Posts by Pascal Monett

Magna Carta mayhem: Protesters lay siege to Edinburgh Castle, citing obscure Latin text that has never applied in Scotland

Oh I think they went above and beyond just "look like".

China orders annual security reviews for all critical information infrastructure operators

Re: Mandatory Security Teams

And that is why unregulated capitalism cannot be accepted at a governmental level.

Without governmental meddling, there is no industry that would, on its own, decide to implement filters to reduce the pollutants being spewed in the air.

Without laws, no company would say "let's not dump these toxic chemicals into the river and, instead, spend millions every year on water treatment".

None of that would happen because capitalism is "shareholder interest" and that interest is money, not the environment.

The Internet has taken up such a space in our lives that it has reached the level of a public utility. Companies, however, are still doing whatever they want, deciding on what level of IT they are willing to pay for to make things work. The only reason there are any security protocols in place is not for the safety of customer data, it's for the safety of the company - because down time costs money and makes for lost sales.

We do need laws to bring home to the Board that their customer data is a treasure that needs proper protection, not just good-enough-protection.

We're getting there, but China is clearly leading the way.

Apple's iPhone computer vision has the potential to preserve privacy but also break it completely

Re: Android != Linux

From the Wiki article I linked to :

"Android is a mobile operating system based on a modified version of the Linux kernel and other open source software "

I didn't say it was Linux, I said it is based on Linux.

Come again ?

"Linux on mobile is not a viable consumer product "

What is Android based on again ?

Oh right : Linux.

It's simpler than that

Apple is not the Police.

It has no right, no mandate and no authority to touch my pics - even if I decide to upload them to a cloud service.

That Apple is giving itself the right to do so should actually be illegal. If Microsoft declared that it had decided that Windows 1 0 would have a service that analyzes all pics on the local computer there would be outrage and an enormous backlash.

Apple has done just that and all I hear are crickets.

Something is very wrong here.

Blackbaud – firm that paid off crooks after 2020 ransomware attack – fails to get California privacy law claim dropped

"Social Good Entities"

What the heck are those ? Twitter ? Facebook ?

Good entities ?

British defence supplier Ultra Electronics to be sold for £2.6bn to US-controlled firm

"a Labour Party shadow minister questioned

Well, now you know the business model, the future governance and operational freedoms. They will be dictated by the USA.

Methinks you should have worried about that before the sale took place.

Zoom incompatible with GDPR, claims data protection watchdog for the German city of Hamburg

Very slowly.

Equivalent protection ?

From the NSA ?

Bollocks.

If you haven't updated your ThroughTek DVR since 2018 do so now, warns Mandiant as critical vuln surfaces

If you really want security, you have a proper system installed that has video capability managed by a company that has clearance to call the cops themselves.

It saves on time and peace of mind, and it's not that expensive.

Green hydrogen 'transitioning from a shed-based industry' says researcher as the UK hedges its H₂ strategy

Re: has something changed since O Level Chemistry days?

Well yeah : there are a lot less people who have their O-level in Chemistry.

A new island has popped up off the coast of Japan thanks to an underwater volcano

It's too far from China and way too close to a permanent Japanese military base.

China starts testing tech to harvest solar energy from orbiting panels

By definition that is not the case. The solar satellite will be hundreds of miles above the planet, so it is soaking up energy that has missed us completely.

However, I do believe that it is better to have a solar satellite than a raft of coal-based power stations that spew continuously into the atmosphere.

What I am curious about is how well they are going to control the retransmission of power. I really would like this tech to work, but I'd also rather not be fried walking the dog.

Pi calculated to '62.8 trillion digits' with a pair of 32-core AMD Epyc chips, 1TB RAM, 510TB disk space

7817924264

Damnit, that was my phone number !

Internet Explorer 3.0 turns 25. One of its devs recalls how it ended marriages – and launched amazing careers

Re: Point of Order.

And it hasn't gotten better since.

I remember Netscape. I liked it at the time.

Then it went from okay, to bad, to worse.

The day I had to use IE to open my Netscape mail, I uninstalled Netscape.

I think that's when I switched to Firefox. Don't remember.

But I do remember having avoided using IE as much as humanly possible.

India makes a play to source rare earths – systematic scrapping of its old cars

I did a double-take on that as well. I would like to know just how much rare earths enter in the composition of over-10-year-old cars.

Heck, I'd like to know how much enter into today's new cars, electric and not.

I know we need them for something . . .

Wikipedia says they are used for magnets and electronics, ceramics and catalysts.

Ok, fine. Ceramics are not much present in cars, I think, and I doubt high-efficiency magnets are present in car speakers either. Electronics in clunkers ? Not much of that either I would guess. It's today's cars that are full of that.

So, not much rare earths to recycle, I'd wager. This is a non-announcement.

Scalpel! Superglue! This mouse won't fix its own ball

Ball crud

I do remember quite clearly the ball-cleaning sessions I used to have with my Microsoft Mouse. It was quite easy to tell when it needed cleaning too : the movement started getting bumpy because something was sticking to the ball.

It was the heyday of mouse mats as well - they improved ball movement.

Thank $deity for wireless laser mice. Just have to blow on it every now and then to dislodge some minuscule piece of dust that makes the pointer not work properly.

China warns game devs not to mess with history

"eventually misinterpreting the game's historical fiction as true"

It's a game, not a history lesson.

That is a stupid decision. It is also a demonstration that the Chinese governments wants its citizens to only think in the approved way. No leeway for intelligence, your brain will be stamped with the Proper Thinking Protocol.

Human beings do not function like that. We need evasion, fantasy, and alternate realities - especially when our lives are dull and dreary.

Putting the squeeze on gaming is just to give you a generation of alcoholics and drug users.

It's a bonkers decision, and the consequences will not be what you think, Xi.

Facebook and Amazon take over Philippines-to-USA sub cable after China Mobile quits

So China might get the data

If Facebook is managing that data, I really don't see how China having it would be any worse.

Branson sews cash parachute for Virgin Atlantic with $300m Virgin Galactic share sale

a private-equity firm

That a private-equity firm has $1.6 billion to loan is understandable.

That it decides to give that money to an airline in these times is much less.

Airlines have taken a major battering and, although air travel is on the upswing, it is not back to pre-COVID levels.

I think that is a major risk. The interest on that loan must be very high.

Amazon Game Studios to its own devs: All your codebase doesn't belong to us

What I create on my own time is mine

And you can pry it from my cold, dead hands, but not before.

Russia: Forget about the Nauka incident. Who punched the hole in the Soyuz, hmm?

Not to contradict you, but one has to admit that our financial situation isn't all that great either.

Since 2020 the central banks in practically all "Western" countries have been printing so much money we're slated to not reabsorb the excess before 2080.

Or so I've heard.

Once again, Facebook champions privacy ... of its algorithms: Independent probe into Instagram shut down

"The signatories of this letter believe in transparency – and so do we"

Fine. Show us the letter you sent then and we'll be the judge.

If you have nothing to hide . . .

Tired: What3Words. Wired: A clone location-tracking service based on FOUR words – and they are all extremely rude

Not my kind of humor, but

I salute the technical realization of it.

As for What3Words, given that we have access to GPS these days, I really don't see the point.

Then again, it's the Internet. There doesn't have to be a point.

Jury tells Apple to cough up two days of annual profit in 4G/LTE patent damages retrial

Re: Apple's threats

It does however demonstrate the toys-out-of-the-pram mentality of the Board.

Such a childish attitude from one of the richest companies in the world is pathetic.

Palantir abandons any attempt at curating nice-guy image with 'Global Information Dominance Experiments'

"China has an underground port for submarines on Hainan island"

Well if you know that I'm pretty sure the US Navy knows that as well and has a sub on station tasked with counting all sub activity.

Brilliant !

I see we have a Yes Minister historian at doctorate level here.

Well done !

Starliner takes off ... back to the factory and not space

Poor Starliner

On the other hand, it's not very surprising that a company that has forgotten how to make a plane properly has trouble making a rocket.

Just sayin'

See that last line in the access list? Yeah, that means you don't have an access list

"The contractors were fired."

And I hope they weren't paid.

Elevating bork to a new level (if the touchscreen worked)

Re: if someone adds another floor

Oh, right. Happens every day, that, doesn't it ?

I'm sure all buildings are built to ensure that any number of floors can be added on a whim. It's not like there are any structural issues, right ?

I'm pretty sure that I've already seen button-operated elevators that are quite efficient in managing the wait time before the user gets to go in.

A touchscreen, by itself, is not going to enhance anything. It's the software behind that does all the work, and the software doesn't care if the button is physical or not.

Perhaps regretting those Instagram, WhatsApp acquisitions, UK watchdog suggests Facebook offloads GIF haven Giphy

It's interesting to discover the consequences, sometimes

Who would've thought a GIF company could stir so much controversy.

And really, Zuck, denying Pepsi its GIF ? Are you so insecure that you can't graciously let a real-world company have a GIF ? Pathetic.

But we knew that.

Re: No it frikkin isn't.

Damn right.

United Nations calls for moratorium on sale of surveillance tech like NSO Group's Pegasus

"has little chance"

More like zero chance.

The UN is all nice and cuddly, but it has no teeth.

Every government is sovereign, and if that government wants to use surveillance tools on its own population, then By God it will, moratorium be damned.

The real issue is that, if there is a country somewhere that refuses to use said tools, it might become a haven for hardened criminals and, <gasp>, actual terrorists.

What then ?

China stops networked vehicle data going offshore under new infosec rules

Chief of network security

That is one job I would be very wary of taking in China. Over here, if a car gets hacked, it's "Oh well, we'll try better next time".

Over there, it's "Here's the invoice for the bullet".

Aside from that, and aside from sending data back to China, I rather like those rules. Ensuring vehicle data security is something I've been waiting for my European car makers to declare themselves on, but all they seem to want to do is ensure that every car's entertainment system is firmly embedded in the CAN bus.

Booo.

Thief hands back at least a third of $600m in crypto-coins stolen from Poly Network

If only it were that simple.

You need to factor in international borders, the limits of police authority, the lack of diplomatic agreements on the subject, and the fact that criminals have a tendency to target people in countries where they do not live.

The use case is valid. Unfortunately.

Singaporean telco leaked personal data of over 57,000 customers

"the company suspects the stolen data file was found within a day"

No. The company feverishly hopes that the stolen data file was found within a day.

Sounds more like it. Besides, there is absolutely no way to prove that declaration anyway. File creation dates can be fiddled with.

Good news: There's a slightly increased chance of asteroid Bennu hitting Earth. Bad news: It's still really slight

“We’ve never modeled an asteroid’s trajectory to this precision before”

I'm not entirely sure that that is actually reassuring . . .

Microsoft emits last preview of .NET 6 and C# 10, but is C# becoming as complex as C++?

"the ability to use operators on generic types."

Generic types.

I will likely be downvoted to hell on this, but IMO generic types are the bane of proper programming.

If you don't know what you're working with, how can you possibly write the proper code to deal with it ?

Obviously, I am for strong variable typing (in case you didn't guess). I like to know that I'm dealing with a String, or an Integer, or a Long. Variant makes my skin crawl, although there are some cases where I know I won't be able to avoid it.

Generic types is just handing over all the issues to the compiler and hoping for the best. That is not good when you're responsible for your code.

There, that was my 2 cents. Blast away.

India's return to space fails after first locally built cryogenic engine experiences 'anomaly'

Re: apparently needed more on the ground testing

It does indeed seem that the CE-7.5 needs a bit more "development".

It's the risk in everything related to rockets.

I wish them better luck next time.

It ain't called rocket science for nothing.

China plans laws for 'healthy' development of tech companies

China needs better "public opinion propaganda"

The word "propaganda" is unfortunate.

Propaganda means fake news, falsehoods erected into fact, and brainwashing of the public so everyone believes it.

China does not need better propaganda, no one does.

China, and every other country, needs journalists that can tell the actual truth without fear of reprisal.

If your news is filled with truth, you don't need propaganda.

Naughty karaoke is China's next tech crackdown target

"China is officially not very keen on that sort of thing"

Officially, of course.

In practice, Comrade Xi has his special waterhole and mistress waiting for him.

Salesforce gets into the vid-streaming with original content caper, promises digital inspriation

"four channels of virtual conference fun"

It will be interesting to see how well they perform.

Personally, I think we're all getting Zoom fatigue, but then there's a lot of people who would probably like to and can't, for whatever reason, so they'll likely jump at the chance to still attend virtually.

Hopefully it won't be just PR and marketing guff.

Google staff who work from home might see pay cut under corporate policy – reports

"reductions in pay for employees that [..] choose to work from home permanently"

No problem - they'll just work less hours to compensate.

GOP lawmakers ask for former Huawei handset biz Honor to be placed the Entity List

And all companies in the USA are not subject to National Security letters which they can tell no one about ?

Perfect example. The company that checks your phone for what it thinks are iffy pics and reports them to the police.

Just what we need.

Re: Biden is just Trump with a different hat

I don't think so, at least, not entirely.

He does not appear to be a neo-Nazi sympathizer, not does he appear to be a despicable idiot rambling incoherently when asked a question.

He answers questions, sometimes directly, but generally without hesitation.

He also knows how to stand up properly.

Oh and, incidentally, he takes decisions that actually benefit the US citizens that don't have a billion in their bank account.

Come fly with me. But first we need to find a boot device

Administrative definitions have nothing to do with distance.