Posts by Mike007

If you had a level of security requirement where you were worried wiping the fingerprint reader after using it would be insufficient, you can add a device password. Which is protected from brute force attacks and doesn't have to be different for every website.

However such an attacker would probably also throw in an old school keylogger at the same time, because why not?

If you are worried about someone like me having a strong motivation to compromise you, your windows 7 system is already riddled with spyware... logging every keystroke and stealing every cookie, sending it to me in realtime. Are you at least using TPM based full disk encryption to make it more interesting for me?

Security requirements vary. Biometrics in practice are way more secure than passwords. Which is why even websites requiring passwords you should use a random password that is stored somewhere that you unlock with biometrics.

There is a reason that the way to identify a real IT professional is where they look when a user is typing a password in to their device or entering a PIN in to a payment terminal etc.*

* Note: The one time a professional DOES look at the PIN pad as someone types the PIN is when entering a building they will be working in. Those who started their career looking away should eventually have learned that lesson...

Re: A Good Boss

I always say you should appreciate the simple things like wages being correct and on time.

You'd be amazed at the number of companies who think fucking up everyone's pay every month and making them wait a month for the "correction" means they have a little bit more money sitting in their bank account and therefore slaughtering staff morale is perfectly fine...

My current boss hasn't ever deducted pay or required me to make up the missed hours for the regular doctors appointments I have, even though my contract permits him to do so.

Re: Who is running the project?

To be fair, if you used accurate language to describe the situation then that would be why you got the disciplinary... Some people think that certain words are automatically wrong to use even when used correctly in a context where there is no other way to express the same thing with the same level of emotion.

Something I have had to explain to a lot of FUCKING IDIOTS over the years... ;)

Re: Think before you click

An ad blocker would remove the adverts instead of just breaking links and hoping that means some ads won't load properly. It also doesn't break other things that aren't browsers.

(Of course if the intention is to use it with a TV then sure... But why is your laptop also going through it when it has the ability to run a proper ad blocker?)

Just to post a followup, I was actually asked to to this task again at work this week. My boss told me to try out a few AI code assistants. More tools. Quality wise... Let's just leave it as there are now more tools?

One example: I asked one model to change the docker compose file to reference an environment file, to share the mysql password between containers instead of putting them under each container. It made the requested change, and also deleted the volumes at the same time. Just because.

I will not use Microsoft's offering so can not comment on if that is better, but people say the tools I tried are comparable...

Re: Firewall or AI

Nearly there... Just needs a dozen or so MB trimmed from the install instructions and we will all be living the dream.

Re: All I want for Christmas ...

I have one of those really smart watches made by Casio with a battery life measured in years... Although it did cost £35 to get the high end model.

Re: There is no case

Using market dominance in one area to drive users to your other services is legally very wrong.

Just like when Google do it.

Re: Great!

> If people want to fiddle with AI, just go online and do it or isn't what all that 'Cloudy' crap is all about?

Ask ChatGPT what you were doing at 4pm yesterday. If the answer isn't "using our service" then no web service can possibly know the answer.

A model running in your computer can just check the screen shots and tell you exactly which video you were watching, as well as answer questions about the various sexual positions demonstrated during the presentation. It can also tell you that the video is very similar to this other video you have saved in your "Important Documents" folder. At least in theory.

Re: an email that appears to be a legal notice

If the first you find out about court proceedings is when informed that a warrant has been issued for your arrest due to non-attendance in a court, tough shit.

You must schedule a couple of days off work to attend court on the opposite side of the country to tell the judge "I didn't receive anything in the post" in person, and they will respond with "do you want to come back next month for a hearing where you will be required to provide proof that you didn't receive it, or do you just want to plead guilty and save the hassle?".

Actually happened to my boss, who turned up with a letter from Royal Mail saying they stopped delivering his post because they had decided the building had burned down for some reason. The letter was not sufficient without also proving when the building had burned down... Which it hadn't.

Re: Is BIOS safe?

Reflashing the BIOS isn't an issue with secure boot as when it reboots it will verify that image is signed by the correct key. This seems to be some method of loading the genuine kernel then modifying it after it has been verified. Which of course requires first loading a signed module containing said code... This is where the secure boot bit comes in.

The problem with the part in the article where it says "The bootkit is a self-signed certificate so in order to run on Secure Boot-protected systems, the system would already have to have the attackers' certificates installed." is the way Linux typically handles singing modules. If you want to install updates then you will need to generate your own key and enroll that, then the private key needs to be accessible to the system when installing kernel updates. This means if your system is compromised then they have access to your keys... However in that case I don't really see why this technique helps them when they can just sign a kernel module.

How Oracle uses the JavaScript name: They are using the similarity between the names JavaScript and Java to pretend their product is relevant in the modern world.

Re: "Neat trick"

Why would it being part of the OS or not factor in to an AV vendors decision to delete it? Asking themselves that question *every* time they release a definition update would add up to minutes of employee time every month wasted!

Re: Win10 will be the last OS from Microsoft I will ever use...

A scrollbar you can see... Now there's a novel idea!

Imagine not having to try scrolling random screens just to see if there are more options hidden below the bottom item, which has of course been sized so that you don't get an ugly half object on the screen which might give it away...

Who the fuck thought I wanted the scroll bars to be hidden and only appear whilst actually scrolling???

Re: You can't add arbitrary data to remove bias.

Just make sure you don't take age in to account when comparing the CV of the person with 10 years in their previous job and the person with no work history who got their degree in 2024.

I am not sure how trying to cancel out age from that scenario works! Do you compensate for the fact that the young person hasn't had the opportunity to spend 10 years gaining experience and therefore this can't be held against them???

Re: MS had never understood timezones.

Check your hypervisor for a setting for BIOS clock being UTC or local time. I assume it is setting the clock on startup, and there is a divide in the IT world between operating systems that store the time in UTC, and the way Microsoft do it.

I believe that is a neutral way of phrasing it.

The setting may not be described this way, and may instead be "Select operating system" with this being one of the settings this parameter changes.

Re: And that is why...

Tip: tab completion will make the shell fill in the escaped characters correctly, and works with just a \ to distinguish "hello world" from "hello" by adding a \ after the hello and pressing tab.

It will also flag a lot of other errors by virtue of not working unless it matches an actual file, so is a useful habit to get in to.

Re: 8.5 seconds...

This lesson with WiFi switches prepared the tech support sector for the introduction of privacy covers on webcams...

Re: Is it..........What.

A couple of years ago I raised a support ticket with Microsoft. The support ticket was specifically "I know how to add this type of calendar in Windows, on the web, or in old outlook for Mac, but can't find the option in the current outlook for Mac".

The call started with the Microsoft support engineer telling me to use their screen sharing things so he could see my screen, then as soon as it loaded he said in a confused tone "umm, there is no ribbon? What is this?".

That is the level of support that outlook for Mac gets from Microsoft. (After escalating multiple levels, the official answer finally came back that outlook for Mac does not support that feature)

Jus recategorise it as office supplies to aid in meetings (not everyone is able to impresses an ambassador naked, and that is nothing for our senior politicians to be ashamed of).

You can always use Javascript to fetch() then inject...

I am not happy to have needed to come up with that "solution" in the past.

<div src="..."> if the XHTML people hadn't been so obsessed with getting rid of tables they could have done these kinds of reforms....

Re: New Tech

DNA based computers will enable full self flying.

Just don't scrutinise that statement too closely, DNA based reader.

Re: cross border data collection nightmare.

Fronted web app uses local time (of course).

Service will take a string and interpret it in server local time.

Database will also interpret a timestamp given as a string in its local timezone.

"Automatic handling of timezones" sounds good in theory... The last system written by my boss that I had to bulk import data from he assumed he could cheat and pretend there were no timezones. He fed in GMT and treated the output as GMT, unaware that the SQL backend was set to London... The overlapping data was unfixable.

Re: Limited Option

although there is more media reporting on windows issues, we have never had to tell users not to install windows updates or take any action to block them.

We have to send out such an announcement EVERY SINGLE TIME apple release a major MacOS update, because of actual serious issues which normally takes the machine offline so we can't fix it remotely. Always issues that were reported to apple prior to release, but they totally bloody ignored and shipped the update anyway.

When the first user emailed support asking if they should upgrade to windows 11 we generated a report and discovered that over 10% of devices had been upgraded with not a single support ticket. Our official position was that it was up to the user if they wanted it or not, because it literally made no difference to anyone else.

However the damage of Mac updates is limited by the fact that very few users can be bothered with the hassle of updating their Mac - it asks "do you want your computer to be unusable for 20-30 minutes while it updates?" at the START of the day when you log on, because that is the obvious time to ask... Seriously Apple? They haven't got a bloody clue!

Re: haveibeenpwned

My number 1 piece of advice to people is a password manager (other than the one built in to the browser). Makes unique randomly generated passwords a no-brainer.

Re: Just No

You memorised the checksum of every file?

Re: They'd better get a move on

We bought one of those mini pcs with 4 NICs that is sold as a pfsense box. To run pfsense for a site. Router was located in the mail room, which is dry and sheltered but unheated.

Specification said operating temperature -20°C - 50°C. The first time the temperature dropped to below freezing we had an outage, I had to unplug it and take it to the office and stick it in front of a heater. First time I have ever given a diagnostic conclusion of "the router froze" and meant it literally... Longer term the issue was resolved with a £10 heated mat from Amazon...

Re: What part of "mirroring"

I am sure we have all seen stories about people watching "videos of other people's children" on their work computer when other people are around and can see their screen. If someone can be that dumb, what hope is there that they will realise they shouldn't show a client's email to another client?

Re: Most of LinkedIn seems like AI-generated crap

Careful about appointing an AI to handle HR. Next thing you know there will be a policy that accusing the HR department of hallucinating results in instant dismissal, even if it is hallucinating the accusation.