Posts by Pascal Monett

Intel is running rings around AMD and Arm at the edge

Re: As is doing telemetry

Get with the program.

Telemetry is the new data stream, and everyone, and I mean everyone, wants to be part of that stream.

NASA's Psyche mission: 2022 launch is off after software arrives late

A question of logistics, I think

I would think that, at this point in time, there's a bunch of meetings on the theme "How can we save the Pysche mission ?" and a few others on the theme "What can do with this stuff is Psyche goes south ?".

NASA is generally pretty good at planning, but I'd hate to be one of their planners right now.

Singapore promises 'brutal and unrelentingly hard' action on dodgy crypto players

"Singapore will offer a state-backed alternative within three years"

What. For.

Signapore already has a currency. Don't tell me that they don't know how to use credit/debit cards and online payments in one of the most highly-connected areas of the planet.

Don't tell me that their online banking doesn't work.

So what is the use of a funny-money currency ?

Someone please explain to me.

Zendesk sold to private investors two weeks after saying it would stay public

The important words

"at this time"

Time is changing all the time.

Apparently, it changed bloody quickly for Zendesk (or, for its CEO/board, more specifically).

Cerebras sets record for 'largest AI model' on a single chip

"one of three options"

Only one of which is actually a verification. A video selfie ? Please. Do you have experts at detecting that that girl is actually 16 and not 18 ?

No, you don't.

And a friend's word ? Clue : it's their friend. They will lie to help their friend.

Cloudflare's outage was human error. There's a way to make tech divinely forgive

"a hangover from the days when storage and CPU were too expensive"

Indeed, they are no longer expensive - at least not when compared to their cost fourty years ago.

Unfortunately, in that time we also have learned to use up all the CPU with new OS versions (eh, Borkzilla ?), to no longer really care about our RAM usage and, since disk space is a penny a GB, well we clutter our things with lots of useless data.

All this edge stuff is being implemented willy-nilly, and we are collectively learning the consequences of the absence of planning.

Cloudflare is going to have to revisit its update procedures and its engineers are going to have to revisit their panic intervention process.

Hey, everybody's learning something, so it's all good.

Beijing probes security at academic journal database

"It will fully comply with the investigation"

Of course it will. The CEO doesn't want to fully investigate the interior of a Chinese jail.

The perfect crime – undone by the perfect email backups

Re: you needed to be able to live off the interest of the interest

Not really.

If you don't plan to have a family, living off the interest of the interest means that, when you die, there is big pile of money that will eventually be claimed by the State.

I see no reason to let the State get the money - it wastes enough as it is.

If you go to a place where your lifestyle costs you $5000 per month, you have twenty years ahead of you before having spent the capital. Interest comes on top, which will likely give you a few more months.

Back in the day, your costs would likely not have been so high, especially if you move yourself to a country where the cost of living is much lower.

Adjust your capital span accordingly.

These days, the Euromillion lottery hands out a minimum of €18 million to the top winner. Even if I try and push my lifestyle to the €10K/month bracket (you can only eat one Beef Angus steak per meal, after all), that still gives me 150 years of capital.

Forget living on the interest, you're just creating more problems instead of solving the most important one : having fun.

You need to RTFM, but feel free to use your brain too

Nice one

Last week I commented that the Who Me? character didn't have procedures to follow.

This week you give me case where the procedure was followed to the letter.

I'm sure you did that on purpose ):D

Microsoft issues fix for Windows 11 Wi-Fi hotspots

Re: Why even use Windows for games?

DirectX.

Probably the only thing Borkzilla has ever done right.

It's a crime to use Google Analytics, watchdog tells Italian website

"a country without an adequate level of data protection,"

It has also just become a country without an adequate level of women's rights.

The United States is on its way to becoming a shithole country.

And that makes me sad.

Especially when large infusions of lobby money appear.

More than $100m in cryptocurrency stolen from blockchain biz

I might have a solution

Maybe if they joined the SWIFT platform their transactions would be a bit more secure ?

Oh, but that would be joining The Man, so obviously not . . .

NASA circles August in its diary to put Artemis I capsule in Moon orbit

A hydrogen fuel leak, but everything's fine

Why do I have flashbacks of Challenger reading those words ?

Is it the engineers that made that evaluation, or the head beancounter ?

Big Tech silent on data privacy in post-Roe America

Re: Swiss-Cheese Reassurances by Clue Co-CEOs

Those are bold words, and I am glad of them, but they mean nothing when faced with a National Security letter.

Now that the puritan assholes have managed to knock women's rights a step down, you can be sure that they will not hesitate to abuse the law in order to track down potential abortions.

Except, obviously, if their own daughter gets pregnant from rape. In that case, they'll use their power to make it happen, discreetly.

Because rules are for the meek.

US senators seek input on their cryptocurrency law via GitHub – and get some

Well said

"[The Bitcoin] ecosystem is a collection of Rube Goldberg devices designed for the express purpose of making compliance with tax, anti-money laundering, disclosure, liability, and other laws difficult if not impossible. Full stop. There is no baby to throw out with this bath water."

I'll have to remember that one.

Re: Countering symptoms rather than the cause

Now, now. Don't go give Trump any ideas like that.

Well, there is one point that makes it ressemble a Ponzi scheme : those who get in first are the most likely to make big wins when the hoi-polloi come rushing in.

Bitcoin, however, is no longer a Ponzi scheme. It's become a crapshoot.

Whatever hit the Moon in March, it left this weird double crater

Re: Bouncy space junk?

In that case there would likely be one crater and something lying to it.

I doubt very much that the rebound energy would be sufficient to create a second crater.

Back-to-office mandates won't work, says Salesforce's Benioff

Absolutely agreed.

You're paying for my work, not for having me come into the office.

My being in the office or not is now irrelevant. COVID proved that.

So you pay me and you skimp on the office. You still win, in the end.

Semiconductor boom could be coming to an end – analysts

What ?

"the chip industry is heading for a slowdown because of companies stockpiling components"

Stockpiling components from where ?

We've been repeatedly told about shortages, especially in the automobile industry, and now, suddenly, there are companies that have magically created stockpiles of stuff ?

Someone needs to explain this to me.

Teslasuit demo: Taking a crack at force feedback with the 'Glove'

Indeed.

And until it is interested, this will remain very, very niche.

But if it gets good enough for the sex industry, it'll make a fortune.

NSO claims 'more than 5' EU states use Pegasus spyware

"carefully contracted to only permit legitimate use"

I would love to have the transcript of the contract discussions with Putin.

Totaled Tesla goes up in flames three weeks after crash

Yes, but that is in a future that doesn't exist yet, so the value of that argument is somewhat diminished in the now.

Cisco quits Moscow

So, the war with Eastasia continues . . .

Now Amazon debuts an AI programming assistant – CodeWhisperer

"those that have bet the farm on machine smarts"

Those who have done that will not survive for very long.

Machines do not have smarts, they have faulty training data and I have yet to read an article about how absolutely astonishingly good some newfangled pseudo-AI thingamajig is.

If what you're doing is that difficult, make sure you have a fully-staffed engineering department.

You'll last longer.

If you didn't store valuable data, ransomware would become impotent

"Who will want to do business with you in the future?"

Ask Talk-Talk.

Somehow, they're still in business.

SpaceX: 5G expansion could kill US Starlink broadband

Re: Ouch

That's life.

You are born wet, cold and hungry, and then it all goes downhill from there.

Intel withholds Ohio fab ceremony over US chip subsidies inaction

"now it's time for us to move forward rapidly"

This just in : 4th quarter revenue is $20 billion.

Pat, if you want to move forward rapidly, I think you have the money to do it.

I am tired of repeatedly seeing that it is the richest companies that profit the most from subsidies.

I'm not bashing the principle of subsidies, I'm sure it's a good thing, but dammit, why do Apple, Microsoft, IBM, Intel & Co get the lion's share when they're already stuffed with cash ?

Something's wrong here.

ZTE intros 'cloud laptop' that draws just five watts of power

Yay, we have finally reinvented the terminal

We now have a 21st century screen that can do nothing on its own and requires a server to be useful.

Progress ?

NASA wants nuclear reactor on the Moon by 2030

So they're looking to put fissile material on a rocket

The discussions about that are going to be interesting, not to mention that any nuclear reactor they send up in space will have to fit inside the payload are of whatever launcher they wish to use.

Here's to hoping that the launcher functions to perfection when the time comes.

Alta Devices state that their tech reaches 29.1% efficiency.

By what magic do you estimate that their tech will be 10 times more efficient on the Moon ?

Xi Jinping himself weighs in on how Big Tech should deploy FinTech

Combat monopoly

That's a bit rich coming from someone who absolute monopoly on power in his country.

HCL to end all support for old versions of Notes and Domino in 2024

Re: none of them can do all the stuff that Notes still can

I still remember the IT director of an important Luxembourg company (which I will not disclose, obviously), who told me that, when they were looking to replace a mainframe (sorry, don't have the details), they asked Microsoft for a quote.

The answer ? 50 NT servers.

50.

If that doesn't boggle your mind, I don't know what will.

The result ? They went with a Solaris server and Domino 4 (yeah, that's how old this is).

I have to say, I hate IBM. They had a great product, with incredible abilities, and they never approached the Fortune 1000 to explain just how indispensable Notes is.

Just my 2 cents, as we say these days.

A miserable work week spent toiling inside 'the metaverse'

Oh, so the positive-VR posts don't ?

Eye strain and nausea

I already heard about that when Quake came out.

Doesn't happen to me, but that doesn't mean I'm a fan of VR. I'm not.

What bothers me with VR is having a headset when I have two gorgeous 26"+ screens sitting on my desktop.

What bothers me is that I am already perfectly immersed in today's games (7 Days to Die is unbelievable).

I don't need to shackle myself with a kilogram of poor performance to watch Nintendo-style graphics , thank you very much.

Microsoft pulls Windows 10/11 installation websites in Russia

Re: One More reason to duump Windows...

How's the weather in Moscow these days ?

Meta now involved in making metalevel standards for the metaverse

"seven-hour surgeries"

I would think that a surgury is a situation where you stay focused on a very limited amount of space. You're not driving a car, flying a plane or walking around town turning your head every which way.

So yeah, maybe for surguries this tech is good, and so much the better.

The funny thing is, humans tend to not like to have stuff stuck on their faces in order to just move around.

Graphical desktop system X Window just turned 38

"Wayland's privacy controls mean that recording a video of what's happening onscreen is difficult."

Does that mean that tools like Teamviewer couldn't work ?

That's a death sentence in the business arena (not that that should be a problem for a Linux distro).

This startup says it can glue all your networks together in the cloud

"Cloud was supposed to make life easier"

Yes. Supposed to. That's certainly how it has been sold (and is still being sold).

Unfortunately, the reality of the fact that you're depending on someone else's server tends to get in the way.

Spain, Austria not convinced location data is personal information

Re: Hm, I'd say..

Agreed, but if you want your mobile phone to be useful, the telco has to know which tower can contact you.

This is going to be a thorny problem.

Liftoff at last for South Korean space program

So, South Korea can launch satellites now

Good for them.

More surveillance satellites are on the way, undoubtedly.

Mars Express orbiter to get code update after 19 years

Astounding

20 years after launch and they're updating the software with a better version from hundreds of thousands of kilometers away.

Space engineers are the coolest.

Okta says Lapsus$ incident was actually a brilliant zero trust demonstration

"Okta was not satisfied with Sitel's actions and has parted ways with the company"

Well if you've got something that works and you get screwed by some 3rd-party, it obviously isn't pleasant and this outcome is hardly surprising.

Funny how the same thing never happens to Microsoft . . .

Toyota wants 'closed loop' EV batteries in its future cars

"a closed loop battery manufacturing process"

I like the idea.

Electric/hybrid vehicles are certainly nice, and it'll be a great thing for city dwellers when the noise of traffic is lowered to just the sound of tires on the road, but I've always been sceptical about the battery issue.

Not to mention that, if this is truly supposed to be a "green" solution, then we'll need to get rid of coal power plants - but okay, baby steps.

It will however be quite reassuring to know that batteries have become like aluminium cans - endlessly recyclable.

If we ever get there.

GitHub's AI code assistant Copilot takes flight. And that'll be $10 a month, please

Agreed.

If you're a "savvy developer", you know what you're doing and how to do it and you don't want any auto-complete to write your code.

Plus, it'll be your name on its bugs.

No thank you.

Info on 1.5m people stolen from US bank in cyberattack

"it was compromised between December and April 2021"

Confusing.

April comes after December, and typically in the year that follows.

So it was December 2020 and April 2021.

Just to be clear.

We are of the same mind.

For a few days earlier this year, rogue GitHub apps could have hijacked countless repos

Am I glad that I'm not in this circus

"If a software vendor's private repository that contains their source code and intellectual property was leaked or deleted, this could literally mean the end of that company"

The code I write goes on a company server and stays there. The code itself can only be modified by very few people, and they have specific IDs. There is zero risk of some random nobody reaching the server, much less accessing the database and even less deleting it.

The Notes/Domino world has a lot of advantages.

Microsoft promises to tighten access to AI it now deems too risky for some devs

"our laws are lagging behind"

I'm pretty sure that, as soon as some senator finds himself in a porno video that he never participated in, the laws will catch up pretty quick.