* Posts by a_yank_lurker

4139 publicly visible posts • joined 16 Nov 2013

Ransomware scumbags leak Boeing, Lockheed Martin, SpaceX documents after contractor refuses to pay

a_yank_lurker

I would guess a phishing attack that hit a target with enough permissions to be interesting.

Cloudflare dumps Google's reCAPTCHA, moves to hCaptcha as free ride ends (and something about privacy)

a_yank_lurker

Re: Audio versions

The problem with any CAPTCHA system is they will need a default dialect. That is inherent in the method. For English it could any of a number dialects depending on where the developers are from. And everyone who does not speak that dialect will have problems with the system.

Time to brush up on current affairs. Because we're predicting Li-ion batt lifetimes using impedance and AI

a_yank_lurker

Is this new?

This sounds like the patents that basically took a tedious manual process and did it on a computer with a bunch of buzzword bingo. Reasonably accurate determination of battery's useful life has been something people have been interested to some extent at least for 100+ years because batteries have been in use for numerous semi-critical applications even then.

We're number two! Microsoft's Edge browser slips past Firefox in latest set of NetMarketShare figures

a_yank_lurker

Lies, Damn Lies, and Statistics

There are several browsers which have about the same measured usage and they are all laggards behind Chrome. I tend not to put much faith in the precise rankings and browsers and OSes by these 'survey' liars. Accurate stats are fairly difficult to obtain and the best you have is an order of magnitude with possibly some sort of accurate trends.

Amazon says it fired a guy for breaking pandemic rules. Same guy who organized a staff protest over a lack of coronavirus protection

a_yank_lurker

Re: One Sided Reporting

In union busting, the only way to get away with it is find solid enough grounds to fire someone that have nothing to do with union organizing. It's actually hard to do because the authorities tend to be suspicious of a 'coincidental firing' when union organizing is involved. About the only way to get rid of the union organizers and not have payout is layoff the entire group and make the group redundant. This sometimes does work if it can be shown this was planned for while and not as union busting effort. In short, it is best to let the unions attempt to organize the workers and act in good faith as it not that uncommon for the efforts to unionize to fail (ask VW about the TN workers rejecting the UAW).

Half of organisations willing to be led into the first circle of hell, or what Dante might call upgrading an ERP system

a_yank_lurker

Re: Upgrading your ERP System? Now?

You must remember the higher reaches of manglement have no clue what is happening in their company let alone the rest of world. To expect to react with anything resembling sense a forlorn hope at best. </snark>

Internet Archive justifies its vast 'copyright infringing' National Emergency Library of 1.4 million books by pointing out that libraries are closed

a_yank_lurker

Re: It has been explained many times ...

The logic flaw is except for classic works the only works that typically made into a movie are recent releases from the last few years. Even when copyright was much short, studios often bought options on works from the authors.

If the copyright period was somewhere around 20 years for all works with no renewal artists would still make most of their money in the first 5 or so years (like 90%+). Also, popular works usually have a limited shelf life. For book to be made into a film as the public moves on to other things. So unless you are dealing with work that has managed to become a 'classic' the movie rights are only useful for a few years after the release of the book.

If the Nine Seniles would bother to read the Constitution they might find the current copyright period unconstitutional because if fails one the Constitutional goals, the promotion of the useful arts. Copyright and patents are attempt to promote developing the 'useful arts' by giving the creators/owners a limited monopoly to make money. It was never intended to permanently lock up works forever plus a couple of millenia.

You're not fooling anyone on that vid-conference call: Walmart says shirt sales soaring, pants not pulled up

a_yank_lurker

Re: You missed the real question....

I doubt Wally World is making up the numbers. I am not sure how many people are video conferencing at home vs screen sharing. With my company we screen share but almost never video conference internally. Plus our dress code in the office was business casual with ties being very optional.

If the sales are driven by anything, it is probably because getting the shirts nicely pressed is not always that easy so it is simpler to buy them.

SAP's locked-down offshore project managers develop remote work plans for clients

a_yank_lurker

Too Early

With the lock downs in the early stages I would be dubious of any comments about the effects. Infrastructure has not been affected much yet nor has there been much social disruption in most countries but I have read reports of problems in India as well as the problems in Southern Italy.

Relax, breaking a website's fine-print doesn't make you a criminal hacker, says judge in US cyber-law legal row

a_yank_lurker

Let's see if this stands

T&C's are contracts which may be invalid because of their one-sided nature anyway (point not litigated here). The idea violating a contract is automatically a crime is idiotic. But grandstanding DA's love nothing more than an easy notch of a conviction to make themselves look good.

Marriott Hotels hacked AGAIN: Two compromised employee logins abused to siphon off 5.2m guests' personal info

a_yank_lurker

Scratch Marriott off the list

Time to scratch Marriott off the list permanently. The only problem is figuring out who else is a Marriott property to be avoided.

Official: Office 365 Personal, Home axed next month... and replaced by Microsoft 365 cloud subscriptions

a_yank_lurker

Re: Aduntgeddit

So you can do bait and switch and force people to spend more. But one has to have a subscription to be vulnerable.

Leaving Las Vegas... for good? IT industry conference circuit won't look the same on other side of COVID-19 pandemic

a_yank_lurker

Re: I disagree

There are several lessons to be learned from this crisis. For many workers, there is little need for a cube in an office as they work from home just as easily. Trade shows have been in trouble for several years now as they are expensive to attend and for vendors often do not have a ROI that remotely justifies attending, this across numerous industries. Video conferencing is cheaper and will allow the interaction that is needed without spending money of travel.

I would bearish mid to long term on the hospitality industry, airlines, and commercial real estate. The first to depend on people traveling away from home. As business travel drops there will be excess capacity in both. Leisure travel will not make up the deficit in both. Commercial real estate will get hit as more people work from either fully or partially who are now mostly nominally office bound. There will be less need for office space as many more would be in the office much less frequently or not at all.

Infosys fires employee who Facebooked 'let's hold hands and share coronavirus'

a_yank_lurker

Re: Background

Well Louisiana has been an odd duck in the US. Many states have implemented a ban on all public gatherings of more than 10 including church services. Also, do not forget NY dynamic dimbulbs (Cuomo and DeBlasio) were telling New Yorkers to party hard in early to mid March when any with a few functioning grey cells was aware Covid-19 was something to be very concerned about. This was contradicting what Feds were saying at the time and the news reports out of Italy.

Official tailored Swift for Windows support promised in 5.3

a_yank_lurker

Re: Swift for ML? That ship sailed a while ago, I think

"how many languages are people programming in these days?" - This has always been a problem with there being numerous languages and versions in circulation since the mid 60s. It seems like it is a requirement for academics and businesses to develop languages that are really vanity projects with some unfortunately becoming widely used. Compound this with bungled designs (aka JS) and other stupidities and you a language landscape that is mess.

Remember that clinical trial, promoted by President Trump, of a possible COVID-19 cure? So, so, so many questions...

a_yank_lurker

The Problem

Many have confused Trump comments on a preliminary report that indicates there might be a cure using existing drugs as opposed to someone who is saying use it now. This is forgetting, Trump and other leaders are focused on many other issues besides reading the details in a preliminary clinical report. What Trump was actually doing was telling people there a clinicians and scientists who are working on cures and vaccines and with some luck we might get a cure out of left field. So keep your hopes up because there is much more activity unreported in the media that might bear fruit, a point that is overlooked. Keeping morale up is an important part of a leader's job in any crisis.

As someone who works in the pharmaceutical industry I am aware many organizations and companies are heavily focused on finding both a cure and a vaccine and getting both to market fast. But the public is largely unaware of these activities. So telling people while we do not either yet others are diligently working on both and anything promising will get to a larger scale trial as soon as we can gives hope that if you can hang on you there is light at the end of the tunnel.

Whether the quinine/antibiotic regime works is apparently murky but it some are trying in trials to see what it does. If it does work, it might give us a better clue on how to handle similar viruses with existing drugs that nobody thought trying before.

Don't believe the hype: Today's AI unlikely to best actual doctors at diagnosing patients from medical scans

a_yank_lurker

AI = Artificial Idiocy

The flaw with AI is not that under idealized conditions it can out perform a human but that is fails miserably when the you have real data. Real data is often incomplete and ambiguous. Remember a couple of the symptoms of Covid-19 resemble the flu which makes it hard to diagnosis based on symptoms alone. I doubt any artificial idiocy system would do much better with ambiguous symptoms than a person especially one who is picking up on a subtle clue that is not the official list of symptoms.

Pattern recognition software is limited by the patterns it has been 'trained' on and the further away from this 'training' data the actual symptoms are the worse it will perform. And artificial idiocy is nothing more than overglorified pattern recognition software with a lot of ignorant hype behind it.

Cops charge prankster who 'corona-coughed' on aged officer and had it filmed

a_yank_lurker

Idiot

Through the book at him, if you have thumb the law books to find charges put him away until he is a ripe old age.

IT services sector faces armageddon as COVID-19 lockdown forces project cancellations – analysts

a_yank_lurker

Re: With the world in lockdown.

My impression is most governments are keenly aware of the medium to long term issues. What they will do is hard to tell right now as many are still in scramble mode and haven't probably fully thought thru the next couple of steps. There is talk of needing to easy some of the restrictions in the near future so businesses can start back up over here. But I think many places are still in lock-down mode for the time being.

a_yank_lurker

Real Effect?

The real effect on dumbsourcing might be to pay more attention to the overall infrastructure available in a location in case of a disaster. Some areas are better prepared for work at home of many for the duration than others. If Indian contractors struggle because of local infrastructure issues but European and North American cope better it might make sense to bring the projects either inhouse or hire a local shop.

Amazon, Apple, Google, IBM, Microsoft speech-to-text AI systems can't understand black people as well as whites

a_yank_lurker

Re: Racist, really?

I would not say racist as much idiotic. There are numerous North American accents. Some are difficult to understand the first time you hear them if you are not a local. The Left Coast accents are pretty bland as US accents go but some regions have a very strong accent even for whites. Now add in all the other English accents and I would like to see the error rates for say New Zealand, Wales, or Scotland.

Taiwan collars coronavirus quarantine scofflaws with smartphone geo-fences. So, which nation will be next?

a_yank_lurker

Re: What if you leave your phone at home?

Tracking phones always sounds good on paper but there is always an assumption that the owner has the phone with them. Not a totally unreasonable assumption but one no the less. It will be mostly true but not always.

Finally – news that something is guaranteed to be healthy and well looked-after for the next six months. That something is Windows 10 1709

a_yank_lurker

Re: Death of WaaS

There are key differences particularly with browsers. OSes are much more critical than any browser as in it must work or you have a very expensive brick. With browsers, one can (and should) have multiple browsers installed so if one goes sideways you have a fall back or two. And with browsers one can have different ones open at the same time which you cannot do with an OS. Fruit updates are technically optional, you can delay them until you are ready and the cadence is annual with fewer new 'features' added per release.

a_yank_lurker

Death of WaaS

So working from home might force Slurp to reconsider its idiotic release cadence for Bloat-as-a-(dis)Service. Many have complained Bloat 10 is at best an early beta release and needs some TLC to be a semi-workable system. Also, a rapid downgrade cadence adds work to the IT staff without adding any real value, definite job security until the bean counters start asking some rather pointed questions. Add working from home, stability will be prized over features as companies need to have work get done not fight the latest bungled Bloat release remotely.

Watching you, with a Vue to a Kill: Wikimedia developers dismiss React for JavaScript makeover despite complaints

a_yank_lurker

Re: Front-end development is a complete mess

Technology churn is idiotic. But there comes a time were the code is so old and creaky that doing anything with it is very difficult if not practically impossible. Then it makes sense to modernize and one should pick a technology that has some maturity to it. As far as picking between React and Vue, I have no opinion but both are mature and well known.

Firefox to burn FTP out of its browser, starting slowly in version 77 due in April

a_yank_lurker

Re: "FTP is an insecure protocol and there are no reasons to prefer it over HTTPS"

A question occurs, is how often do people actually use FTP over other protocols/methods of downloading files? I haven't used FTP knowingly in years and even then usually used a FTP client not a browser. When I have checked my downloads it has been HTTPS for the last several years. So is this a case of Mozilla noticing FTP is used so sparingly that trying to maintain a problematic feature is a waste of time as there are alternatives for the few who actually use FTP.

Surge in home working highlights Microsoft licensing issue: If you are not on subscription, working remotely is a premium feature

a_yank_lurker

Issue

The issue is many organizations are not set up to have a large portion of their staff work remotely. Those that already were issued laptops with the appropriate software preinstalled so using a personal computer was not required (or often not allowed). I am not sure how using a home computer would affect the licensing, it is a rather messy issue. But if Slurp, et. al. wants to really anger potential ex-customers hammer companies over licensing during this time. It is not as if the customers are trying to violate their licenses. Also, I am not sure that many courts worldwide would look kindly on what many would view as a shakedown attempt to profit on the misery of others; not exactly a winning strategy. But Silly Valley is notorious for their collective tone-deafness.

When the world ends – coronavirus plague, WW3, whatever – all that will be left are cockroaches and Larry Ellison trash talking his rivals

a_yank_lurker

Equating Leisure Suit Larry to a cockroach is an insult to those fine insects; cockroaches. It is hard to find someone or something lower than Leisure Suit Larry.

Microsoft nukes 9 million-strong Necurs botnet after unpicking domain name-generating algorithm

a_yank_lurker

Re: MS at least try to be the good guys every now and then

The principle reason to target Bloat is it is the most common desktop OS. With widespread adoption there are a lot of users who are basically clueless about how computers work and how to protect them, easy pickin's for the miscreants. Plus, all it takes to get infected is make 1 mistake which can happen to anyone.

Fruity OS and penguinista's are less common on the desktop and in the case of the penguinistas generally more skilled users. Less common makes these OSes less them profitable to attack and in the case of the penguinistas the higher skill makes successful attacks less likely. But they are still vulnerable, just not as often or as easy.

As far as Bloat being easier to break, this is true but often the issue is a lack of maintenance (updating) and user competence than the inherent security flaws of Bloat. Servers as compared to desktops are run by more knowledgeable personnel who more about the OS and its proper configuration which makes attacking servers directly more difficult, independent of the OS.

Yelp finally gets its chance to tell US Congress how Google screws its listings service every minute of every day

a_yank_lurker

Review Sites

The problem with all review sites is not so much the accuracy of the ratings at the time they were given but that over time the ratings are liable to change. Also, a related problem is the number ratings, often too few to be statistically significant. Thus the results presented are often skewed in weird ways that takes effort to sort out detracting from their supposed value.

Corporate VPN huffing and puffing while everyone works from home over COVID-19? You're not alone, admins

a_yank_lurker

Re: 100% cloud

My group and most of the company is now home based for the duration. We all had laptops issued with VPN software preinstalled and configured. And many of us were mostly WFH or already home based as it was so switching over is not as major a headache. Still will need enough bandwidth. And are not an IT company.

I suspect this might accelerate moving workers out of the office more once everyone adjusts. And being able to do this for a large number of workers is something that will help as you lessen the need for people to be together in large groups.

Stuck at home? Need something to keep busy with? Microsoft has 115 ideas – including an awful SMBv3 security hole to worry about

a_yank_lurker

Re: Imagine a user...

If you are complaining about Bloat's design it has roots in the CPM/DOS days when there were no hard drives or networks. PCs were completely standalone devices that had exactly 1 user and only 1 user with input either from a keyboard or a file on a floppy. Output was often printed. There were many design decisions that made sense in the old days but have consequences when computers are networked together and it is possible for code from different 'users' to be running simultaneously on the box.

The saving grace of Linux and BSD is they are Unix derived/based. Since Unix was designed for a multiuser environment there were design decisions made that make it more secure.

Back to the bugs at hand, it is unclear which ones are due to ancient design decisions (probably none) and which ones are due to bad code (probably all). Buffer overruns are a programming problem.

IBM's outgoing boss Rometty awarded $20m+ in 2019 for growing revenue 0.1%

a_yank_lurker

Re: Maximizing shareholder value?

The only way to truly maximize shareholder value over the long term is to terminate the upper echelons of manglement with extreme prejudice. Manglement is more interested in lining their pockets in a semi-legal way (just inside the law to avoid a long Club Fed vacation) at the expense of everyone else.

Former US Homeland Security Inspector General accused of stealing govt code and trying to resell it to... the US govt

a_yank_lurker

All administrations have appointed corrupt individuals unintentionally to various high ranking positions. Also with the growth of the administrative state aka Trump's swamp this is more a problem because of the numbers involved making it harder to properly vet everyone.

Corrupt scum no matter who appointed them damage the credibility (or whatever is left) of the government.

Stop us if you've heard this one before: HP Inc rejects Xerox's $36.5bn buyout plan as takeover saga drags on

a_yank_lurker

Scum Meet Slime

About all this proposed merger does is take 2 washed up has beens into 1 larger washed up has been. I expect both to shrivel into even smaller husks of their former glory with one possibly joining the Dodos without the merger. Together there is less chance of survival. For once the HP board is showing something resembling intelligence and a spine to telling Xerox to buzz off.

'Optional' is the new 'Full' in Windows 10: Microsoft mucks about with diagnostic slurpage levels for Fast Ring Insiders

a_yank_lurker

Slurp listening to customers and doing what they want is an oxymoron. Slurp hasn't cared about customers particularly home and SBOs for years and it appears for enterprise since Bloat 10 was released (I have a long list of issues with the downgrade to Bloat 10 with my work box).

Oracle staffers in Europe weather cloudy job cuts: As many as 1,300 workers face chop after sales slide

a_yank_lurker

Re: Oracle can only decline

One problem for Larry and his Minions is Oracle is a relational database and there are other very good relational databases as options to ditch or avoid the Minions. True migrating from relational one db to another is a royal PITA but it is doable if the Minions are too obnoxious. Also, there are other cloud vendors who at least have a reputation of not being anywhere near as odious as the Minions. So they face a potential double whammy, customers can become ex-customers and there are other better perceived cloudy options.

Alleged Vault 7 leaker trial finale: Want to know the CIA's password for its top-secret hacking tools? 123ABCdef

a_yank_lurker

Re: Guilty? Possibly. Beyond a doubt? No Way!

Going to a jury is risky for both sides. As is pointed out the actual case is relatively thin but he is a louse at best. So it could either way. The jury could decide being a louse was sufficient motive for leaking. But they could also decide he was too well known as a louse and despised that he might have been set up as a fall guy. It really hinges on how thin the evidence is.

If you're writing code in Python, JavaScript, Java and PHP, relax. The hot trendy languages are still miles behind, this survey says

a_yank_lurker

Re: COBOL

They missed FORTRASH also. In reality, the 'rankings' give an idea about which languages are popular in large areas but not all. It's not perfect but it gives an idea of what languages might get you a job.

Switchzilla? More like Ditch-your-staff-zilla: Cisco back at the layoffs as revenues shrink

a_yank_lurker

Typical Manglement

Silly Valley manglement has never understood basic economics and market maturation. At some point all markets become mature where sales growth slows and is mostly driven by economic and population growth (could be negative, see Toys-R-US, RIP) as well as raiding competitors. They have been in a la-la land not understanding that to raid competitors you must be better than your competitors at a competitive price. Networks will grow but their growth will not be particularly rapid as most people have enough gear and capacity that new gear is not needed until the old gear dies.

Windows 10 Slow Ring update strides confidently into 2020

a_yank_lurker

A newbie to Bloat 10

As someone who just been downgraded at work to Bloat 10 all I want Slurp to do is fix Bloat's real problems. I am not fond of spending a couple of hours resetting all the customizations that went missing, templates not working, One Drive syncing problems, and general wonkiness and I have not yet finished. I have no use for poorly thought software that is not quite barely functional particular when Bloat 7 could be tamed and stay tamed. So Slurp, I do not care for your idiotic 'features' when there more serious basic problems with Bloat that need addressing. Note all this has done has convinced me to avoid ALL products and services from Slurp when I have a say in the matter.

Southern Water not such a phisherman's phriend, hauls itself offline to tackle email lure

a_yank_lurker

Phishing

Unfortunately, phishing to be successful requires only 1 or 2 people to err. The problem often isn't awareness or incompetence but that people make mistakes and these mistakes sometimes have serious consequences. For example if you know who I routinely receive emails from (home or work) a carefully crafted email might fool me. Plus at work I will receive a 'random' email from a colleague I have not had any contact with before, another fruitful area for successful phishing, again a carefully crafted email might fool me.

After blowing $100m to snoop on Americans' phone call logs for four years, what did the NSA get? Just one lead

a_yank_lurker

Re: Typical

Most of the best techniques for fighting organized gangs and cells were developed in the pre-smartphone era (like over 100 years ago). It has long been recognized the communication has to occur and that anything other than face-to-face in a secure room risks interception, letters can be opened, telegrams purloined, POTS tapped, etc. So minimizing the paper/electronic trail has been a major consideration for a long time. Now, in some respects, all the electronic toys have a tendency to leave electronic/video trails that are hard to erase which makes a competent plod's job a lot easier. And one problem for any miscreant is there are plenty of video cameras around which they do not control or own. Plus, any phone being carried will likely have a GPS on which will nicely track their location, remember phones are too convenient to left at home even when you should.

a_yank_lurker

Typical

This seems to be a typical bureaucratic waste of money and resources. It seems like the NSA thought wading through a pile of data when they do not know where to look would be successful. Are there terrorists in the US, certainly but the major groups are well known. And generally most of the key membership is known. Being monitored, they could cause problems but it is likely a halfway competent plod will figure out they are up to something before they strike. Also, sifting through reams of data will not normally find the lone wolves who by definition are hard to find until they act.

Good news, everyone: The US military says it will be ethically minded about how it develops AI

a_yank_lurker

Double Oxymoron

Military AI is a double oxymoron.

In-depth: Deloitte and accounts expert both cleared what HPE described as 'contrived' Autonomy sales

a_yank_lurker

Bean Counting

The proper bean counting for a complex deal is likely to have parts that are murky at best; honest people can come to very different conclusions on how to count the beans. The real question I have is not that some of the bean counting is a mess but whether there was any real attempt to misstate Autonomy's overall financial position. From what I can understand there was no attempt to misstate. So now we are to do arguing about interpretations of accounting rules on some murky parts of various deals. Did HP overpay for Autonomy and not do proper due diligence, the answer to both is yes. But that is not the fault of Autonomy but HP under Leo the Galactic Idiot.

Third time's a charm, maybe: Bankers suing Oracle over claims of exaggerated cloud sales have another go at convincing skeptical judge

a_yank_lurker

Bench Shyster

Given the well-known shakedown tactics of the Minions the bench shyster is either bought or an idiot. The Minions' tactics would make a mafioso blush for their brazenness and general jackassery. So I would believe the charges are probably true; the Minions squeezed many customers with a deal to make some numbers look better than they actually are. What the bench shyster fails to grasp is not that the net revenue is off but the Minions want to look like a stronger cloud player than they really are. Since the Minions are a distant laggard anything the juices their cloud numbers will help their stock price and market perception which is the basis of the suit.

Managed services slinger Ensono waves goodbye to staff on both sides of the pond

a_yank_lurker

Time Zones

Obviously the chief mangler has not looked at map. There is a significant time difference between India and Europe or the US. This means staff in India who are handling European or US calls are a badly shifted schedule compared to Europe or US based employee. Having worked the graveyard shift, it is rough shift to do any length of time and I can see a fairly high burnout rate in India.

Most of these manglers have not worked off hour shifts so they do not know what kind of social and physical demands these shifts put on people. The burnout rate is much higher than on a regular shift, saw this myself and I survived 3 years on the graveyard.

Google product boss cuffed on suspicion of murder after his Microsoft manager wife goes missing, woman's body found, during Hawaii trip

a_yank_lurker

Evidence?

Obvious the plods are not releasing details or at least all the details. I am not sure how they determined it was a homicide without information from the autopsy being released. What most fail to realize is in any suspicious death the ME and the plods will be looking for details that confirm or deny the story they have. And there is a lot little details that can contradict a plausible sounding story either from the scene or the autopsy.

Microsoft crack habit reports: User claims Surface Laptop 3 screen fractured again after repair

a_yank_lurker

Material Science

Slurp is a bit weak on IT so why would anyone be surprised when they are even less competent with material science. There are numerous reasons for glass to crack without being abused and they usually stem from either sloppy manufacturing or spec the wrong kind of glass. Unless Slurp does a proper investigation they will not know what the root cause is and blaming the users is not a good way to endear you to potential customers.