I second the emotion!!
And emotional it very well is!
Posts by JCitizen
947 publicly visible posts • joined 16 Jul 2012
'First ever' snap emerges of something vaguely resembling our solar system 300 ly away. We'll take 10 tickets
China successfully launches Mars probe that packs an orbiter, lander, rover
Congrats, First American Title Insurance, you've made technology history. For all the wrong reasons
United Arab Emirates’ Mars probe successfully launched and phones home
Seven 'no log' VPN providers accused of leaking – yup, you guessed it – 1.2TB of user logs onto the internet
Monday 20th July 2020 17:38 GMT 
Want an almost sure method?
Not sure if he uses VPN, because much of the lines of communication are cut up and rather random; but if you really want to communicate in a way that even the heavy deep state hitters find it hard to intercept you; do it the way the Dalai Lama does it. I'll just leave it at that - just think about it and you will figure it out. The PRC doesn't need to know. He is always two steps ahead of them, all the way!
Monday 20th July 2020 16:07 GMT
Re: So, recommendations?
Check Point is the only one I'd trust, they kept the Chinese out of my network for five years, when the PRC finally gave up. I only used their hardware too.
But if you are in Hong Kong, you might as well forget it; although if I were a protester, I'd have a plan to roll my own using friendly advice; and open source methods. None of the details, which I'd discuss in public anyway.
Report: CIA runs secret cyberwar with little oversight after Trump gave the OK, say US government officials
Twitter says hack of key staff led to celebrity, politician, biz account hijack mega-spree
Citrix denies dark web claim of network compromise and ransomware attack
Thursday 16th July 2020 18:45 GMT
I remember when...
I was introduced to Citrix while working for a local school client, and was very impressed with the dumb terminal Citrix product. At that time many schools were still using Windows 98, and had serious security problems because of that. Citrix solved the problem, in that only the main servers needed to be upgraded and advanced security practiced in that area of the network. The dumb terminals only used the base OS when not doing school network business. So they were technically isolated from the server network at that time.
However, I felt like Citrix was sitting on their laurels for years after that, and would probably go the way of many other failed corporations if they didn't work to constantly advance their products and systems. I still feel that way now, but I am also a lot less familiar with it now that I'm retired. I hope they can think outside the box and continue to innovate as they did with wondrous flare in the decades past.
Cambridge student rebuilds Polish Enigma-code-breaking box that paved the way for Turing ... and Victory!
Thursday 16th July 2020 17:55 GMT
Re: Presentation
Yes, that's it! I like to call it the "guessing machine" because it made it easier to setup tables to eventually find the keys. It was still horribly complicated task, but some of the German communications used less complicated machines, and lazy settings each day, which helped the Polish a great deal. Adding plug boards to the Enigma device made it necessary to use the latest computers at Bletchley to even have a ghost of a chance of decryption while the information was still valuable.
Thursday 16th July 2020 17:46 GMT
Re: Poor video
From what I read on the Cyclometer, much of the work was done by testing the settings by various methods, like the grill and catalog methods, then this machine could display data that could be used to continue guessing the entire key. There was information about using perforated cards to place on top of the raw messages to see if they made sense, the hence the key was discovered that way. I may be way off, but watching the movie helped me at least gain a basic understanding. So yes you could use this machine to decrypt but it was a tedious method that took a large team of people to work it out. It wasn't as good as the computers Bletchley made up later, that replaced hundreds of workers by using auto electro-mechanical means to find the keys.
Thursday 16th July 2020 16:17 GMT
Re: Poor video
I don't think any of the wheel control encryption machines were made to "find" keys, you were just supposed to know the key settings using a timetable book in each location. For each change in time, the key was changed to a pre-planned setting. However having that polish device to study made designing a purely decryption machine more likely, because the mechanical nature of it was obvious. Later, they just had to build a mechanical means to predict those wheel settings - like the Bombe machine. Later computers did it better using "valves" instead of individual cylindrical calculators.
Better get Grandpa off Windows 7 because zero-day bug in Zoom allows remote code execution on vintage OS
Wednesday 15th July 2020 20:51 GMT
No worries mate!!
I'm still using Windows 7 and any patches that were cross platform with Win10 I will get also, though some things I won't need. I use micro patching and it works even better than what I had while MS was doing it - even my applications all get patched!! I will be using Win 7 for as long as my computer keeps running!
Trump U-turns on foreign student crackdown: F-1, M-1 visa holders allowed to study online mid-pandemic in the US
Is it a bird? Is it a plane? No, it's a charred white dwarf star blasted across our galaxy by an ancient semi-supernova
Wednesday 15th July 2020 18:46 GMT 
Stuff to think about..
I wonder if this formerly binary system was close to merging, and the event happened before this merger was successful - also the two objects could have been circling each other at astounding speeds as well - but because one of them went NOVA just before the merger, somehow the angular velocity was preserved and imparted a nearly equal and opposite reaction, instead of simply merging and becoming another form of star, or even a black hole. I've never read that a binary system merging like that ever ended up changing from original direction before, so I'm assuming as a novice astrophysics fan, that something completely different had to happen like that. It would seem that much of the matter from both stars would have coalesced however, and just an expanding blast wave with left over gases was left at the event site. Also, I wonder if anyone is gathering data on what are the known universe's fastest objects (relatively speaking of course)
With that incredible speed, it would sure be fun, to watch at a safe distance and see this rogue dwarf slam into another mass of any type in the galactic plane!! Just the thought of that thing moving so fast against the grain of the galaxy would seem like at least doubling the chances of a collision - but the disappointing reality, is that entire galaxies probably pass right through each other with barely even one of such meetings.
Trump reveals US cyber-attack on Russian election-misdirection troll farms
Monday 13th July 2020 17:38 GMT
Re: Bet you missed
Russia is only friendly to "terrorists" when it serves their national interests directly; they almost got their asses handed to them in Chechnya and have endured conflict in other local civil wars inside the Federation up to and including ISIL - so they are not completely in love with all the groups we are against. I see no reason not to share information about groups that are both our enemies - but I'm not in favor of a complete dump of information about the entire area - although they probably know more than we do - so there may even be some value in that as well, as long as they are also forthcoming.
An email banning our staff from using TikTok? Haha, funny story about that, we didn't mean it – Amazon
NASA trusted 'traditional' Boeing to program its Starliner without close supervision... It failed to dock due to bugs
Huawei launches UK charm offensive: We've provided 2G, 3G and 4G for 20 years, and you're worried about 5G?
Friday 10th July 2020 16:36 GMT
Re: Code quality
Chips are not built in the US, they may be designed there, but only TI still builds chips in the US. My friend said these chips were in a lab in Malaysia and were not made in accordance to the design matrix - they were obviously piggy backing changes to the lithography mask were made - when my friend pointed out that they had even arrogantly put logos to their creations on the mask, my friend was quickly escorted out of the lab, and never allowed access to the rest of the tour. Now that just stinks, and I don't care who knows it!
Captain, the computer has identified 250 alien stars that infiltrated our galaxy – actual science, not science-fiction
The Moon certainly ain't made of cheese but it may be made of more metal than previously thought, sensor shows
Euro police forces infiltrated encrypted phone biz – and now 'criminal' EncroChat users are being rounded up
Details of Beijing's new Hong Kong security law signal end to more than two decades of autonomy
Thursday 2nd July 2020 20:30 GMT
Hopefully..
Maybe Australia could make some kind of offer that would not include some kind of apartheid like that land deal would. Of course I doubt they were serious; but really I think it would be a boon to the Australian economy! Of course I would think Taiwan might consider letting migrants to go there; although I don't know what the attitude is, for fearing PRC retribution.
CyberX, CyberX, does whatever a CyberX does. Locks IoT, machines too, Microsoft got it, so will you
Tuesday 30th June 2020 15:27 GMT
Azure disaster..
I wouldn't touch Azure with a 10 foot pole. Back in 2010 when "Windows Azure" started, I had a client that found out the network was riddled with nation state bad actors and IP industrial espionage agents!
Once exposed to one of these, they'd take over your local network, and machines, and block all communications that would result in getting help to extricate yourself from tar baby! The victim was forced to contact Microsoft by mail, and the team at Azure would not lift a finger to help these hapless associates! I was so mad at the time, I thought whoever was running Azure at Redmond should be shot up against a wall!! Needless to say, after all the fighting to regain control over their life, their business was wrecked! Avoid Azure at all costs!
I myself had to contact my ISP to ask them to restore their switch and routers images, because the crooks had made it impossible for people to call me on the land line!! Fortunately my security on the network perimeter, and my in depth security posture, blocked any take over of my network and hardware. The phone company/ISP thought I was crazy until they did what I asked and found out I was right!
Brit police's use of facial-recognition tech is lawful, no need to question us, cops' lawyer tells Court of Appeal
Monday 29th June 2020 18:56 GMT 
Food for thoughts and comparison...
Okay - I get the reasons for push back - and that is healthy in any free society. But I live in a small town, where EVERYBODY knows who you are and probably even know things that are true, that even I didn't know myself, or forgot, at least. So it is difficult for me to see what all the fuss about cameras and facial recognition is all about. Now we do occasionally have a crime in Smallville, and everyone usually thinks they know who did it, but they are rarely correct, but because everyone sees everyone else going down the street, and they know them, it is probably assumed by a person from the large metropolis that Joe Local Sixpack is a goner for good in the courts; but that is rarely how it turns out. Here is the reason why - no matter how well the witness thinks they saw Joe going down the street near the crime scene near the correct time of the incident, they STILL have to prove the ID of the crook under suspicion. This part never ceases to amaze me, because when the police do a line up so the witness(es) can ID the perp, it never fails that they flunk the test for ID of the real perp!!
So I figure even if the plod have the suspect on CCTV, the court should wait until a camera facial recognition can survive a line up. Why not? Is this machine any better than a real human eye witness? Well actually I should hope so, but I have my doubts. Even people in my town have got away with murder, so just how bad is this surveillance after all. I really don't fear public recognition machines at all. It just comes from being from a small town - your mileage may differ.
Sorry to drone on and on but have you heard of Ingenuity? NASA's camera-copter is ready to head off to Mars
Monday 29th June 2020 15:35 GMT
Re: Why
After watching that earth bound lab test of the drone deployment, I don't have a lot of confidence it is going to work. It looked like they had a couple of technicians with crow bars trying to get the deployment mechanism to work. We all know how disasters happen so easy on Mars! I reference the failed drilling device on that last fiasco!
There are DDoS attacks, then there's this 809 million packet-per-second tsunami Akamai says it just caught
Monday 29th June 2020 15:03 GMT
Re: And the next step...
Well, we all know what this is - the article says a huge percentage of the IPs were brand new addresses; so it has to be the recent flood of IoT devices people are buying in droves. These folks will not have a clue as to what is causing the problem, even if they got a call from the ISP. What needs to happen is the government is going to have to step in and make a law that requires all device manufacturers put in configurations to assure, that these can't be hacked within seconds like they are now. The industry will be livid, because the clueless customers won't know how to get around the configurations to make the device work, but tough. That is just the way it is!
My last brand new router was fortunately setup this way, and they even gave me the wi-fi password, so I wouldn't have to make one up. I believe the cloud side of the remote administration was turned off by default - this is the way to sell device properly. It shouldn't delay too many customers, because most of them will NEVER use the features that make a router vulnerable, so why leave them wide open with standard user ID 'admin', and no password wide open for attack? That is just silly when it isn't that hard to do things the right way.
Australia's Lion brewery hit by second cyber attack as nation staggers under suspected Chinese digital assault
Monday 22nd June 2020 19:14 GMT
@My other car is also a Trabant
Where is this right wing media? I watch almost every news service on TV and haven't found one yet! BBC comes as close as I've found, as they seem to report all the news and the uncomfortable news too. Is that your single source?
Backwater internet trolls don't count, they are not big enough to provide coverage to the public at large; just fringe groups and there are plenty of those to keep all flavor if nuthatches happy. That includes Breitbart - nobody even heard of them until the regular news media started screaming about them.
Hey NYPD, when you're done tear-gassing and running over protesters, can you tell us about your spy gear?
NASA to send Perseverance, a new trundle bot, and Ingenuity, the first interplanetary helicopter, to sniff out life on Mars in July
NASA scientists mull sending a spacecraft on a 13-year mission to visit Neptune's 'bizarre' moon, Triton
The girl with the dragnet tattoo: How a TV news clip, Insta snaps, a glimpse of a tat and a T-shirt sold on Etsy led FBI to alleged cop car arsonist
Thursday 18th June 2020 15:24 GMT
Re: Missing info
How they got this information? Easy! Everybody quit practicing good privacy protection years ago! We put our thoughts, pictures, and video out there in public for all to view - the authorities don't even have to get a warrant anymore to gather PLENTY of information about all of us.
Thursday 18th June 2020 14:59 GMT
@LucreLout - Re: Tut....kids today....
Why would they need unfettered access? Look how easy it is without such snooping. In today's world, where people leave their tracks publicly all over the web, it is a piece of cake to fine out everything you want to know about any potential suspect you can think of! You can even access hacker dumps online from corporate breaches that give a total picture of anything you want to know about anyone. The criminals know me better than I do - I found out when I had to fight them over my bank account and credit cards. It is all public knowledge - especially since the Equifax breach!
Thursday 18th June 2020 14:47 GMT
Re: Police cars rest easier
What I'm wondering is why the three letter agencies can't use investigation techniques like this to find terrorists, and quit trying to put back doors in everyone's device, when it isn't even necessary. Good ol' gumshoe work like this could find potential terrorists before they even strike - it is just using common sense deductive reasoning. Doh!
ESET rushes to defend rival Malwarebytes in legal war sparked by vendor upset at 'unwanted program' labeling
Taiwan aims to trump China with new display tech industry development plan
Trend Micro pulls another app over security fears: This time, the Privacy Browser in the Dr Safety Android suite
Monday 15th June 2020 18:43 GMT
Trend Micro used to be on top...
In the early part of this century, Trend Micro was the only anti-virus that actually seemed to work - it and NOD32 that is. But after 2007 all bets were off and it seemed non of the AVs I tried did there jobs anymore, except Avast. None the less I temporarily used ESET's NOD32 until I started getting very difficult problems trying to reinstate my license when the subscription ran out. It was so difficult I quit and went to Avast. Now it seems none of the AVs truly detect any of the best malware out there, so I settled on MBAM for now. As long as I keep everything totally updated, at least malware is unlikely to pwn my computer - I'm not even sure MBAM can help any better, but it is a lifetime license, so I'm sticking to it. They don't have their own browser, but they have a Chrome extension that seems to work pretty well so far.
As Uncle Sam flies spy drones over protest-packed cities, Homeland Security asks the public if that's a good idea
Friday 12th June 2020 14:50 GMT
Re: You asked my opinion about drones...
I think drones are the best thing since sliced bread. Why wouldn't military and police use them to the upmost. They already were using helicopters, which were ineffective at identifying the actual bad actors in a crowd. I was trained in riot control in the National Guard, and we always employed snipers with the best visual equipment we could get to surveil from a tall building or other over look in troubled areas. This way the actual bad actors could be discovered, and video documented, and if need be, taken out if the danger to the public is perilous enough.
The only problem is leadership. You have to tip the balance toward 1st Amendment rights and use discretion when surveilling troublesome demonstrations that could blow up in your face. I think it is ridiculous to ham string our LEOs from using the best equipment and hardware available. However it takes good training and leadership which seems to be greatly lacking in these times; as it is obvious too many 1st responders were not behaving under a good SOP governance. Maybe the police went mad and rioted them selves? We need those assets to prove both sides of the equation. It can save lives or weed out bad law enforcement personnel; but it will take good directors and leaders to know the difference and be transparent with the public in their tactics(to a point) and mistakes. Don't tell me it can't be done - that doesn't matter, we need to strive to that goal no matter what.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
