Posts by Pascal Monett

Feds take down Kremlin-backed Cyclops Blink botnet

Re: What happened to Gorgon Stare?

Well, in all honesty, a drone is going to have a spot of trouble finding (let alone taking down) a botnet with only its cameras.

China, India face tech brain drain through US universities

"Recent research by a Chinese university that reached similar conclusions was quietly taken down"

That is a mistake. It's not because you are a dictorship that you can afford the luxury of blinding yourself to reality.

That's how revolutions happen.

Canada wants Big Tech to share its riches with news publishers

"Reactions to the bill from the tech companies concerned"

. . have been carefully tailored to make sure the company looks good to the public while planning on pulling the teeth out of this bill right down to the bone.

But surreptiously.

First Light says it's hit nuclear fusion breakthrough with no fancy lasers, magnets

"the gun would shoot a projectile every 30 seconds"

They're going to need one hell of a Gatling gun to reliably shoot a projectile every 30 seconds on a 24/7 schedule.

IBM deliberately misclassified mainframe sales to enrich execs, lawsuit claims

What ? Little Ginny cooked the books ? Say it ain't so !

Ginni "I fly about in a helicopter while you worry about getting laid off" Rometty made some "strategic financial decisions" that investors didn't like ?

I'm shocked. Shocked, I say.

Re: that will change after these people are dished out justice

Oh, right. So right after we get fusion energy and room-temperature superconductors then ?

Google talks up its 540-billion-parameter text-generating AI system

So the number of billions of parameters is the new megapixel count for AI ?

We recently read about a 176-billion-parameter pseudo-AI, now we have a 540-billion-parameter pseudo-AI. I'm guessing it's supposed to be better. It's also likely to need all of SAP's engineers to set those parameters.

So, who's going to invent the trillion-parameter AI ? And which country is going to devote all of its population to configuring it ?

Shouldn't be long now . . .

IBM highlights real-time fraud detection in z16 mainframe

Re: Fraud Detection

I once had a very good surprise from my bank. Having ordered some work in my bathroom, when it came time to pay the bill I made a bank transfer of a few thousand euros. It was on a Saturday.

Not really a habit.

The following Monday, I got a call from my bank. The person confirmed my identity, then asked me about the transfer. I explained the situation and, at the question "so you do authorize the transfer ?" I answered yes, I very much did because the artisan deserved being paid for his work.

THAT is fraud prevention.

I like my bank.

The metaverse of fantasy worlds is itself still a fantasy

Not to mention ten times the bandwidth.

We're still in a world where fiber and GB/s connections are not universal.

Re: Who Me?

Well, let's make one thing clear : if the porn industry does not adopt the concept, it is dead in the water.

Porn is what has made the Internet as useful as it is.

Porn is the reason why you can purchase stuff on web sites.

Porn pushed all it could to get that to happen because it was in its interest to have people buying anonymously.

So, if porn finds this metaverse thing interesting, it will happen, otherwise, it won't because nobody else has the incentive to make it work.

Epic Games' court dates with Apple and Google pushed into 2024

"they would not be ready by November"

I'm sorry, we're in April now. How is it that a bunch of scribblers won't be able to present anything in the next 7 months ?

Is it impacting their golf schedule ?

Bank had no firewall license, intrusion or phishing protection – guess the rest

the Andra Pradesh Mahesh Co-Operative Urban Bank

Is going to quickly learn about networks, intrusion detection systems and that the cost of a proper firewall license means it can continue doing business.

Some people have to learn the hard way.

Remember when Huawei's CFO was detained in Canada? She's been promoted to chair the board

"While critics of the system may question the resulting continuity and accountability"

Accountability ?

For the CEO of a multinational multi-billion dollar behemoth ?

Has Apotheker been sanctioned for his shameful dealings in acquiring Autonomy ?

Do these "critics" understand how the world works these days ?

Any fool can write a language: It takes compilers to save the world

"Any fool can write a language"

Many have.

If you fire someone, don't let them hang around a month to finish code

A well-deserved failure.

Re: a massive 456MB of RAM

The cost of that alone must have brought the beancounters to a coma.

In 1992 I bought 1MB of EDO 70ns RAM for a thousand francs (apparently around €150 today), for my 386. Back then, a thousand francs was no laughing matter.

And that was ten years later.

As opposed to me, a Frenchman who writes code in English.

My comments are also in English though, I'm not going to toy around writing them in German (not that I could, my German is really bad).

I have created many in-house tools.

Just made another one this morning, in fact.

This kind of thing can still be necessary.

I like using recursive functions, whenever possible. It seems quite elegant to me, but I have learned that said elegance comes at a price.

For example, if you need to search and replace a given character in a string of characters (for export to csv reasons, for example), if you have to write your own s&r function for whatever reason, you'd better be sure that the original string isn't too long and that there aren't too many occurences.

Otherwise, your code will crash with a memory overflow error due to the amount of instances of the recursive function.

In that case, there's no choice but to deal with a loop function and handle everything in one instance.

It's a bummer, but it works.

Re: Unhelpful comments

Every time I gave a training course in LotusScript or VBA, the last day I had a session on commenting your code.

I tried to drill in my students' head the fact that you do not write a comment that repeats what the code is saying. Anyone who can read code does not need a comment like "Test for zero".

I tried to show them that code commenting is "If there is no label, then <something> ".

Of course, I have no idea how successful I've been, but I've tried.

Tomorrow Water thinks we should colocate datacenters and sewage plants

I would say it's still a good choice in the long run.

UK suit over reselling surplus Microsoft licenses rolls on

Re: Well....

There you go using logic again. There is no logic in law.

Now go to the blackboard and write that down 20 times during recess.

Scientists repurpose hoverfly vision to detect drones by sound

Re: Use Cases

Given that there is always a government somewhere that is funding the terrorists, in the broad view you are right.

However, there's a fair chance that it is not your govenment that is funding terrorists, so you are also wrong.

Unless you're in Russia, in which case you do not say such things because, if you do, you're the terrorist.

Amazon warehouse workers in New York unionize in historic win against web giant

"objections based on the inappropriate and undue influence"

Which, of course, have nothing to do with the innapropriate and undue influence of Amazon managers going around and hinting forcefully that unionising would entail a pink slip.

It's about time that Ronald Reagan's legacy on this point dies a final death. A direct relationship ? There is no such thing. On the one hand, there is the company, with its HR department and protocols and procedures. On the other hand, there is one employee. There is no such thing as equality in this scenario.

A union is required to ensure that HR cannot unduly impress the employee with falsehoods to keep said employee quiet and obedient. But of course, that means the employee will have support to have his rights enforced, and that means money.

So, obviously, Bezos does not agree even though he has enough money to double the salary of all his employees and he wouldn't even notice.

Google: Russian credential thieves target NATO, Eastern European military

So, we know who they are

We have their IPs.

And we still can't do anything about it ?

Modem-wiping malware caused Viasat satellite broadband outage in Europe

Re: Data backhaul Redundancy?

First of all, wind turbines are not critical energy generation thingies - they're a welcome accessory, when they work, that is. Second, wind turbines have trouble spontaneously blowing up, and even more trouble irradiating the countryside.

The worst that can happen is that they lose their blades, and that would still be a local incident with a drop in production. Maybe the support could be damaged as well, but replacing a wind turbine is a sight easier than replacing a gas generator (let's not even think about replacing a nuclear power plant).

So, all in all, a single data line just might be an acceptable choice.

Besides, your dual backhaul would have been just as screwed if they had the same routers on both lines. And don't tell me that they wouldn't. The beancounters would not allow a more costly solution.

Web3 'contains the seeds of a dystopian nightmare' says analyst firm

Wow, what a slapdown

This may be an April Fool's, but it was a pleasure to read anyway.

I'll wait for the confirmation that is was, but until then, I will treat anything Web 3 as plague-ridden.

Bain Capital plots to buy Toshiba with help from largest shareholder

Hold on a minute

So, investors were dead against a split last week when it was the Board that proposed it, but this week a major investor is all for it ?

And is brokering his own deal ?

Smells like financial shenanigans are afoot.

Docker goes double unicorn with $105m Series C funding and $2.1b valuation

Re: TLDR

Maybe, but they still got $100 million with that pitch.

DeepMind 'grossly inadequate' at tackling sexual harassment, says former staffer

"DeepMind takes all allegations of workplace misconduct extremely seriously"

Okay, that right there automatically makes my BS-ometer tingle in the red.

You take it very seriously and spent more than a year in investigation when your own internal manual says two weeks is the allotted time ?

That's really taking things seriously for sure.

I thank God I don't work in such crappy companies.

Re: NDAs

Should be simple enough to fix : just write a law that makes it illegal to suppress claims of harrassment or sexual abuse, and enact it.

Ethereum transaction shuffling for profit ... and not much fun for everyone else

"regulation is necessary to make Ethereum compatible with traditional finance"

No. The regulation that is necessary is banning it.

Stop funny money burning the world.

Russia bans foreign software purchases for critical infrastructure

"Russia bans foreign software purchases for critical infrastructure"

Well ain't that perfect timing ?

Most foreign software houses have banned dealing with Russia.

Everyone's happy then ?

National Security Agency employee indicted for 'leaking top secret info'

"The NSA is [..] supposed to be very good at securing data"

Yeah, except when it isn't.

Having your crown jewels hacked and stolen makes for some very sloppy internal procedures when you are indeed "supposed" to be secure at all levels.

With 90% COVID-19 vax rate, Intel to step up return-to-office

Blame China ?

That's easy.

How about blaming supply line management and the (entirely home-grown) drive for the past two decades to not have any storage ?

Storage costs money, eh ? Well no storage has cost even more this time around.

I think we're going to go back to a time where storage was of more importance, and the supply chain will sort itself out.

One man band

Yep. I'm a freelance.

But no, I'm not being treated differently from the regular employees. They've all been corralled back in as well.

I'm waiting to see how this is going to play out in the long run. I've asked some pointed questions to the Helpdesk guys in every company I work in, and they've all answered pretty much the same thing : the technical side is ready to rock if remote work is once again required (which is, in retrospect, pretty obvious - they're not going to undo all that they have achieved only to have to do it all over again, duh).

So I'm just wondering if there is going to be some movement on the employee side. That said, even if there is some sort of protest from the employees, there's a good chance I won't benefit from it anyway. I'm just a consultant. My contract is that I'm there to do a job.

Re: WFH is here to stay

I wish.

With the removal of all COVID restrictions, I now have to be on-site for most of my customers. There is nothing more I can do on-site than at home, but the order has been given.

I only have one customer now that still appreciates the fact that I can help without occupying a desk, or wasting an hour getting there. With one of my other customers, I am planning to have them accept that, from time to time, I can give a second days' work in the week, but I will mandate that it be from my home office. Still, there's only so many days in the week.

WFH was great for me, but it's fast looking to become a beautiful souvenir.

Japanese startup makes baby carrier-style sling for 'Love Robots'

"cuddling up to a furry machine"

Okay, I think the question of the sanity of the People Of The Rising Sun has been settled.

They're bonkers.

China tells big tech to reveal some customers' income

The one and only benefit of a totalitarian government

You WILL pay your taxes.

UK spy boss warns China hopes Russia will help it take over tech standards

I'm not defending the invasion, far from it.

But Putin went in, that's a fact, and there is 70 years of NATO paranoia that says that Putin's army should have steamrolled the place.

That didn't happen. Not by any measure.

The war in Ukraine is a devastating blow to the image of a mighty Russia

Russia's failure in Afghanistan was understandable. It was a mistake for everyone who ever set foot there.

Russia's failure in Ukraine is not understandable. It should have been a win. Maybe not an easy one, but a win, nonetheless.

To have the Russian army bogged down, or even retreating, is a damning indictment of a serious lack of preparation and foresight.

The bear has lost its claws. Russia's credibility as a military threat is in the toilet, and Putin's reputation has been hit for six.

I wonder what mayhem will come from that.

How Google hopes to build more efficient, multi-capability AI systems

"train separate models for each type of task"

Yes. Because whatever marketing says, it is not AI.

Cryptomining groups fight fiercely for cloud resources

Thieves knifing thieves

Obviously there will be consequences when an army of miscreants have refined their techniques and turn back to attack on-prem servers, but I'm always happy when criminals take out each other.

It saves work for the police.

Intel debuts Arc discrete GPUs for laptops

"This is sort of the future of rendering as you know"

Of course, Intel.

Nvidia and AMD have been slugging it out over video performance for 3 decades, but you are the future.

Yeah, sure.

Meanwhile, Nvidia's RTX 3080 draws 320 W of power, has 8704 "stream processors" (damned if I know what that is), and can display any game on a 3840 x 2160 screen without trouble.

I'm left wondering if your piddly little 150W part is good enough to play Minecraft on.

But hey, competition is a Good Thing^TM, so you go for it. Who knows, maybe 32 ray-tracing units is the future ?

Senate edges US chip world closer to $50b subsidies

Hang on a minute

There are elements that are favorable to China ?

How does that compute ?

Meta accused of hiring Republican consultancy to seed anti-TikTok rumors

"We’re proud of the work we’ve done"

You're proud to have encouraged young people to slap their teachers ?

You utter asshole.

Yale finance director stole $40m in computers to resell on the sly

"She faces up to 20 years behind bars"

And well she should. All that money and no taste, tsk tsk. A G550 and a Range Rover ? Did you even drive into the woods one day ?

The E450A is very much more in your comfort zone, I'll give you that, but buying two Cadillac Escalade ? What en Earth were you thinking lady ? Did you at least give one to someone ? You already had a shoebox, you didn't need to buy two more.

No, all that money and she buys practically nothing but shitty SUVs.

She definitely deserves 20 years.

DoJ to Congress: Thumbs up for big tech antitrust bill

"Amazon, Apple, Google [..] have expressed their dissatisfaction"

Good.

That means that the bill has some teeth, so it's a Good Thing^TM.

Avast, me hearties ! We'll bring those scurvy dogs in line yet !

Arrr !

Nvidia releases $1,999, 8K-capable GeForce RTX 3090 Ti GPU

I guess it's no use

to ask if it can run Crysis ?

Okay, okay, stop pushing . . .

The first step to data privacy is admitting you have a problem, Google

"You have no privacy, get over it"

Sorry, we're not getting over it.

It's not because you have the means, that you have the right.

And if you can't understand that, let me come over with a cluebat and I will make you understand.