* Posts by Destroy All Monsters

16005 publicly visible posts • joined 3 Jun 2008

Probe President Trump and his crappy Samsung Twitter-o-phone, demand angry congressfolk

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Windows

I laugh!

Best commentary by olde Patrick Cockburn:

Donald Trump and the US media are in a fight to the finish – and they're both guilty of peddling alternative facts

I will probably be accused of being a Wehrkraftzersetzer again because liberal demonization by loud bullshitting is the thing to do nowadays.

UK Snoopers' Charter gagging order drafted for London Internet Exchange directors

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Windows

Re: > The Home Office did not respond for comment at the time of writing.

Patriotism is a disgusting illness.

So you say. Sounds pretty dogmatic and touchy-feely though.

But what has all of this to do with patriotism in the first place?

Unless you want to awkwardly defend "open border" policy, but that is another problem.

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Windows

I have been hearing that some people call me paranoid.

Deep state? Nope, doesn't exist. It's an illusion, your opinion is corrosive of our democracy.

Pick up that can.

Don’t panic over cyber-terrorism: Daesh-bags still at script kiddie level

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Paris Hilton

Belittling: ISIS as the daily adorable punching bag?

Why is El Reg calling the Carefully Grown Friends of the Obama Administration (so unhumanly/cruelly removed from the premises of East Aleppo as reported by "White Helmets") silly names?

Al-Qaeda is no longer a serious force, he said, both on and offline.

O'Really, Mr. NSA? Last I heard, the US-Saudi Arabia friendship from hell basically handed over Yemen to the Qaeda for no good reason whatsoever except "who doesn't like to do a regime change bombing". The Qaeda is likely to get hotter under the robes of the Saudi regime soon, it's just poetic justice. Boom Boom!

Meanwhile Syrian Rebel Gets Life Sentence for Mass Killing Caught on Video (actually seeking asylum in Sweden). Not "moderate" enough, eh? Fine kettle we got ourselves into here, allowing ourselves to be manipulated by neocons and cut-out politicians. Next target: Iran. (Ceterum censeo Russiam esse delendam is of course the permanent refrain)

OK, it's time to talk mass spying again: America's Section 702 powers are up for renewal

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Holmes

Re: Hmmm.....

I almost rejected this for its sheer stupidity but I'll leave it here for all to see. You're either expertly trolling, or helping to fuel the creeping post-fact neurosis that's threatening to poison the great nation that is America.

So what am I supposed to do? Recant for my reactionary, deplorable views?

I wish to move back to the times to the Moderatrix.

Now it seems thin-skinned teenagers recruited from a liberal hellhole blog are at the moderator's desk, and the sound of "I don't like your opinion, so shut up!" is the new normal. What is one to make of this? Is it over?

MAKE EL REG GREAT AGAIN!

I don't have the time to go into the litany of "scandals", there are angles anywhere. Let's just take:

> Michael Flynn.

You know someone is being lead on a leash when a single name is dropped to light up the semantic network linked to "wast right-wing danger" memes. That someone is probably the reader.

I don't know whether Michael Flynn would be a bigger danger to world peace and sanity than a Chernobyl Mind Controller stitched together from festering leftover pieces of Mesdames Hillary and Powers, but there is NOTHING scandalous in or around Michael Flynn at the present time.

Or, as ex-CIAster Phil Giraldi (always an excellent source of commentary) writes:

To be sure, there are parts of the Flynn tale that just do not make sense. How is it that an experienced intelligence officer would not instinctively know that a long-distance telephone call between a man relaxing at a beach resort in the Dominican Republic and the Russian ambassador in Washington would be intercepted by the National Security Agency? And knowing that, why would anyone lie about it, even if it did include some kind of discussion relating to the current round of sanctions on Russia, which is pretty unsensational material when all is said and done? Flynn certainly had a number of other discussions with foreign-intelligence officers before the Trump inaugural, including those of Israel and most likely Britain, without any scandal being imputed even though the talks must surely have included discussion of substantive issues. The difference is clearly the involvement of Russia.

Yeah?

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Holmes

Hmmm.....

While the entire US political machinery has been caught up with one Trump-based scandal after another over the past three weeks.

In an article about jesuitisms emitted by TLAs, this doesn't start off too well, as I haven't heard of a single Trump-based scandal. I have heard of chaos, confusion, dangerous doofosity and NYT headlines with a tenuous link to reality, yes. I now know about Evola too, he's a pretty cool guy, he founds esoteric fascist cults to alter reality and doesn't afraid of anything.

In 2001 – after the terrorist attacks in New York and Washington – the NSA then persuaded the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court that it should be allowed to search using the personal identifiers of US citizens, ie, their telephone numbers or email addresses. This was despite the fact that the law had previously specifically prohibited this sort of "reverse targeting."

This timeline is fishy. After the Saudi-sponsored hit it took a few years for this to take hold (an attack made more dramatic and WMD-relevant by distribution of Anthrax packages by persons still unknown in spite of the apprehension and suicide of an Oswald-like character who is hot for sorority girls). The mass hoovering became profitable when "Big Internet" and "everyone online" started to happen, let's say around Google's IPO in 2004. Or maybe when mobile Internet took off, so around 2007? Additionally, i I understand correctly, reverse targeting is also all about targeting US citizens by declaring collected data "incidentially obtained" during the aboveboard activity of snooping on foreigners, so it's really about the search terms (an irrelevant detail in any case).

For this reason alone, it is vital that vigorous public debate over Section 702 – what it is intended to achieve and how to prevent future abuses of the law – happen as soon as possible.

It's over. The deep state is now pretty deep and cemented by excellent tools while the TV screens are filled with fake reality and clownish pussy riot marchers. As President Redacted (the Republican briefly in charge after Bush Junior, prior to the Trump administration; nobody really rememebers him, it's as if he had been wearing a Scramble Suit the whole time) stated in June 2013, NSA runs "a circumscribed, narrow system directed at us being able to protect our people." Yes, indeed. But who are "our people"?

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Black Helicopters

Do you ever get the feeling that we have been actors in a psychological experiment to see what people will do with their computers?

No, the psychological experiment began with OC bombing and was all about how much crap you can shovel into a fake reality sitcom until somebody sits up and notices.

Results were encouraging.

The next target is Iran.

Finally, a use for your mobile phone: Snapping ALIEN signal blurts

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Re: Re. Aliens

Why bother emulating pulsars when you can use real pulsars for navigation

Extra-galactic government decisions processes?

Kremlin-linked hackers believed to be behind Mac spyware Xagent

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Your daily dose of Kremlin linking has arrived

After this, we announce the increase of the weekly chocolate ration from 30 to 20 grams.

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Google claims ‘massive’ Stagefright Android bug had 'sod all effect'

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Paris Hilton

Re: Finally a sane article on Android security

As I've been saying for quite some time. Real people with real Android ...

Not sure whether serious or actually a washing powder salesman now working for the Google.

Bruce Schneier: The US government is coming for YOUR code, techies

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Big Brother

We are doomed.

This is the industry that gave us genius ideas like "software patents" and recently, to the acclaim of internally damaged journalists, "API copyrights".

Getting something right?

Yeah, right!

OTOH, as no-one can be arsed to get software "right" in any case, disaster will continue to strike, hacks will continue to proliferate, and backdoors will stay in code bases . We are heading for the one of those Hieronymus Bosch hell situations.

Two words, Mozilla: SPEED! NOW! Quit fiddling and get serious

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Big Brother

You await some decision?

Even Brendan Eich, creator of JavaScript and one of Mozilla's founders – who was later forced out of the company after it came out that he had donated money to support anti-gay rights legislation in California

"reinstating a ban on same-sex marriage" is now "anti-gay legislation". The newspeak dictionary says so.

Well, I am saddened to say that I have zero hope for companies that cave in to the professionally offended bloggers and sundry Guardianistas at the drop of a hat. Vegetables exhibit more decision power.

Roses are red, you're over the moon, 'cos you work in infosec, and you're retiring soon

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Windows

> Puts up a large (well large-ish) salary number

If you think you can hire cheap IT Security personnel that actually knows its way around (as opposed to recycled MBAs and incompetent glitzy narcissists out for a quick buck), you will soon learn otherwise.

Companies expecting "off the shelf" security or exchangeable hires are doomed anyway, milk them, then let them be reaped.

Maybe I can still change specialization, there is life in this here "deplorable" yet.

UK prof claims to have first practical blueprint of a quantum computer

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Re: Just asking..

Not a chance.

(and I don't know what "self applicability" means)

In fact, the problems solvable by a Quantum Computer in Polynomial Time (i.e. BQP) does not even cover NP-complete problems.

The universe continues to suck in a profound way (i.e. there always seems to be nearly a shortcut around hard work, but in the end, Mother Nature says no).

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Holmes

Re: You know what would be handy on these kind of articles?

Number 0: The Talk (Scott Aaronson)

Number 1: QM since that Laughing Classical Greek Guy (Scott Aaronson)

Number 2: Quantum Theory From Five Reasonable Axioms (Lucien Hardy)

Number 3: Quantum Algorithms via Linear Algebra: A Primer MIT Press Book

Number 4: Quantum Picturalism (sorry, I don't get this yet, maybe ever)

Lovely. Now someone's ported IoT-menacing Mirai to Windows boxes

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Just hook them up to Windows for maximum infection-passing.

Get orf the air over moi land Irish farmer roars at drones

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Still better than Podesta's Pizza.

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This is bait.

World to spend US$2.4 TRILLION on tech in 2017

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Re: hmmm

> Financial billions, what the civilised world calls milliards

Only the french use milliards (10^9), and using billion for 10^12 is confusing and frankly dumb.

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USD 2.4 Trillion

> About half an Iraq war

> Now looking at an Iran war

The recession is still on, right?

Windows 10: What is it good for? Microsoft pitches to devs ahead of Creators Update

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> if you buy it for £12

This is the correct price for Win 10 Enterprise Edition.

Not the ridiculous "Happy Merchant" EUR 160.

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Re: Pretty much nothing.

So where is my Win7.5?

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> @Mage, Windows 10 is perfectly fine for business.

No it isn't.

Most "business" can be done (and is better done) by a pared-down terminal with locked-down applications.

Windows is overshit, I mean overkill, a solution in search of a problem. It keeps sysadmins busy and empties the budget. Fuck it.

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Re: reality bubble

"Windows is not going away. It is firmly entrenched as a business workhorse"

In the 21st century a "workhose" is a poor, sick, mutant animal with rabies infested with mind-control worms that everyone pretends to admire for its productivity.

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Thumb Down

> incidentally large chunks of the NHS and MoD run on Windows servers

Everyone is entitled to their own little hell and having Microsoft's licensing police probe the anus.

Especially if the taxpayer has agreed to it.

Trump cybersecurity order morphs into 2,200-plus-word extravaganza

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Facepalm

Oh wos!

We have now reached the intersectionality of justified Obamashit pusback and Pointy Haired Boss with Nukes.

Russia (A) bans web porn as a 'bad influence' (B) decriminalizes domestic violence – or (C) all of the above?

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Paris Hilton

Re: Decriminalisation: Does this do the opposite of what you think?

> It sends the message that it's OK to beat your spouse or kids

OTOH, why are we discussing beating laws in Russia as opposed to say, beating laws in Saudi Arabia again?

Honest question.

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Cheap Bullshit.

Facebook investors yell at CEO: Get the Zuck out of our boardroom!

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Holmes

> activist investors

Actually called "investors" as opposed to the guys who just dump money into a bowl and hope to get multiples out of it soonish before it all collapses again.

NASA's Curiosity puts cat among the climate pigeons: Lack of CO2 sinks water theory

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Alien

Re: "which was supposedly a lot thicker"

Alien refrigerators, releasing Freons!

Mars as the space dump? Dig deep enough and we will find crap, I say.

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Re: Carbons not the only greenhouse gas

Random commentards telling others on how science is done in an unironic way. Then a paragraph starts with "perhaps".

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Trump's new telecoms chief bins broadband subsidies for the poor

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Paris Hilton

Re: Idiots elected an idiot.

> Idiots elected an idiot.

> Go USA!!!!!!!

Are you affiliated with antifa? The level of foul-moutheness and general inability at coherence would say yes.

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Re: Prevent an informed electorate

You can get your lies from the NYT every sngle day.

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Paris Hilton

That's not nice!

But I don't really care. Iran is far more a danger to sudden trumpificative excesses.

These providers include a minority-owned business

Probably owned by white, non-muslim, non-gay, non-transgender males?

Trump's immigration clampdown has Silicon Valley techies fearing for their house prices

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Trollface

Hmmm....

The liburls are really reaching.

Statue of Liberty was originally Muslim woman: February 4, 2017, 3:15 PM: One of the most persistent symbols of American life, the Statue of Liberty, began as a Muslim woman. CBSN's Reena Ninan has the backstory on Lady Liberty.

So "Lady Liberty" has always secretly been "Lady Muslim Immigrant" (in a convoluted way) and no-one actually suspected! Holy Predator-pursued cow, Batman!

I wonder how a travel ban on immigration, however ill-advised, can cause such painful clenching of the anal sphincter? This goes beyong "Freedom Fries" retardation, by far.

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Holmes

Re: Meh! Stupidity at its best.

TWENTY-TWO MILLION emails that went missing from Dubbya's private email server?

Well, I sure hope he didn't intend to read them.

Funny, I seem to remember there used to be a "president" between Dubya and Trump, I forget his name. He was all about "looking forward, not back" and was always finding "red lines" in other people's backyards. Yeah, probably another republican.

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Holmes

Re: I bet Donald has been having a tantrum(p) or two over the past couple of days:

I seriously doubt this can be kept rejected. It's not like the constitution is saying much about immigration, for obvious reasons.

And if good old Saint Democrat FDR could put US citizens into concentration camps legally, well...

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Facepalm

Re: Lack of immigrants to Silicon Valley is the least of their problems

> try and stop another 2007/8 crash

Er .... yeah?

After 8 years of QE whatever and Obama shitonomics, how is that even supposed to be possible??

Uncle Sam probes SpaceX – but crack nothing to be alarmed about, we're told

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Facepalm

> the engineers knew both accidents were going to happen, management did the equivalent of putting their fingers in their ears and going lalalala.

That's opposing "the engineers" and "management" which is utter bullshit.

In the end "the engineers" were ALSO going lalalala. Though they didn't realize it.

David Hockney creates new Sun masthead. Now for The Reg...

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Re: sigh

Nice to see a bit of light-hearted Friday fun get hijacked by someone with chips on both shoulders and up both nostrils to boot.

Fun is overrated anyway.

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Alien

Re: Yet they still can't get rid of them by giving them away at Shell petrol stations

The huge circulation and no one admits to have actually bought a copy.

I'm not saying it's Aliens, but...

Fears Windows code-signing changes will screw up QA process

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Paris Hilton

Can anyone explain

Why signing "changes the binaries"?

It really sounds like some is reaching here.

Also, we have 25 million pieces of "malware that appear trusted because they are legitimately signed by valued code-signing certificates" (it appears that the adjective "valued" no longer has the meaning that it used to have). How does signature revocation happen? I hope someone knows.

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you have to manually insert a USB stick to a server somewhere

Sounds like a use for Internet of Things.

A USB stick insertion robot hand, with web interface and REST API.

UK defence secretary: Russian hacks are destabilising Western democracy

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Big Brother

It also bears reminding

...one of the biggest "hacks" of "democracy" was the invasion and abrasion of a couple of countries that had scant to do with either 9/11 or with "weapons of mass destruction". The perps of this are still free, appearing on TV or writing from think-tanks instead of getting their just deserts. Adding the Lybian adventure and the Syrian democracy enhancement to the list would provide for "equal opportunity" in the court visitation department, too. Not entirely unsurpisingly, Russia seems to have nothing to do with any of those instrumentations. Fancy that.

Also, what happened to the story about “Taking Down” British Officials? Memoryholded, too?

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> I visited Moscow in 1975, it was grey, smelly & scary.

Get out of here, Stalker!

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Big Brother

BUT ... MUH DEMOCRACY!

Hot on the heels of "GCHQ cyber-chief slams security outfits peddling 'medieval witchcraft'"

At the Enigma 2017 conference this week, Dr Ian Levy said world-plus-dog were trying to flog security defenses to tackle "advanced persistent threats," usually using photos of hoodie-cloaked blokes poised over a keyboard with Matrix-style green lettering in the background. But such figures – seen as untouchable, unbeatable, and untraceable – are chimeras, and it’s just “adequate pernicious toe-rags” who are doing the hacking, he argued.

Do they want to drive us crazy by cognitive dissonance?

Tell you what, whenever a western worthy is mouthing off about "the democracy" (especially one "threatened by Putin"), democratic process is being hollowed out behind the scenes and there sure is somebody who is going to be shafted soon (generally people recruited into "activism" with unclear objectives). First a little color revolution (currently "pink" seem to be the next color of choice), "our guy" getting installed because of his/her extreme democratic potentialhaving been an insider of the hourse of cards for a long time, then the well-connected consultants move in to seize or sell off assets while the the specter of an external enemy is kept alive ... Sorted!

Hard numbers: The mathematical architectures of Artificial Intelligence

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Re: Rarely is the question asked:

> Machine learning is an updating of relational by meanings database.

Uh no.

Chinese hackers switch tactics for spying on Russian jet makers

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Re: That is worrying...

You can't just go any copy high tech without a long-term investment in the very idiosyncratic "production network" and "latent knowledge". These ain't the times of cruisers-with-steam-boilers any more. I don't understand why the chinese don't get this.

Also, I though Russia and China were looking for réapprochment? Seems to be going badly, then.

AI vuln-hunter bots have seen things you people wouldn't believe

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Windows

Re: Have seen things you people wouldn't believe

Actually, I'm seeing Idris (compiles to Haskell) Dependently-Typed Programming Language and this seems to be a good incremental advancement in the state of the art. Fancy AI hype not needed, just theorem proving over the type system.

Problem is for old curmudgeon deplorables like me who have started with Pascal and never really been in the ML lineage it's nearly Alien Technology.

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Re: Impressive

> a lot of the technology we use wouldn't exist without the military looking for new weapons

I strongly doubt this.

Actually it's the military who pull in stuff from the civilian sphere, add their own opportunity cost and paint it in olive for no real advantage.