Posts by Pascal Monett

The UK is running on empty when it comes to electric vehicle charging points

It seems obvious that, if you have an EV and you park in a space with a charger, you'll get into the habit of plugging the car in, just to be sure.

And then there's the question of do you have enough power generation to supply all those chargers without shutting down power to households ?

I'm all for EVs, but I am still waiting for the proof that batteries are 100% recyclable and not a gigantic pile of noxious chemicals waiting for the landfill.

Biden warns 'real shooting war' will be sparked by severe cyber attack

And they don't need hackers to cause accidents, they do that quite well on their own.

Politicians have nothing to do with engineers.

Actual engineers will answer your questions truthfully.

Slacking off? It used to be there was pretty much one place to chat with your fellow developers: IRC

"Zulip is doing it right"

Thank you, El Reg, for regularly bringing me nuggets of useful information like this.

I'm going to keep a link on this article and I'll check Zulip out as far as I can. I'm sure I'll be referring Zulip to my contacts in a short time.

Look at the bright side : at least they're enquiring about it.

Ecuador shreds Julian Assange's citizenship

You mean resist punching him in the face ?

Most probably.

Great reset? More like Fake Reset: Leaders need a reality check if they think their best staff will give up hybrid work

Going on-site has certainly been made redundant in IT

The last 18 months have not only demonstrated that IT workers can do their jobs perfectly well from any Internet connection, it has also demonstrated that they're doing their jobs just as well - if not better - than before.

I do hear regrets about not having water-cooler conversations any more, and there is a wee bit of pining to see other human beings again, but I'm convinced that most IT workers will stand by a sizeable portion of working from home time during the week.

And I'm not talking about two days per month.

A large consulting company I work with has mandated one day per week at HQ - rotated by teams. Of course, it's a consulting company, so it figures that there are coordination meetings and such that justify bringing in a group of people so that they can exchange usefully, as humans beings do. Also of course, it's a consulting company, so it figures that, the rest of the week, the company wants it consultants working for their clients - remotely.

Compsci student walks off with $50,000 after bug bounty report blows gaping hole in Shopify software repos

"he had push and pull access to all the private Shopify repositories"

And he inculded that access in the code he made publicly available.

He should be banned from posting to GitHub permanently.

SK Hynix hits 3-year revenue high as extreme ultraviolet production kicks off in earnest

"There could be some unexpected technical difficulties"

I'm sure Intel would agree.

'Login infrastructure issue' blamed as sustained Xero outage threatens payrolls

Xero - aptly named, methinks

"The cloud-based single point of failure software slinger"

TFTFY

What happened, are Excel spreadsheets not good enough any more ?

You're a small business, do you really have that many invoices to file at the end of the month ?

Intel announces AWS has become a client, Qualcomm likes its future tech, advances that as proof it's back in business

"Gelsinger argued"

Of course he's going to argue, Intel failed it's 10nm proces for long enough to give AMD time to swamp the market.

With all due respect, Mr Gelsinger, nitpicking about how nanometers don't represent atoms is not going to change the fact that, for the second time in Intel's history, you are playing catch-up to your main competitor.

Steam-powered computers: Retro cool or old and busted?

"who wouldn't enjoy a go on a steam train simulator?"

Indeed.

In the age now past of public gatherings, I used to participate in certain Steampunk events at a particular place in Luxembourg called Fond-de-Gras. They have 2 working steam-powered locomotives and you can basically park and take a train ride to an imaginary past.

I personally think it is the absolute best place for a Steampunk convention or gathering, and that train ride is the perfect setting to take you from the modern world to an entirely different world in 20 minutes of coal-huffing rail.

I really would like to be the driver of that train, so yeah, a steam train simulator ? Sign me up.

I've got a broken combine harvester – but the manufacturer won't give me the software key

Re: Americans throw away 416,000 cell phone

The amount of waste that our "modern" society produces beggars the mind. I buy a deep-frozen pack of fish. When I open the cardboard box, each piece is individually wrapped in plastic. What for ? The fish is already frozen when they put it in the box, no ?

And don't tell me that it's a hygiene problem. We all know that when we buy frozen products we need to get them to the freezer post-haste.

We are going to end up drowning in our own filth.

Early Skype developer Jaan Tallinn splashes cash in latest funding for Matrix-based instant messenger Element

"sticking a knife into email"

Is that a joke ?

Do you have any idea how important email is in the business arena today ?

Instant Messaging is nice, but it is not something you can present in court. An email is a legal trace of information and, beyond that, it is a certified justification of what happened and when.

If you really want to kill email, please wait until I've retired. Thank you.

Google promises its days as a cold-eyed API-killer are behind it

"organizations need those APIs to be stable"

It's 2021 and Google is finally mouthing words about code stability.

Whaddya know ? Maybe I'll finally be able to see a pig fly . . .

Private cryptocurrencies make lousy national currencies: International Monetary Fund

"New digital forms of money have the potential to provide cheaper and faster payments, enhance financial inclusion, improve resilience and competition among payment providers, and facilitate cross-border transfers. "

I think I have a better idea than creating an ideal environment for criminals : change the banking environment so the public doesn't need such funny money schemes in order to easily transfer money from one person to another, or from one country to another.

We've done it Europe, you can do it too.

Japan plans remote-controlled robotic space tourism to the ISS and beyond

"controllable by the public from Earth"

I sincerely hope that whoever is controlling a remotely-operated sabotage weapon will be under supervision at all times.

Hubble in another first: Water vapor spotted in atmosphere of Jupiter’s Ganymede

"Hubble in another first"

Given that the paper has already been published, I'm guessing that this discovery is pre-borking.

I wonder what new marvels Hubble will discover now ?

What is your greatest weakness? The definitive list of the many kinds of interviewer you will meet in Hell

Re: wait for another contract instead

Sure ! How much will you pay me to wait ?

Re: Reverse

Now that's an interesting way of conducting a job interview.

Obviously, those with not enough experience will automatically weed themselves out, those with experience will be able to ask some pointed questions.

I like that approach !

And the point was ?

Was the job supposed to be repeating the acronyms all day long ?

Heh, heh. Yeah, that was something she probably learned to keep to herself.

Windows 11 comes bearing THAAS, Trojan Horse as a service

"If [Google] showed any sign of understanding conferencing, that'd be nice"

Google certainly has the means to make things work. If Borkzilla does gain widespread market acceptance with Teams, the incentive for Google to undercut it by removing all the Teams angst and making something that is actually user-friendly as well as efficient will be enormous.

Plus there's all that additional slurp to be had, which Google is very, very good at obtaining.

No, I don't think the conference wars are over yet. Not by a long shot.

And yet, we have to wait.

You're repeating yourself, grandpa.

After staring over the precipice once before, Kent County Council considers £500m in outsourcing again

Re: KCC have a track record of wasting money

Well in that case they're following the UK Government's lead to the letter.

For a true display of wealth, dab printer ink behind your ears instead of Chanel No. 5

The problem is that not enough people react on this. They just accept the cost, shrug and get on with their lives.

Look how long it's taken to start hearing about the Right to Repair (and people were getting riled up about that).

This kind of news needs to repeated every day, every where, until people wake up and realize that ink is the new mafia domain, and we're all being held at gunpoint until we hand over the dosh.

Absolutely.

If you use your inkjet once a week, it's pretty much guaranteed in my experience that your print heads will dry up before the cartridge empties out.

I put up with this nuisance for more than a decade until I got fed up with the endless head cycling and wasted ink and paper and just bought a laser printer instead.

One of the best purchases I have ever made. I bought it in September 2010 and it's still working fine.

Laser printers are really affordable now, and you don't to need to print in colour as much as you think you do. Buy one that does scanner at the same time and you'll be able to use it for a decade or more.

Exsparko-destructus! What happens when wand waving meets extremely poor wiring

Cue next week's On Call about a company whose terminals suddenly start randomly disconnecting . . .

Google fixes 'Chromebork' one-character code typo that prevented Chrome OS logins

"All three mitigations, however, clear local data on the device"

So Google screws up and you get to lose your data in order to keep using your device.

You might as well be using a Windows laptop.

Some people are going to learn the value of backups the hard way.

With Alphabet's legendary commitment to products, we can't wait to see what its robotics biz Intrinsic achieves

"the AI can work out the best way to achieve its goal"

No. The Statistical Analysis Machine is going to use and break a million industrial robots in order to find the best way to do one job without breaking either the machine or the piece it is supposed to work on.

IBM finally made a computer that could soundly beat a master chess player - but only because said computer played 60 million games against itself before being confronted to a human, which doesn't have a chance in hell of playing more than a few thousand in his lifetime.

Industrial robots are built for one task. A riveting robot is not going to paint, a painting robot is not going to cut metal.

Intrinsic might be an interesting experiment in applied computing science, but I doubt companies will want their expensive equipment "finding out" how to do the one thing they were bought for.

Apologetic Audacity rewrites privacy policy after 'significant lapse in communication'

Re: any new project forks?

I think that, with the amount of forks already in existence, Muse can continue doing whatever it wants, it no longer makes any difference.

Muse made the mistake of confusing Open Source with My Private Data-Gathering Platform.

Open Source is not going to forget.

Rackspace literally decimates workforce: One in ten staffers let go this week

So they are openly admitting to firing US workers and replace them with foreign ones

Shouldn't there be a law against that ?

They not firing the US guys (and gals) because they're no good. They're perfectly good at their job, they're just more expensive than foreign workers. Who just might be not so good at their job, but they're cheaper.

I'm looking forward to the reports on how Rackspace hosting is plagued with problems because their new workforce doesn't know their job or how to read the procedures.

Is it broken yet? Is it? Is it? Ooh that means I can buy a sparkly, new but otherwise hard-to-justify replacement!

Bliss !

You lucky dog you.

Make-me-admin holes found in Windows, Linux kernel

Re: Was there ever a time when it did make sense ?

Only to Microsoft, and only for DRM.

We've been saddled with it ever since.

I'm not surprised to learn that it can also be a security risk, it was a bad idea right from the start.

My oh my

I've never had to make so many side searches as I did to be able to understand this article.

Silver ticket ? Ok, now I know what that is.

VSS ? Should be called VSC. It's disabled on my machine.

Mimikatz ? Never heard of it. Thankfully, its home page is quite simple to understand.

I think I've already hit my quota of learning for the day, and it's not even beer o'clock.

Peers question experts over UK police use of AI, facial recognition tech

Stop calling it AI !

It is not Artificial Intelligence in any way, shape or form.

It is statistical analysis, that's all.

Call it what it is, that will do wonders to dehumanize it.

Of course, marketing won't like that.

Apple delays recalling staff to offices until October as Delta variant romps across US

I really would like some government somewhere to post an official notice on these things.

I'm tired of hearing "he said" stuff thirdhand.

Open-source dev and critic of Beijing claims Audacity owner Muse threatened him with deportation to China in row over copyright

Re: they're actually trying to be reasonable

Oh yes, putting a paywall on stuff they don't actually own is eminently reasonable, of course.

Did you actually read the article, or are you a manager at Muse ?

Journo who went to prison for 2 years for breaking US cyber-security law is jailed again

Some people never learn

How stupid do you have to be to be on probation and redo the same stupid stuff that landed you in jail the first time ?

Back to the clink with you, moron, and good luck on ever finding anyone that will once again trust you with a keyboard.

Mountains on neutron stars are not even a millimetre tall due to extreme gravity

"extreme gravitational fields"

IIRC, I once read that, if you could hold an object 1 meter above the surface of a neutron star, when you let it go it would impact said surface at a speed of 1000km/h.

So 0 to 1000 in one meter. Talk about acceleration !

South Korea tables law to remove app stores' in-app purchase monopolies

Five per cent

If Google and Apple had reigned in their lust for money and set the tax at 5%, we wouldn't be having any of these discussions.

But no, they had to go all rapacious and greedy and set their tax at 30%, which is 29.994% more than the cost of running their Store.

I'm not against making money, but there comes a point where you have to admit that the rate is largely exaggerated.

30% is definitely in the exaggerated category. Then there is the added insult of not allowing in-app purchases from outside the Store - but even that would be less of an issue if the tax was 5%.

Verified: UK.gov launching plans for yet another digital identity scheme

Re: Three of mine

Well that comes as news to me and I'm very sorry to hear that you've had such a string of bad luck.

I would like to think that my bank would be a bit more attentive. Once I set up a transfer of over €3000 to plumber for the work he did, and the next day I got a call from the bank inquiring if the transfer was legitimate. Of course, I told them that it was and they definitely needed to make the transfer because my plumber needed to get paid for his work.

But they called.

Re: bank security is handwavy nonsense

Oh really ?

Show me one bank account that has been hacked.

I'm not talking about credit cards, I'm talking about the account itself.

Go on, show me one case where a bank account was hacked and money transferred without the authorization of its actual owner.

AWS gave Parler a chance, won't say if it talked to NSO before axing spyware biz's backend systems

So they're all working with NSO

All cloud providers are working with them, knowing full well what NSO is up to and what it does.

That paints a rather bleak picture of the contrast between morals and money.

Not that that is surprising, or new.

UK.gov's Huawei watchdog says firm made 'no overall improvement' on firmware security but won't say why

Yes, Huawei is the big bad

Meanwhile, Microsoft and all other US-based tech firms are constantly bombarded with police information requests - which they have to answer.

But Huawei is the danger.

Of course.

England's controversial extraction of personal medical histories from GP systems is delayed for a second time

"they would not share data with the scheme"

Good on them.

All this data sharing shenanigans is just driving me nuts. Finally some people are taking a stand and thank God it's the doctors.

They took the Hippocratic Oath, not the Hypocratic Oath, and they're doing their job.

It may very well be that there can be a legitimate use and benefit from a centralized national health database, but the UK Government is not exactly in the best of positions when it comes to providing any sort of guarantee on how that data will be protected and managed.

Especially not if any US private company is involved.

India IT minister denies illegal use of NSO Pegasus spyware

"has denied the nation illegally used the NSO Group's Pegasus spyware"

The obligatory conclusion from that statement is that there has been "legal" use of the Pegasus spyware.

Logic is extremely simple. If India didn't use the software, the Minister would have been boasting about it.

He's not, so they're using it.

I think the Chinese like money just as much as anyone else.