark 85

Crap rolling downhill it will be.

So the end result will be some poor guy/gal in IT will take a hit (possibly a big one) for being the one person who acted alone and decided to destroy the computer. Maybe his boss but unlikely the blame will go any higher.

No, no, you're all wrong. That's not a Kremlin agent. It's someone with 'inauthentic behavior'

Mark 85

Re: Hit the 'Reset' button

Go a step further and purge all their servers/computers not just data warehouses and have them really start over. I'm not even sure that would work as it's too deeply ingrained into the money machine as then the data would be really fresh.

Not so much changing their tune as enabling autotune: Facebook, Twitter bigwigs nod and smile to US senators

Mark 85

Feet dragging and political winds...

The corporates involved are obviously doing the "dog and pony show" bit before Congress. They know that if they drag their feet long enough, Congress will either find something else about that's "important" or the make up (political party numbers) will change and then the firms won't have to do a thing.

Cloud-slingers get 3-week extension to pitch for Pentagon's JEDI contract

Mark 85

Re: Enterprise-level computing in the war cloud

From a security standpoint? You gotta' be sh***ing me.

Brit teen pleads guilty to Minecraft-linked bomb and airline hoaxes

Mark 85

I was thinking hubris but Sedgwick is a better reference.

Cybercrooks home in on infosec's weakest link – you poor gullible people

Mark 85

Re: Lambs to the slaughter

Don't put the weakest link on the front line.

In the old days, the military did that on purpose... cannon fodder. I wonder if the corporate mindset is the same?

Silence! Cybercrime's Pinky and the Brain have nicked $800k off banks

Mark 85

Russian Hackers or Red Herring?

This sounds a bit like the bad guys are tossing out want they want good guys to believe. Servers can be set up anywhere, doing the Russian on an English Keyboard (or mapped to an English keyboard) isn't all that hard.

Benchmark smartphone drama: We wouldn't call it cheating, says Huawei, but look, everyone's at it

Mark 85

Re: VW

Well.. all the cool companies are doing it, from cars to phones, computers, etc, If it has a processor, the data we see published is just so much BS. The performance figures have become just fluff and meaningless.

Ever wanted to strangle Microsoft? Now Outlook, Skype 'throttle' users amid storm cloud drama

Mark 85

Re: I NEVER get tired of posting this

Alternately: "How's that Microsoft thing working out for ya'?"

Archive.org's Wayback Machine is legit legal evidence, US appeals court judges rule

Mark 85

Re: snapshot versus screenshot of snapshot

Simple, lawyers and judge need to compare the two. You won't get the scripts running in the background if I recall correctly and not always the ads, etc.

Cock-ups, rather than conspiracies, top self-reported data breaches

Mark 85

From the post, a copy of his resignation with apparently the damning evidence is in the hands of a solicitor. That should help with any CYA issues.

Go Pester someone else: TSB ditches CEO over bank's IT meltdown

Mark 85

Re: still expected to take away about £1.7m

Go a bit harsher... his payouts will be into a TSB account.

Thousands of misconfigured 3D printers on interwebz run risk of sabotage

Mark 85

Re: Set 'em on fire

The next revision of the firmware makes it almost impossible to disable the thermal protection.

The catch is that this only helps if the firmware is upgraded by user. Most users haven't clue on how to update this stuff (or any hardware except for the Windows Updates that have been set to "auto").

Mark 85

Re: Why

Damn good question. Maybe further, why is any printer or other machinery connected to the internet? I know people with CNC mills, laser cutters, etc. that are connected... why?

Trainer regrets giving straight answer to staffer's odd question

Mark 85

it's best to not cheap out on tools.

This should be a universal rule. I don't cheap out on personal tools at home so why should a business. In the long haul, cheap tools and their replacements aren't all that cheap in the long term.

Mark 85

I would of told them not to pour human blood in it .

So management blood would work then? management /= human normally.

Mark 85

So preventive maintenance..... pour the 7-up on before any colas get spilled on it.

Microsoft gives Windows 10 a name, throws folks a bone

Mark 85

So given all the uproar over Office (again), I guess I shouldn't upgrade from Office 2010? Not used much unless someone insists on getting a Word document.

Then again, I always preferred Word Perfect but that horse is pretty much dead and MS Works still handles a lot of my needs but not all. I'm sure that at some point, I'll get sucked into a massive upgrade to the latest and greatest (tongue in cheek) Office to be "compatible". The days of :buy it, own it, and it just works" are long over.

Microsoft takes a pruning axe to Skype's forest of features

Mark 85

It sounds like a lot of job justification was going with Skype along the lines of what they did to Windows. Things don't need a lot of bells and whistles and shiny. They just need to work and not get in the way which is something I think MS forgot.

If you weren't rich enough to buy a Surface before, you may as well let that dream die

Mark 85

Re: American Idiot

There's a mental lock-in with many consumers and most businesses. Same lock in that IBM had on a lot of people at one time. When stock price becomes more important the buyers and users, MS will be taking the same fall. There's such a thing as too much hubris and MS proved it with the Win10 update.

Anon man suing Google wants crim conviction to be forgotten

Mark 85

Just an observation..

A person who represents them self in court has a fool for a lawyer.

Fast food, slow user – techie tears hair out over crashed drive-thru till

Mark 85

Re: Do you want fries with that?

CPU - Central Potato Unit?

I think Crispy Potato Unit.

US government upends critical spying case with new denial

Mark 85

Re: As usual, the intel community lies to the people in order to protect itself.

Indeed. Governments don't have rights; they have powers

And as we know, power corrupts. Absolute power corrupts absolutely. With no checks and balances, there is absolute power involved here.

Fruit flies use the power of the sun to help them fly in straight lines

Mark 85
Mushroom

So this study might be useful to the military for piloting drones, missiles, etc.? Just don't distract the pilot with a banana.

Cobalt cybercrooks phry up phishing campaign to phling at phinance orgs

Mark 85

Looking at the amounts of money taken, this seems (on the surface) of some government sanctioned group and not a bunch of random crims. Logically, if I were to hit one of the targets they've hit for the amounts they've managed to take, I'd be retired in some no-extradition locale really fast. There's obviously more to this then we're being told. Maybe the guy they collared for this is just red herring?

Fourth 'Fappening' celeb nude snap thief treated to 8 months in the clink

Mark 85

Re: Pics or it didn't happe-- oh, wait...

However, it has to be said that at least some of the victims here are no stranger to publicly distributing photos and/or videos of themselves without their vest on.

I think the difference is that for the vids and photos distributed publically, they get paid. The others they didn't.

Spies still super upset they can't get at your encrypted comms data

Mark 85

Re: Self-contradiction

The reality is, they've gone too far down the rabbit hole to back out. Backing off now means they've lost. These agencies live and die by the "budget" and if they're collecting our data, you can be damn sure they're collecting all the data they can on those in power and using it to keep their budgets and powers.

Politics is a very dirty business and one should always wash one's hands afterwards.

Mark 85

Re: Too stupid and too late

Don't push for (and get) powers requiring ISPs to record my internet browsing behaviour, and *definitely* don't try and shrug it off with "it's just metadata, harmless, honest guv".

This point is moot as Google, FB, etc. do this already. Even the ISP's have logs on you.

Mark 85

Re: business won't comply

the entities to have most benefit from strong encryption are organised crime, corrupt governments and money-launderers who can transfer assets untraceably.

There in is the problem. Those groups want the control and access to yours and everyone else's data. So do we protect the general population, or expose them to the groups you mentioned? This sword they want will cut both ways.

C'mon, if you say your device is 'unhackable', you're just asking for it: Bitfi retracts edgy claim

Mark 85

The concept of "unhackable" is bunk. Given enough time and possibly money, anything can be hacked. Reminds me of claims by various safe companies and all were proven wrong.

‘Very fine people’ rename New York as ‘Jewtropolis’ on Snapchat, Zillow

Mark 85

“We build systems so this does not happen,” the company said of the thing that just happened.

Gotta' love that denial/admission... True corporatespeak.