Hello,

There seems to be the impression that these are completely separate companies doing this. They are not.

In 2020, NortonLifeLock, Inc. acquired Avira, the acquisition was completed in 2020. Avira, in turn, was in the process of itself of acquiring BullGuard, which completed in 2021.

NortonLifeLock, Inc. also acquired Avast in 2021, which itself acquired AVG in 2016.

This means that NortonLifeLock, Inc owns the Avast, AVG, Avira and BullGuard brands in addition to its own Norton brand.

Whether or not NortonLifeLock implements cryptomining in their other brands is anyone's guess, but if it is successful in bringing in additional revenue for shareholders, that may be a foregone conclusion.

Regards,

Aryeh Goretsky

Hello,

Headline says fine was $50,000 (USD). It was £50,000 (GBP).

At the current exchange rate, £50,000 equals about $66,000.

Regards,

Aryeh Goretsky

Hello,

I am trying to get my head around this, but the one thing that I do not understand is, simply, what problem does this solve for Reddit's users? Is it simply for Reddit to create an imaginary market?

Reddit's attempts to generate additional sources of revenue beyond advertising seem to have largely fallen flat, is this some way to get its customers to increase their advertising spend?

The other concern that pops immediately into my head is that Reddit has consistently been very poor at handling various forms of abuse and fraud on their platform. The 16-year-old company only stood up a trust and safety team about 4-5 years ago, if I recall correctly, and the results of their activities had largely been reactive and ham-fisted, at least when there are results.

So, I have to ask myself, who exactly is this entry into the blockchain for, and who does it benefit?

Regards,

Aryeh Goretsky

Hello,

Just in case anyone wants to view the video without having to register or use a VPN: https://www.youtube.com/watch?...

Regards,

Aryeh Goretsky

Hello,

Apparently, the person who posted this story (msmash?) linked to the story from another article:

https://www.slashgear.com/goog...

The correct source, if you want to read the article, is:

https://www.theverge.com/2020/...

Fortunately, I was able to find it because the post quoted liberally from the article, and I was able to search on that.

I tend to let Slashdot's editing team off the hook for a lot of things, such as confusing summaries and grammar, mainly because I'm guilty of the same things myself, but this really should have been caught before it was shared with the public.

Regards,

Aryeh Goretsky

Hello,

I wonder what effect this will have, if any, on the pending age discrimination lawsuit against IBM?

Regards,

Aryeh Goretsky

Hello,

Yes, there are several Russian software companies with significant exports. A quick bit of searching reveals:

• ABBYY
• Acronis
• CBOSS
• Cognitive Technologies
• Elecard
• Kaspersky Lab
• Nginix
• Yandex

While they may not as well known as some of their Western counterparts, they are companies with large numbers of customers outside of Russia and an embargo of their products and services would likely be problematic around the globe.

Regards

Aryeh Goretsky

Hello,

I use the headphone jack in my laptop, as well as in my desktop and my smartphone when I am listening to music. Bothering co-workers and fellow passengers by blasting out your music is rude and annoying.

Regards,

Aryeh Goretsky

Hello,

A few questions, if I might:

1. What is the largest installed single-base or use of FreeDOS of which you are aware?
2. What is the most novel, interesting and surprising use of FreeDOS that you have seen, so far?
3. What was the most difficult part of MS-DOS (or PC-DOS/IBM-DOS) to support in FreeDOS?
4. What is the most frequently-requested feature or add-on you hear about for FreeDOS
5. What would you like to see the FreeDOS Project become in the next 5 years? What about the next 25?

Thank you for taking the time to answer my questions.

Regards,

Aryeh Goretsky

Hello,

Computer virus writers, since back in the day of writing DOS viruses, did often put message directed at anti-virus companies and even individual employees, as well as shout-outs to other virus writers and virus-writing groups. Song lyrics and poems would occasionally be included as well, sometimes to be displayed as part of a payload, otherwise just in there for, one presumes, the curious. The Stoned boot sector/MBR virus' "Legalise marijauana. Your PC is now stoned" message comes to immediate mind.

Of course, these days, computer viruses are almost extinct. There are about two or three families of viruses which are still active (Sality, Virut, ...). Everything else is just various kinds of non-replicating malware, like the ransomware this article discusses. Replicating ransomware like Petya and WannaCry are still comparatively rare.

Today, there is little concern from most developers about the size of their code, at least in the same way it was back in the mini-computer and dawn of the PC era where RAM might have been measured in kilobytes. When you have malware which is hundreds of KB long, or even over a megabyte like Stuxnet, the need to optimize code for size becomes something of a non-issue.

Regards,

Aryeh Goretsky

Hello,

While Bulgaria was once a hot-bed of virus activity in the DOS era, the focus on malicious software has spread throughout Russia, Eastern Europe and the Baltic states, to the extent that it has crowded out Bulgaria as being a well-known source of malware. Of course, today malware is a global phenomenon, and you find clusters of development throughout the world, including regional specializations in both Asia and Latin America for targeting domestic banking, for example.

Vesselin Bontchev, one of the first people to document the Bulgarian virus scene via his seminal work, The Bulgarian and Soviet Virus Factories, remains active in the field and would probably be the best source for current information on Bulgaria's position in the threat economy. He can also be found on Twitter, where his tendency towards logorrhea is somewhat tempered by the 280-character limit.

Regards,

Aryeh Goretsky

Hello,

Unsurprisingly, OKCupid is owned by IAC, the same company that owns (or owned, in this case) AskJeeves, Match.Com, Plenty of Fish, Tinder and a host of other web properties. They are a company that makes money by getting eyeball counts, and things which interfere with that, like security, are tossed by the wayside.

Several years ago, someone signed up using my name and email address for match.com, and a password of "baculum" (go ahead, look it up). There was no attempt to first authenticate me, they just allowed the account to be created and start getting responses, and when I realized what was going on and tried to log in, they sent the password for the account in plaintext to me.

Apparently using IAC properties is (or was) a popular way to harass people. I reached out to their security people, trying to find out more about how an account was created with my email address and no authentication, and asked for information like the IP address it was created from and the time, and got a form letter back saying to come back with a warrant or subpoena.

That they continue to have account abuse issues does not surprise me at all.

Regards,

Aryeh Goretsky

Hello,

So, in other words, it is an updated copy of Lenovo's 15th anniversary "Reserve Edition" ThinkPad? http://www.notebookreview.com/...

Meh.

Regards,

Aryeh Goretsky