Posts by Pascal Monett

Oracle staff share news of sizable layoffs

Oracle is "trimming"

So, on the one hand, Oracle ups its licenses due to "economic concerns", and on the other it sheds $1 billion of empoyees.

Looks like management bonus is going to be insane this quarter.

Can we have a "big, fat dollar" icon ?

Bad news, older tech workers: Job advert language works against you

Re: Examples?

Indeed.

I downloaded the paper. This is an example of the job posting they created for Retail Sales Associate (page 35 of 59) :

"Our women’s clothing store in *City* is looking for a sales associate to help us out weekday afternoons.

We are pretty busy store and you must *Physical Requirement* . We are looking for someone with open

to working in retail, who *Communication Skill Requirement* . We need you to *Technology

Requirement*. So if this sounds like you, send us your resume and your earliest possible starting date

and we will be in touch"

Apart from the glaring spelling and writing mistakes, I stared at that for a few seconds until I understood that they used *Physical Requirement* (etc) as a variable, to be filled in at posting time, I guess.

So I went and looked for their list of physical requirements. On page 46, I found a table that seemed promising, but their "control" text was like : "You must be good at working without supervision".

What's ageist in that ?

WhatsApp boss says no to AI filters policing encrypted chat

Of course Child Protection groups are all for this

Think of the children, eh ? How can you disagree with that, you monster ?

Yeah, well think of the journalists in a dictatorship. Think of my access to my bank account.

Sexual abuse, in any form and at any age, is abhorrent and I absolutely disapprove.

But if that means that some dictatorships will be able to find and kill journalists that are just doing their jobs, well I'm sorry, but the police need to up their game before I'll accept murder in exchange for child safety.

Not to mention that I seem to recall having read that actual cases of CSAM represent 0.2% of all reported cases.

The needs of the many is strong, point-to-point encryption. The needs of the few is better police work.

Last week Intel killed Optane. Today, Kioxia and Everspin announced comparable tech

Interesting development

While the lion was hunting, the jackals kept their heads down. Now that the lion is gone, the jackals can feast.

So, if these new attempts (that seem interesting, viewed from my chair at least) succeed, does that mean that Intel will buy these companies out ?

Or will Intel just eat its humble pie in the corner and skulk ?

Tim Hortons offers free coffee and donut to settle data privacy invasion claims

"one of the largest email threat landscape shifts in recent history"

Not really, no.

It still relies on the idiot to click on an attachment.

It's not because the extension is different that it is such a big deal.

Feds put $10m bounty on Putin pal accused of bankrolling US election troll farm

It's been said by better people than me (Robin Williams, for example), but political candidates should never be able to talk on screen without a visible list of their most important campaign contributors.

Just so people can see why they're saying what they say.

And when you look at the state of education in the US, you understand that it is tailor-made to churn out people of low intellect.

What a coincidence.

I paid for it, that makes it mine. Doesn’t it? No – and it never did

Oooh, kinky !

Psst … Want to buy a used IBM Selectric? No questions asked

Re: Wow

Yeah. That's how things used to be made : built to last.

Now they're built to fail after the guarantee.

I'm guessing they're just as stupid as anyone else.

And honestly, my home desktop doesn't have a password to secure its access.

If a thief gets there, all is lost anyway.

VMware’s subscriptions start at 16 cores, prices won't be made public

"cannot be easily shared or copied and pasted"

Yeah, such a shame that there's not some piece of kit that would allow for typing the relevant parts.

We're all using VR, aren't we ?

Surprise! The metaverse is going to suck for privacy

Cognitive Acuity ?

Really ? A VR headset can measure how accurately I think ?

Let's just say that I have trouble believing that.

China's IT minister under investigation for violating law

So, Xi Pooh is against corruption

Well that's nice to hear. When is that going to trickle down to creating a business ?

I've heard that, if you want to create a business and you don't want to waste two years for the paperwork, some "encouragement" is welcome.

Is that really true, and if so, when is that going to change ?

I have trouble believing this anti-corruption stance when China openly pirates Western software without even a thought.

US court system suffered 'incredibly significant attack' – sealed files at risk

The sweeping effect on operations is staggering

Is it staggering enough to call IBM ?

Microsoft to offer app-store-like experience to distribute and update bespoke apps

Oh great

Another tool that Borkzilla will foul up to make admins' lives miserable.

Yippeee.

Businesses confess: We pass cyberattack costs onto customers

A report full of obvious points

Nonetheless, it is a good thing to point them out.

However, the clincher is in the last paragraph :

"organizations using security AI and automation technologies had average data breach costs that were $3.05 million less than those that weren't"

No points for guessing who sells "security AI".

This whole report is just a sales pitch for IBM who is trying to scare customers into signing up for its products.

Zero trust only saves you a million. We can save you 3 million.

Sign here.

Meta pours cash into servers and AI as ad revenue falls

Re: Mind tricks

Yeah but this time, it's determined by computer.

Just drink the Kool-Aid. Mommy AI knows best.

ServiceNow valuation dips after subs forecast cut

"helping them embark on the onerous mission to get off intransigent enterprise applications"

You mean drop the stuff that works and throw your data and the survival of your company into the hands of someone else's server.

I don't think so.

BT accused of 'misinformation' campaign ahead of strikes

"This represents a pay rise of around 5 percent on average"

Nice.

Where's the other 25% that the CEO got ?

Google postpones Chrome's third-party cookie bonfire yet again

"instead of making the hard changes needed to become truly private shutting down its advertising revenue entirely, [..]"

TFTFY

Scientists use dead spider as gripper for robot arm, label it a 'Necrobot'

I doubt that a cat would remain anywhere near a dead body for long.

I don't think they'd like the smell.

FileWave fixes bugs that left 1,000+ orgs open to ransomware, data theft

"And then, for fun, the researchers remotely dropped fake ransomware on each device"

And then, for fun, the owners of each device dragged them to Court.

If you are a researcher, then you respect other people's devices and you definitely don't "have fun" with them.

Philippines logs on to Starlink for remote area internet services

7,100 islands ?

Yup, connecting all that is going to cost an astronomical amount.

Go Starlink !

Now another Meta acquisition in jeopardy: VR biz Within

"the FTC is sending a chilling message to anyone who wishes to innovate in VR"

No. The FTC is sending you a chilling message.

Don't confuse yourself with the entire market. VR companies are entirely allowed to spring up and thrive. It's just that you are not going to be allowed to swallow all of them up.

Wait, can someone explain the difference ?

"VR dedicated fitness apps and [..] VR fitness apps"

What is this waffling ? So, there are fitness apps, and there are dedicated fitness apps ?

I'm supposed to understand that there are fitness apps that also serve as calculators, or what ?

Look, I'm all for tying El Zuck's hands behind his back, but as far as I know, a fitness app is dedicated to fitness. This supposed distinction just serves the wordcount.

SK Group pledges $22b for US chip, battery manufacturing

Kentucky, Tennessee

Well, at least it's not Texas again.

There's a bit of water in those states.

Luca Stealer malware spreads rapidly after code handily appears on GitHub

"Luca Stealer already has been updated three times"

So, GitHub has a login, doesn't it ?

Why isn't the police involved in this ?

IBM puts NIST’s quantum-resistant crypto to work in Z16 mainframe

Um, guys, get your story straight

"exposing secrets in seconds" ?

At the beginning of the month you published an article which stated that "it should be possible to factor a 2,048-bit integer in an RSA cryptosystem in about eight hours, given a 20 million-qubit quantum computer"

Ok, so it will expose secrets in seconds, I agree.

28 800 of them.

General Motors goes electric with $2.5b US government loan for battery plants

44 against 558

Wow.

That's one hell of a difference to overcome.

The Great Pacific Garbage Patch: Now 100,000kg smaller

Re: collective stupidity

You only have to watch a smoker who flicks the cigarette butt carelessy to the ground.

The world is our trash can.

Until the vast of people understand that that is not the case, it's going to be an uphill battle.

Martin Shkreli, out of prison for running a Ponzi scheme, now pushes Web3 thing

Shkreli

How is it that he isn't banned from ever heading a company again ?

Culture shock: Ransomware gang sacks arts orgs' email lists

"WordFly believes"

Nice to hear.

What would be even nicer would be to read a technical forensic report that demonstrates Wordfly's beliefs are justified.

But I doubt they have the expertise to do that, or the money to hire an expert to do it, or the will to go through the expense.

WordFly is a mass-mailing system. Probably maintained by one guy, remotely.

He's not going to waste his time on this and he doesn't have the necessary experience to handle it. Plus he probably has no clue as to what needs to be done to avoid a repeat of this issue.

He'll just continue business as usual, and keep pocketing whatever he can bill.

Crypto exchange Kraken reportedly hunted by the Feds for alleged sanctions busting

"Kraken has robust compliance measures in place"

Yeah, well we'll see just how robust those measures stand up against judicial enquiry.

Personally, you're a crypto scam. The only robust thing you have is your exit strategy.

Charter told to pay $7.3b in damages after cable installer murders grandmother

$7.3 billion for a murder ?

Is this just opportunistic, or is the US judicial system finally losing its mind ?

If every murder is billed in the billions, who is going to pay ?

It seems clear to me that the only reason for this astronomical amount is because there is a big company to pin the blame on. Even if the company didn't do complete due diligence, a sentence in the billions seems a bit much to me.

And since when is an employee with an access card supposed to be deprived of access if they're not working ?

I'd like to see how much administrative hassle it would create if every single company had to suspend employee access for employees taking half a day off.

The HR department would certainly have to be doubled.

Microsoft profits rise again despite knocks from China, Russia

"It seems money markets are content"

Money markets are rarely unhappy with multinational behemoths that have billions at the bank.

Google Cloud growth slows, losses grow, bosses unworried

So they lost less than a billion over $69.7 billion in revenue

Yeah, I don't think I'd fret much over that either.

Alphabet is a money-printing business. Unless your name is Ballmer, there's no way you can fail there.

Vietnamese attacker circumvents Facebook security with ‘DUCKTAIL’ malware

"Facebook’s credibility"

Those two words have nothing to do together.

LockBit ransomware gang claims it ransacked Italy’s tax agency

"the company found no signs of a cyberattack or a data breach"

Of course not.

It's Italy.

They wouldn't know a data breach if it bit them in the ass.

Besides, the data is probably wrong or outdated anyway.

UK immigration systems delayed by extra Ukraine visa work

Re: began in 2013 and was expected to be completed in 2017

Yeah but, Agile !

Infosec not your job but your responsibility? How to be smarter than the average bear

Re: Not just for the non-pro

I have literally just come back from having lunch with one of my closest friends. He explained how he was happy to branch out into cybersecurity. He created a new company for that (he already has several that are functioning fine, so he has form in that), company which has secured partnerships with major anti-virus companies present in Europe. He told me how happy he was that this new creation already had about a quarter million euros in orders and upcoming sales.

The whole time I couldn't help thinking : my God what have you gotten yourself into ?

Sure, the money appears to be rolling in now, but what's going to happen to you six months down the line when Putin's dogs savage your clients' data through whatever means ?

I fear for him. Cybersecurity is a world of treason and backstabbing, and you never know where it'll come from.

Windows Start Menu not starting? You're not alone

"its rich tradition of fixing one thing and breaking another"

Ah, Borkzilla. You can't even guarantee that your Start Menu will continue to function.

And you want me to believe that your Auto-Update is a Good Thing<supTM</sup>.

Nah, don't think so.

Intel’s smartNICs probably aren’t for you (yet) says Intel

Wow, that's news

“I think what is perhaps even more important, dare I say, than the device itself, is the software ecosystem that grows up in support of it”

No, really ? Ya think ?

Gosh. Somebody call Monkey Boy. The 80s has finally found someone who listened.

Price, lead times and scarcity of fiber optics may derail projects

Re: Given that the cost of deployment has suddenly doubled

Agreed.

The cost of the least expensive element has doubled. So ?

You're going to be spending a lot more on all those people and machines who have to actually make it happen.

Sure, margins are going to be slightly tighter. The marketing guy might not get his full bonus. The client might find that there is a bit more to pay.

But it costs a hell of alot to more to dig a ten kilometer trench that it does to lay fiber at double the price of 3 bucks per kilometer.

Let's dial the hysteria down a bit, shall we ?

Oracle to hike support fees in line with inflation

"in line with inflation"

Yes, of course. Perfectly logical.

Because it is Oracle that is paying for the electricity that makes their clients' servers run, right ?

What ? No ? The clients have their servers hosted locally, or with a Cloud contract ?

So, basically, Oracle is just using an economic excuse to increase its revenues without any expenditure whatsoever ?

My, I would like to able to print money like that.

Couldn't connect to West Europe SQL Databases last week? Blame operator error

"stronger guardrails 'to prevent human errors' "

Sounds like better procedures should be used.

But that sounds like work . . .

Analysts question pace of SAP users moving to S/4HANA

"60 per cent of customers committing to run S/4HANA on the cloud were new to SAP"

So basically he's saying fuck the old customers, welcome to the new, and YEEHAAAAWW we're going to rake it in.

I really love when customer loyalty is recognized.

He doesn't seem to give a flying one about that.

My Big Coin founder is – you guessed it – a $6m crypto-fraudster

More fools are learning their lesson

It's like backups. You ignore the problem until it bites you in the ass, then (hopefully) you educate yourself.

Well, that another $6 million in education.

I'm hoping they won't need to relearn the lesson.

We've got a photocopier and it can copy anything

Re: Ambivalence

Well here's the choice :

1) You do not restrict copying technology. Tens of Youtube channels pop up to tell you how to perfectly copy a €50 bill. Thousands of miscreant idiots decide to give it a try, and tens of thousands of businesses are left out of pocket, plus tribunals are chock full of of the penny-pinching, freewheeling morons.

2) You control copying technology. Counterfeiters are forced to put a lot of work and not a small amount of technology into making plausible fakes, and then they are caught anyway after a while. One court case, problem solved.

I don't know about you, but I prefer option 2.

This is why I love El Reg comments.

You can learn the craziest things.

Microsoft sunsets Windows built-in data leak prevention

"will be discontinued in future versions of Windows"

Guys, get your story straight.

Windows 1 0 was already supposed to be the last version.

Then you made Windows 11, and now you're clearly stating that there will be more to come.

So get out of the closet and say so.