Posts by a_yank_lurker

Fundamental Immaturity

The diaper (napkins to you Brits) brigade have consistently ignored those of us who been around the block once or twice. There are genuine slimes in the world that you need to watch for. The slimes will abusing any system if there is no vigilance. They were doing before Failbook, etc. and will continue to do so in the future. This also shows up in their attitude towards privacy. There are good reasons for law-abiding people to not want their details freely available, particularly if the slimes can see it also.

Dates

Dimbulb bought shares on 8-Jan-2018. This is well after Meltdown and Spectre were publicly announced. Most of the press focused on Meltdown and thus Intel but I remember it being noted that AMD was likely affected by Spectre (later confirmed) during this period. This smells like someone who either is looking to fleece AMD by shystering or is an idiot who should be parted from his money.

2FA - worthwhile pain

2FA is worthwhile pain as allows for a couple ways of notification and verification. By using a text message to a phone, this prevents a miscreant from clicking a link an being able to reset the password even if they have the email account. One email vendor (Fastmail) goes an extra step, every device connected to an email account has its own password, different from the webmail password. Lose the phone, just disable/reset the password for the phone.

Recently Swambo got an email from a merchant for an order placed by someone else in another state. She never had an account with the merchant and was puzzled what happened. I convinced her to the call the merchant to see if they can shed any light. It appears someone has a very similar email account to hers and fat fingered the setup as the credit card used was in the buyer's name. OOPS. Swambo is changing her passwords as a defensive move. I pointed out she could have played havoc with the other person if the 2FA authorization is not used as the login is likely her email account address. Moral of the story, 2FA is a pain but by adding an extra step you are likely to block someone getting access to your account.

RI vs AI

Real intelligence is the ability to make reasonable inferences from limited current data, previous experience, learning, etc. to make good decisions. In the case of any human language real intelligence can understand meaning based on context, word order, etc. and when two texts (in this case) give the same answer or at least a plausibly correct answer. The southern border of California can be described as the US-Mexico, Mexican, California-Mexico, etc. border depending on context. A human would be understand they refer to the same line on the ground.

AI, correctly Absolute Idiocy, is just fancy pattern matching and database querying. There is understanding of context or the possibility there could be more than one correct answer to the question. Also, it has no ability to make reasoned decisions.

What is STEM?

We have a similar problem over here. But I think there is a fundamental problem when discussing STEM, what is it you are babbling about? My background is in material science and yet I am in IT as a programmer with limited formal IT training. Also, I have worked as process (chemical) engineer with even less formal training. So are talking about training people who have enough general skills along with some specific ones that they can shift around in various STEM fields or are we talking about have people with very specific skills that will probably be obsolete in 10 years?

Benchmarks Valid?

All the benchmarks I have ever seen are like EPA gas mileage figures; artificial numbers the are optimistic at best. But numbers because of how they are derived have some comparative value at least in a gross sense. EPA mileage figures do not actually account varying load, weather conditions, etc. that affect the real world numbers. Benchmarks have the same problems, what is the proper balance between CPU load, memory load, drive reads, etc. to mimic the mythical average user? The 'crime' is not that benchmarks are skewed but that they researches are misusing them to try predict behavior in the real world when they are only good tell general trends.

Statistics

Right now, we are not seeing good statistics of just how much damage the patches are causing. The number of data points are few and seem to be biased towards the worst. However, I suspect the effects will range from none/not detectable to eye-popping but the key is the distribution in the server farms once people figure out how to work around the problems. I would not be surprised at something the resembles a Weibul distribution or a mirror of a Weibul (asymmetric cluster with must values clustered at one end with longish tail).

Unexpected

When one's options were a PC/laptop that is what people bought. Also, in many regions the market is mature meaning most sales of PCs are replacements. With the other devices being available and doing the job most people need, there will be declining demand for a PCs for awhile. Eventually the drop will flatten out.

One point these 'analysts' seem to always miss is most families do not need that many PCs and many have more than they need squirreled away gathering dust. Businesses will need only issue one box to an employee at a time.

Why?

What is the purpose of the 'Management Engine'? Does it serve a real need? If Chipzilla can come up with a good reason then fine, otherwise it is a pointless piece of stupidity that should never have seen the light of day.

Ouch

This one has the potential to really hurt. Essentially the suit is claiming a version of securities fraud. Depending on the details this could lead to a Club Feral vacation with a large 'donation' to the ferals when the ferals decide to act.

morons led by idiots

Further proof Isty Bitsy Morons will going belly up. Rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic did more good.

Bankruptcy Soon?

Why do I have a feeling someone is heading to bankruptcy soon? Farming out your IT staff is a fools errand as you will lose control over them with time as the contractor moves staff around. In house staff means you have control and they are also only working on your projects.

New Donut Shop?

There must be a new, all-you-eat, donut shop opening up and they can not miss out. Solving any crime takes a leg work, talking to people, reviewing what evidence you have, etc. Probably the most important bits of evidence from a phone are location and traffic logs. The traffic logs will give them a reason to go play 20-questions someone. But that means giving up your seat in the donut queue.

Forest vs Trees

The net claim is Chocolate Factory actively discriminates against certain groups in violation of state/feral laws. If true and proven, Chocolate Factory is footing the bill for some serious money plus further scrutiny such as age discrimination.

As far as why there is in imbalance in IT between men and women in the US my take is that many males who go into IT have dismal social skills even for STEM majors. Also, there is a tendency to not realize most of IT is problem solving that is a common STEM skill applied to a specific set of problems. Much of IT can be learned by anyone who wishes to spend the time.

A bit of history, in the old days there were no IT graduates so those who got into IT were often some what older, seasoned professionals who were more mature and socially adept. They had a better understanding of the fundamental role of IT in business which really has not changed to improve the bottom line by automating tasks that humans tend to do very slowly and often erratically. Often the PFYs are more interested in 'saving the world' than helping the business make money but they will not have any money if the business does not survive.

Feral Incompetence - Deja Vu Department

Didn't OPM (Office Personnel Mismanagement) have a breach like this a few years ago? It seems as if the average feral incompetent is incapable of learning.

Chipzilla it was nice to know you

As bad as this cock up is I suspect there will a series of patches for all OSes that will be rushed more than normal. This is one time I will not criticize Slurp or anyone else for wonky patches to fix Chipzilla's screw up.

East Texas Says Howdy

Did Expedia open an office in East Texas? I doubt these patents have much merit but that never stopped a troll.

Question

How are the miscreant infecting POS systems? I ask out of my own ignorance.

I know the Target hack was because of poor internal system design that allowed a hacker coming in one a vendor login to reach the POS system.

$700 versus $25

Manual, keyed deadbolts are available at Home Depot over here for $25 +/- depending on finish, etc. So please tell why I should pay 28x the price of a very reliable mechanical deadbolt?

I await your answer.

Real Issue

Perens was complaining about an attempt to subvert GPL by claiming patches are not covered. GPL requires (intends to) all modifications to the code be released under the same license. The court ruled that there was no applicable case on the GPL and its derivative requirements and that his comments were a valid opinion about the GPL. Thus there is no defamation possible.

AI of?

AI or just a big database with lots of computing power behind it?

What about Brave

If Vivaldi annoys them what do they think about Brave? Brave is very much privacy centered, I think more so than Vivaldi. But that might be perception or splitting hairs.

Feral Criminality

The Ferals are taking lounging in the doughnut shop to an extreme. If this was a money laundering or drug case they would get off their asses and get the locals involved. So the question is why can't they do it in this case.

Buzzword Bingo for PHBs

When I hear DevOps, Agile, etc. I wonder if the shills have ever worked on a real system. To be a good developer, tester, system admin, etc. takes a specific set of skills that do not overlap that much with the others. Expecting someone to good at all is a fool's errand.

PHBs playing Statistician

There must be no regard for what data was collected, why it was collected, and any rudimentary knowledge of statistics by the C-suite PHBs. One flaw about analyzing 'big data' is that is often actually very disparate data silos that are not easily linked together.