* Posts by JohnFen

5648 publicly visible posts • joined 20 Feb 2015

Google internal revolt grows as search-engine Spartacuses prepare strike over China

JohnFen

Re: Hmm

"To offer this service to the people of China Google will have to abide by the law. Google is not objecting to the law because it wants to provide the service to the Chinese population."

Yes, I never said otherwise.

"Which are the heads of Google who went ahead to develop this service."

And the people who work for them.

"What are the absolutes of morality/rightness."

You've moved the goalposts here. I was disputing the assertion that "moral and right have no meaning". I was not asserting that there was such a thing as an "absolute morality".

"This is others complaining about it."

This is the workers trying to correct what they see as an unacceptable situation. I don't see the problem with that at all -- we all have the right (and duty) to speak up and act about things we find unacceptable. They're doing so because Google has, in the past, been a company that promoted and valued a certain set of ethics, and this project is in opposition to that.

I do think that really, this is the employees waking up to the fact that they don't work for the sort of company that they thought they worked for, and they are trying to avoid making the hard decision between compromising their own values or quitting positions that they used to value.

Personally, I think the best move they can make is to quit (Google isn't going to change, after all), but when you're very invested, it is a gut-wrenching thing to face. So I have sympathy for them.

JohnFen

Re: Hmm

"So you dont want to help their government but dont understand the relevancy of sending them money?"

You are misunderstanding what I'm saying. I'm not saying "don't do business with China". I'm saying "don't do business in a nation where the laws are requiring you to do something objectionable".

"Which then begs the question of what is morality and based on who's morals."

Indeed, and I'm referring to the morality of the people who are deciding what action they should or should not take.

"The difference being that moral or right have no meaning."

This couldn't be further from the truth.

"Well thats the entire war machine removed. Even if built for defence it could be turned inward (see US). And the entire welfare/tax system too. Policing too."

We're getting into a very nuanced area here. I'll just leave it at this: I both agree and disagree with you here.

JohnFen

Re: Old but still true.

"Google is a whore"

Let's be fair -- we're all whores. We all sell the use of our bodies and minds for money.

JohnFen

Re: No matter what happens

"You winnow down the potential pool of employees enough, and you are no longer the place "everybody wants to work"."

This. I personally know and correspond with a dozen or so "top flight" developers (way smarter and more capable than I'll ever be), and at this point about half of them have mentioned that they would never be willing to work for Google.

JohnFen

"while they hire replacements,"

The problem Google (and all other software companies) has is that the global pool of truly talented engineers isn't that large. You can always hire replacements, but hiring replacements of equal caliber is difficult and expensive, and growing more so as time goes by.

JohnFen

Re: My advice to Google employees

"but good luck finding one that would then tolerate the open dissent to its business decisions that (so far) Google has allowed."

All but two of the companies I've worked for have no problem with open dissent to their business decisions. When it comes to walkouts and work stoppages, that's a different story of course, but that's about specific forms of dissent, not dissent in general.

However, I do agree that you shouldn't work for a company that behaves in a way you find unacceptable. I have a rather long list of companies that I would never consider working for due to this sort of thing, and have quit a few jobs because I couldn't stomach their business practices. Fortunately, there are more decent companies that indecent ones!

Google is a bit different, though, because -- at least for a lot of their employees -- the company that hired them is a very different one than what exists now. Google's ethical stance has chanced quite a lot over the years, and there are numerous employees who are just now waking up to that fact and coming to terms with the idea that Google may not be a company that they can be OK working for. I think their reaction is understandable.

JohnFen

Re: Hmm

"I am pretty sure with electronics and I assume you have clothing etc you likely buy from China even if it is somewhere in the supply chain."

I don't understand the relevancy of this argument. Are those electronics and clothing intended to help the government engage in abuse? I do actively avoid supporting such products.

"So why should Google be more moral than you"

I would be happy is Google were even 25% as moral as the average human being.

"Google is looking at act within the law, so if you have some problem with that you need to explain your problem."

You are conflating the legality of something with whether or not it is moral or right. Those are two independent things.

"Are you saying the Chinese do not deserve access to western products and services?"

No, I'm saying that it's wrong to build an infrastructure that helps a government to abuse its own citizens. This isn't a stance I have that is unique to Chine -- I have similar objections when companies to this for the US government as well.

JohnFen

Re: Hmm

"it would be a way they could comply with Chinese law without abetting the human rights abuse."

How do you figure? Dragonfly looks specifically designed and intended to abet human rights abuses to me.

JohnFen

Re: Hmm

"That's very cute, but much larger organisations than Google have tried to put pressure on China, and have got diddly-squat in return."

Not true. Avoiding doing business in nations where the law requires you to do terrible things gains you some invaluable things, such as a better reputation in the rest of the world, clean hands, and the ability to sleep at night.

JohnFen

Re: Hmm

"Is this an argument for Google not to follow the law?"

No, it's an argument to avoid doing business in nations where the laws are morally unconscionable.

JohnFen

Re: No matter what happens

"One of the biggest problems many young people have is confusion over their right to have an opinion, the time to keep that opinion to themselves, and the weight the rest of us should ascribe to their opinions"

That's not a "problem"* unique to young people. It's endemic across the generations.

*I scarequote "problem" here because I don't actually think it's a problem at all.

JohnFen

Re: What we say vs What we do

" Inventors don't get to choose how a tool is utilized, only suggest."

True, but what about if, as appears to be the case with Dragonfly, the invention includes functionality that is deliberately and specifically intended to do evil things?

JohnFen

Re: No matter what happens

In the US, everyone (on average) spends 3 hours 48 minutes per day surfing the web. That's up 14 minutes over the prior year. The number is expected to keep rising for at least a few more years before leveling off.

JohnFen

My advice to Google employees

Get out.

Google already made its trajectory very clear, both in words and actions, quite a while back, before all this Dragonfly nonsense. There is nothing good at the end of the road it has decided to walk down. Save your own reputations and sense of self-worth and find a more worthy employer.

Giraffe hacks printers worldwide to promote God-awful YouTuber. Did we read that one right?

JohnFen

Re: Let me do their job for them as they’re so incompetent

"Felix in the past made a joke to do with a death threat to all Jews. It was a joke to see how at he could stretch the limits of a website."

Well, I guess he found out, didn't he?

JohnFen

Re: He’s not so bad

"You gotta give him a chance"

You're wrongly assuming that nobody here already has.

"it’s just the younger generations sense of humor."

No, it's the sense of humor of a certain subset of people (mostly young). I know plenty of young people who find him highly objectionable.

"He’s not anti-Semitic"

You can't shake the Devil's hand and say you're only kidding.

JohnFen

Re: Newbs

"try to discount people’s opinions that way."

Nah, what's discounting most of these people's opinions is their inability to actually offer anything that supports their opinions.

JohnFen

Re: Let me do their job for them as they’re so incompetent

"This print hack was done to increase his subscriber count of his channel as he is facing being dethroned from the top spot on YouTube as most subscribed channel. His fans have made it their duty to keep him on top of YouTube and this is a hacker who is trying to help pewdiepie!"

You say this in a rather approving tone. Do you even understand that this sort of action makes his fans (and, by extension, him) look terrible?

JohnFen

Re: Newbs

"These people see an article of blatant slander"

If the "slander" (I think you meant "libel" here) is really so blatant, why hasn't anyone managed to point out what false facts it includes? In order to be libelous, it has to be untrue.

JohnFen

Re: Newbs

"what’s wrong with creating an account to comment on these things? "

What's wrong with actually pointing out what the errors in the article are? I haven't seen a single comment that does that yet.

JohnFen

Re: Representee of the 9 Year Old Army

"is the sort of joke you would maybe make behind closed doors with friends."

Umm, no, it's not.

"please don’t even try to pretend that you’re above it."

Please don't try to pretend that you know what people you've never heard from would or would not do.

"your clearly not biased view that he’s an awful YouTuber"

I think the issue isn't whether or not he's an awful YouTuber. The issue is whether or not he's an awful human being.

JohnFen

Re: Get me a babysitter

"Its probably the last part that aggrovates so many people."

Probably not. Despite what wealthy people often believe, people don't tend to be aggravated by how wealthy others are. Fame, however, is an amplifier -- so a badly behaved person who is in the public eye will attract more condemnation than the same behavior done by a "nobody".

JohnFen

The thing I appreciate about PewDiePie

The thing I appreciate about PewDiePie is that he perfectly encapsulates most of the worst aspects of the internet.

Microsoft polishes up Chromium as EdgeHTML peers into the abyss

JohnFen

Re: Microsoft middle(nuisance)ware.

"I guess it depends what you're actually doing all day"

This is almost certainly true. I use Windows because I develop Windows applications. I don't use Windows on my personal machines, though, so my entire Windows experience is through the lens of a developer doing his job.

"If anything, Windows 10 is slightly nicer to use"

This is clearly a matter of personal taste, but I find Windows 10 less pleasant to use.

"being able to layout the applications I use the most (that aren't pinned to the task bar) the way I want in the start menu"

The start menu is one of my major gripes about Windows 10. Fortunately, that's easy to fix by using a replacement start menu. You and I clearly use the start menu differently, though, as I don't think I've ever reorganized the recently used list.

"the applications list is infinitely better than the All Programs menu from earlier incarnations of Windows."

I am of the exact opposite opinion!

JohnFen

Re: Take your browser and fuck off

"So you advocate the Google tax and blatant privacy intrusion of Alphabet ?"

Nope, but in terms of those issues, I don't see a huge difference between Google and Microsoft. They're both horrible and abusive companies.

JohnFen

"Is it a promotion of a monoculture if Microsoft are getting a seat at the Chromium table, not just Google?"

Yes. The more companies that sit at that table, the more of a monoculture we have. The diversity that's important isn't in the number of companies using the same engine, it's in having several different engines.

"I can't imagine there's many webdevs saying "oh, no! Fewer browsers to support!""

I'm sure you're right, but let's talk frankly here -- as an end user, I don't give two shits about how hard the life of web developers is, just as so many of them don't give two shits about me.

JohnFen

Re: I did use Edge...

"I dislike Windows menu-lessness"

Oh, I agree with this SO MUCH. That and the awful trend these days of hiding all the controls.

JohnFen

Re: Begone foul beast :o)

"Don't really get the complaints about the UI. It's a browser. Mostly it's showing a web page"

Yes, but the UI bits that aren't showing the web page are absolutely terrible.

"Favourites are largely dead with the ability to type a letter or two and jump to a favourite page."

For you. There are many people, however, that don't use (or want to use) autocompletion.

"Edge behaves as a UWP app, adapting to tablet mode properly."

Maybe that's OK on mobile (I dunno, never used it there), but the UWP apps I've seen on the desktop (including Edge) are horrid.

"won't change opinions which are based on image with most people still thinking Edge is IE and sheep"

I think that you're being overly dismissive here. You may get along well with Edge, but plenty of people don't. Not because they have a false image of the browser, but because they've used it and found it wanting. I am one of those people -- Edge is perhaps my least favorite mainstream browser.

JohnFen

Re: Microsoft middle(nuisance)ware.

"intended to move from the 90s application UI and Win32 dependency to UWP"

I really wish they'd abandon that effort.

JohnFen

Re: Microsoft middle(nuisance)ware.

"I use Windows 10 every day. I also used to use Windows 7 every day. Never had any problems with either."

I use both every day, and I can't deny that Windows 7 is far easier to use than Windows 10.

JohnFen

Easy to see the downside

"It is hard to see much of a downside to Microsoft ditching EdgeHTML in favour of Chromium"

I know that the author was probably referring to the downside to Microsoft, but this has some big downsides to everyone else. It is increasing the web monoculture, it is entrenching Google's dominance, it is furthering Microsoft's intrusion into open source, etc.

As sales slide, virtual reality fans look to a bright, untethered future

JohnFen

Re: Lack of decent content.

"Take a lot of miserable staff in a big, open-plan office. Add in VR or AR systems so each team are presented with their own little space (a walled garden with a shady tree overhanging it would work fairly well), and add in headphones so the user can choose if they want to just hear chit-chat from their own team area, their own music or general noise."

I honestly can't think of a better way to take a stressful and counterproductive environment and make it even MORE stressful and counterproductive.

JohnFen

Re: Lack of decent content.

"It's fascinating watching the brightest and best of this generation make exactly the same mistakes as their parents or grandparents"

That's a tradition that goes back across many (probably all) generations.

JohnFen

Only if

"Of course, that niche could easily explode should someone like Apple blunder into the marketplace with smart glasses to set the fanbois a-swooning."

Only if they can come up with a reason to own them outside of niche purposes (gaming and workplace, mostly). These things are high on the "gee-whiz" scale, but I've yet to see a really compelling general use for them.

Google: Psst, hey kid, want a new eSIM? Our Fi has one right here

JohnFen

Overpriced?

"Current rates are 20¢/minute"

That's seriously steep! My normal cell carrier is far cheaper than that for international roaming. Even if it weren't, though, wouldn't it be cheaper to get a cheap prepaid phone in the area you would be? I'm not seeing the roaming advantage here...

Tape vendors feel the cold, clammy hand of AWS on their shoulders. Behind them grins the Glacier Deep Archive

JohnFen

"I tend to put a lot of backup data on hard drives which I store off site"

Hard drives are a terrible backup medium.

GCHQ pushes for 'virtual crocodile clips' on chat apps – the ability to silently slip into private encrypted comms

JohnFen

Re: I thought they could crack most encryption.

"If anyone has even a theoretical attack on, say, PGP, I'd be interested to hear about it."

Here you go. This is both a bit dated and a very brief overview, but talks about people's success in cracking PGP encrypted messages. http://www.pgp.net/pgpnet/pgp-faq/pgp-faq-security-questions.html

The summary: There are regular competitions to crack PGP messages, and it's rare that someone doesn't win. However, the time and resources required are pretty huge, so the methods aren't actually useful in practice unless there is a single target worth throwing a ton of resources at, and even then you're only going to crack one message at a time. Cracking things like SSH sessions aren't a practical threat, but cracking encrypted data at rest is (if you and/or one or two files are of extreme interest).

As is noted in that link, cracking is something that is possible -- but if you want to crack PGP, you're really better off going with other methods (subvert the end points, brute force the passphrase, etc.). PGP is not technically uncrackable at all, but for the vast majority of people, it's reasonable to treat it as if it were.

That's why it's called "pretty good privacy" and not "perfect privacy".

Dog with 'psychotic tendencies' escapes home to poop on his neighbours' pillows

JohnFen

Re: It uses cat doors

Oh yes, they are! They're very smart, mean, and tenacious, and once they learn how to enter you house, you can rely on them to do so forevermore.

NHS supplier that holds 40 million UK patient records: AWS is our new cloud-based platform

JohnFen

Re: Red flag

"The greatest vulnerability will be end users"

If this follows the same pattern as 80% of security issues, it isn't the end users that will be the biggest weakness, it will be the employees of the agencies that have access to this data.

JohnFen

Re: Just a minute there

"I was unsuccessful in convincing him it was not that much safer."

I believe you're mistaken in saying "not that much safer". In reality, it's not any safer at all. But you're dealing with someone who is using a single word (that's in the dictionary, no less) as their password -- so obviously they couldn't care less about being secure in the first place.

JohnFen

Re: Bullshit Alert

"how are my or anyone else's medical records out of scope of the US Patriot act in AWS?"

If those records are being kept in servers on US soil, then they are absolutely in scope and will remain so. Further, if the Patriot act is invoked to get at those records, nobody outside of Amazon will be told.

However, if those records are encrypted and the keys aren't available to Amazon, then what the government would get is a bunch of encrypted data.

JohnFen

Re: Just a minute there

Don't worry! Those third party apps will have to engage in authentication to ensure they're authorized. They recognize that this poses an addition burden on app developers, though, and so to mitigate that they've decided the authentication will be a simple, standardized password: "password".

JohnFen

Red flag

"unprecedented levels of protection"

When I see hyperbolic statements like this in relation to security issues, I get very, very suspicious that the security is flawed.

Here are another 45,000 reasons to patch Windows systems against old NSA exploits

JohnFen

Re: Is anyone using UPnP anyway?

"The problem isn't the users, per se, in this case, the problem is the manufacturers putting out a device in a dangerous condition"

I absolutely agree that manufacturers of consumer networking gear are often irresponsible when it comes to default security. But users are on the hook as well. There is a strain of thought that says that consumer tech should be operable by people who don't know what they're doing. I think this is wrong -- networking is a complex topic, and its important that people who are installing, configuring, and maintaining it have some amount of knowledge about what they're doing.

To go with your car analogy, there aren't very many places in the world where you can legally drive a car without demonstrating a minimum level of competency. Cars are very complicated machines, and people operating them need to have knowledge of how they work in order to do so safely. They don't have to be experts in the sense that they can build or repair them, but they have to know enough to tell when something needs attention and how to safely recover from malfunctions.

JohnFen

Re: how about

Indeed. I would also add that being "secure" is an absolute sense is an unachievable ideal. This is pretty much the first law of security, and is why the security world has the truism that you are the most vulnerable the minute that you believe you are secure.

The dingo... er, Google stole my patent! Biz boss tells how Choc Factory staff tried to rip off idea from interview

JohnFen

"She argues that working in the open, by publishing research papers, helps prevent people from trying to patent the work."

I agree with this.

In fact, during my entire professional career, I've taken a rather similar approach. When I come up with an idea that might be patentable, I make sure to publish it somewhere authoritative and include all of the details that would go into a patent filing, specifically so that it can be cited as prior art should someone else try to patent it. Why don't I patent it myself? Because I'm a software engineer, and I don't think that software patents should be a thing that is allowed.

Little FYI: Wi-Fi calling services on AT&T, T-Mobile US, Verizon are insecure, say boffins

JohnFen

Re: VPN?

IPSec is problematic.

The last security review of it that I'm aware of was a very long time ago (around 2003), but at that time, it was found to have some pretty serious design flaws and the general consensus was that it shouldn't be used if another option was available.

Perhaps things have improved since then, but until I see a new analysis reporting that the issues have been addressed, I will continue to not consider IPSec to be adequate.

JohnFen

Re: Use a VPN?

If your goal is to resist third party attacks rather than hiding from your ISP, then you can use a VPN that you run yourself. Then you don't have to worry about the trustworthiness of a VPN provider because you aren't using one.

This is what I do with my phone -- all communications go through a VPN that I run at home (I use a firewall to ensure no packets get sent except through the VPN). I am still exposed to my home's ISP, of course, but otherwise my communications are always encrypted.

OneDrive is broken: Microsoft's cloudy storage drops from the sky for EU users

JohnFen

Re: Msoft bashing again

"almost like a vendetta against Msoft"

It's not a vendetta against Microsoft, or at least not against Microsoft in particular. El Reg treats all companies this way. I would be unhappy if they gave Microsoft a pass.

Prez Trump to host chinwag with Google, Microsoft, Oracle and Qualcomm – report

JohnFen

Wisely?

"emerging tech won't be addressed "wisely" if the big players drop out of the conversation."

The big players dropping out of the conversation is more likely to increase, not decrease, the amount of wisdom, as long as the rest of the tech community remains involved.