Posts by Pascal Monett

Russia starts playing by the rules: FSB busts 14 REvil ransomware suspects

"few expected Russia to arrest ransomware gang members before today"

I don't think anybody was expecting that.

When I started reading this article, my eyes went wide open.

Now that I have finished reading it though, the fact that Russian FSB agents are operating in Ukraine, a nominally indepent country, is telling. I'm sure that, normally, Russia should have asked Ukraine to take care of the arrests. It doesn't sound like there was any such diplomatic niceities. Putin just sent in his jackboots and they did the job.

As if Ukraine was part of Russia.

I'm glad those bastards got their comeuppance, but I would have been happier if it had been in a proper, legal fashion.

Admins report Hyper-V and domain controller issues after first Patch Tuesday of 2022

"if it was aware of the problems"

Not until enough beta testers customers had voiced their dissatisfaction.

'IwlIj jachjaj! Incoming LibreOffice 7.3 to support Klingon and Interslavic

Re: like the French habit of protesting before negotiations

I hear you :).

There is an historic tradition that has partly to do with pure tradition, and partly to do with syndication, but the fact is, in France, if you want to make sure that the subject is important, you need to yell before negociations take place.

From my point of view, that is somewhat logical. If you don't make yourself heard before the decision, what guarantee do you have that the decision is not going to be carefully considered (as opposed to handed out to whatever initial factor tried to influence it) ?

Of course, given the number of decisions that didn't give a damn either way, you could ask : what's the point ?

The answer ? It's l'esprit Gaulois, whatever that means these days.

If your intent is to truly master a language, there is no substitute for immersion. You need to go somewhere where that language is spoken and yours is not, so as to remove the crutch of falling back on your native tongue.

You learn very quickly when you have to learn to be able to eat, or find your way.

I think language diversity is essential. I am lucky, I was born in France to a French mother and a Canadian (English) father. I grew up in the USA, and moved to France when I was 11. I was young enough to learn French by assimilation. It took about two years, but it worked.

I am now bilingual English/French, but more than that, I have a perspective on things that my purely-French compatriots do not have.

A language is also a culture, and learning a new language means getting introduced to that culture. Czech appears to be a very interesting language, with intriguing ramifications on the cultural mindset. Intellectually, I would love to be able to learn that language and be introduced to the mindset that accompanies it, but I won't fool myself. I'm too old to wrack my brain with such an effort and, given that I can barely grasp German, it would take me the rest of my life to get to grips with Czech.

My loss, obviously.

Games Workshop has chucked another £500k at entrenched ERP project with no end to epic battle in sight

"The early concepts look amazing"

Why ? Which artist did you hire to paint the figurines ?

Okay, I jest, but Games Workshop was a cornerstone in my AD&D years.

I do hope they'll make it through.

'Admin error': AWS in dead company data centre planning application snafu in Oxfordshire

Set the rules

Multinationals are not the only things capable of defining the rules.

Set your own rules. First of all, no tax rebates. At all. Next, mandatory presence for the next 30 years. Any abandonment of service before that time is subject to penalty equal to the average amount of revenue times the number of years not present before the limit.

Note that I said revenue, not benefits.

Weed dispensary software company's ambitions pruned after Spotify trademark clash

"The 'Potify' branding as shown in the document looks pretty much like Spotify's"

What a bunch of morons. You see Spotify and, in a cloud of weed, you think you're a genius by just removing "S" and keeping everything else ?

You deserve a stiff fine.

Idiots.

Then again, what can you expect from a bunch of weed-addled morons ?

HMRC tool for measuring IR35 status is so great, employers are ditching it in their droves

"just 5 per cent saying they thought CEST was accurate in the survey"

I'm sorry but, as a freelance consultant myself, I can't help thinking that, if my customer satisfaction was 5%, I would be out of business and looking for a chance to flip fries at McDonalds.

Software engineer jailed for 2 years after using RATs and crypters to steal underage victims' intimate pics

"pleading guilty to accessing women and children's webcams"

For Christ's sake, man, don't you know PornHub ? Or YouPorn ? Or just the goddamned Internet ?

There's enough images out there, most of them from professionals, for you to sate your thirst for a good wank session.

Or so I've heard.

Allegedly.

I couldn't possibly comment.

Mine's the one with . . uh, yeah, that one.

UK competition watchdog closes the comment book on Microsoft's Nuance merger

"Microsoft's acquisition of Nuance"

So, Nuance bought Dragon, the best speech-recognition software I know of. Now Borkzilla had bought Nuance.

Well then, goodbye Dragon, it was nice knowing you.

Final PCIe 6.0 specs unleashed: 64 GTps link speed incoming... with products to follow in 2023

Re: But what about my wife's gaming rig?

Oh I wouldn't worry. Nvidia will have PCIe 6-compatible GPUs by next year.

Given that I have just upgraded my 10-year-old desktop last November, I'm planning on taking advantage of my 3080 until my retirement. By then, my next upgrade will clearly be PCIe 6-compatible across the board.

NASA's Mars InSight trips into safe mode and ESA's Sentinel-1B gives scientists the silent treatment

Or just a brush on an arm, like a windshield wiper ?

Would that have really been that much to add ?

Open source maintainer threatens to throw in the towel if companies won't ante up

There's something I don't get

You decide to contribute to a FOSS project. That is a Good Thing^TM, and good on you.

Whatever brought you to think that you should get paid for it ?

Now, let me be clear that I am aware that there are many companies that are profiting from this, but you knew that there would be people using your code when you started. That is why you started. Why do you feel that you should be paid now ? Is it because there are companies making mint out of your work ?

There should only be two categories of developers working on FOSS projects : the ones paid by their company to contribute code, and the ones doing it as a hobby after their day job.

If you are contributing FOSS code as a full-time occupation, you are perverting the system and I don't see that you deserve being paid. Open your own company and go closed-source. If you're worth it, you'll make it. If you're not, you'll find another employ and go contribute on your spare time.

Anonymous employee review site Glassdoor research: Tech companies dominate the best places to work

Frankly, it seems a bit stupid to me to go and post bad things about your company on the company network. The company has the right, and the power, to log everything you do.

You can access the Internet from your phone. Or from your home PC. In either case, you are secure from the prying eyes of your company.

Ransomware puts New Mexico prison in lockdown: Cameras, doors go offline

"The attack took automatic security doors offline"

Well at least the installation reverted to manual control, instead of just opening all the doors.

Silver lining and all that . . .

Mine's the black one with white stripes.

US watchdog pokes Facebook a second time: Meta faces fresh monopoly lawsuit

But of course

Target the person criticizing you and state that they have an axe to grind. That paints them as biased and, therefor, unreliable. Well done, Zuck, your minions have been properly assimilated and are emulating your despicable mindset of explaining away any problem with strawman arguments.

Unfortunately, it's not because you don't like being criticized that the criticism is not justified. And, if it is justified, it doesn't really matter if the person criticizing is biased or not.

For example, I am heavily biased against FaceBook. However, when I state that FB has enabled genocide, it doesn't matter if I am biased. It is a fact (unfortunately).

EthereumMax, a Kardashian and Floyd Mayweather Jr sued over alleged 'pump and dump' cryptocurrency scam

Methinks he's going to find out the hard way that funny money offers no guarantees.

If I were the judge, I'd throw that lawsuit out in an instant.

Data centre outfit Interxion hit with outage at central London facility

"Interxion pronounced 'Interaction' "

No.

That is the same thing as Cuil supposedly pronounced as "Cool". It is written Cuil, which is pronounced Ku-il, NOT Kool. And that is why they failed.

Writing is supposed to be clear. If they wanted to be pronounced as Interaction, they should have called themselves that. Failing that, they could have called themselves Inter@ction, or some other brain-dead version.

Interxion is pronounced In-Ter-Ksion. Period.

Secure boot for UK electric car chargers isn't mandatory until 2023 – but why the delay?

What great news

The industry is creating an entirely new market for skiddies to brick charge points unless you pay $$$ in funny money to unencrypt them.

I am so happy that this new ecological market is taking into account those poor malware writers. Truly we are in the 3rd Millennium.

Instead of just bonking a credit card or a phone on a contactless pad to pay a given amount and have everything local without needing Da IntarWebs to authorize everything. You want a blood sample with that ?

Honestly, I'm looking forward to my retirement, but the way things are going, I'm going to start looking forward to leaving this world for good.

Another day, another ERP project behind schedule: This time it's Norfolk County Council and an Oracle system

Re: Surprise, surprise ..... yet another cost overrun :)

Well, they're not actually "estimating" the cost savings, they're just repeating what the marketroid told them.

Mobile networks really hate Apple's Private Relay: Some folks find iOS privacy feature blocked on their iPhones

ISPs and networks are being paid by the contract you signed up for to use their services. They do not need additional revenue, else they should have priced their contracts differently.

Signal CEO Moxie Marlinspike resigns, leaves WhatsApp co-founder to run things until a successor is named

Re: some unknown influencer

Now that is a contradiction in terms.

That said, I am severely disappointed. When I learned that this guy was creating Signal I had the utmost respect for him. He was really championing our privacy, and I felt that that deserved all the recognition.

Now he thinks his work is done, and the last thing he does is foist a funny money ecology-destroying scheme on us ?

Shame on you, Marlinspike.

JavaScript dev deliberately screws up own popular npm packages to make a point of some sort

Proof that the industry is mad

"Faker.js is incorporated into more than 2,500 other npm packages and is downloaded 2.4 million times per week; colors.js is incorporated into almost 19,000 other npm packages and gets 23 million downloads a week."

That is over 25 million web sites (or at least web pages) that outsource their functionality to a guy they don't know and don't pay every day of the year.

Are you out of your fucking minds ?

I'll never stop repeating this : your production server should have all of its code local and you should know all the code you put into it.

You find a package that is useful ? Fine, download it, test it and incorporate it into your code. But YOU DO NOT LINK TO IT.

It's called security. It's a bitch, but it works.

GCHQ was rebuked for ignoring spy law safeguards as pandemic hit Britain

Complaining about something that you have approved 99.94% of the time

Is that called CYA or what ?

OK, it's not CYA, it's just a politician trying to get brownie points.

But still . . .

The James Webb Space Telescope has only gone and deployed its primary mirror

"As the agencies ticked off each JWST milestone"

Because, contrary to UK councils deploying an ERP, NASA knows exactly what needs to be done, has recorded the milestones and is applying said knowledge to ensure that JWST will be functional.

I suggest that all UK councils wanting to deploy an ERP go take a learning course in project management at NASA.

They will utterly fail, but at least they will get a cluebat to the face.

No defence for outdated defenders as consumer AV nears RIP

Re: My own

And the solution is simple :

1) don't use Outlook. Every malware writer is on the lookout for that.

2) Use NoScript. 99.9% of all malware on the web needs JavaScript to install. Stop that and the virus is killed dead in its tracks.

Of course, point 2 requires you to not be a noob of the web, but hey, this is El Reg forums. You should know how to handle yourself in a browser.

UK government tool to monitor its legacy application estate is… LATE

Well of course

"She now heads up the government's 18,000-strong digital, data and technology professions and leads the function for government"

Obviously. She's already failed once, no reason to not let her fail again, right ?

Let us start by defining the word "administration".

Rocketing chip sales growth to ease off this year, reach $680bn, say analysts

COVID was not the only reason for supply issues

Taiwan had a drought, and TSMC was rather severely impacted by that.

We can all hope that COVID will end up going away, but there's every chance that droughts will happen again next summer.

That is probably why TSMC is building in the US (albeit in one of driest states of the Union <smacks forehead>).

Feeling virtuous with a good old paperback? Well, don't. Switching to traditional media does not improve mood

It's a dystopian future.

Wouldn't be much dystopia if everyone was treated well.

A book is an entirely different experience. An e-reader is a slab of plastic and glass. There is nothing especially pleasing about touching it. Of course, what you read on it is just as engrossing as a book, but you're still holding an inert object (which is still incredibly useful if you're on a trip - you just can't lug around a suitcase full of books, but an e-reader is the equivalent in your pocket).

A book is almost a living thing. Pages are tactile, and they keep trace of how you treat them. A well-read book is full of little scars, places where the page tip is folded because the reader was too fast in turning it. Looking at the state of a book is almost reading into its own history.

I read on a screen all day long. I'm a programmer so, if I'm not coding, I'm probably looking for a tip or a solution to a specific problem, or consulting the manual for a specific function, or on the lookout for news in my domain of expertise. I'm looking at screens from 7 in the morning to around midnight every day.

If I want to take a break from that, I want a book. A good old-fashion dead tree compendium that I can cherish and treat with respect, while letting my mind wander its universe.

But that's just my opinion.

Google: We disagree with Sonos patent ruling so much, we've changed our code to avoid infringement

Absolutely right.

That should be filed under contempt of court and fined accordingly.

Worst of CES Awards: The least private, least secure, least repairable, and least sustainable

"the marginal cost of sharing and making copies of things is pretty close to zero"

Please go explain that to Apple. They still think that 30% is an acceptable share of profits from someone else's work.

Snap continues to make a spectacle of itself as it tries to trademark the word spectacles

Aimed at "creators"

Code for "the general public can't give a damn".

India says: Xiaomi the $88m in missing import taxes, please

"the company could remotely enable censorship tools"

That may be fine in China, but the rest of the world does not approve.

Yet.

A fifth of England's NHS trusts are mostly paper-based as they grapple with COVID backlog, warn MPs

"improve productivity in an organisation severely short of staff"

Well maybe one of the first things to do would be hiring more staff ?

Once you have enough people to deal with the day-to-day, you can start thinking about optimizing.

As usual, government is dealing with things ass-backwards.

Not looking forward to a greyscale 2022? Then look back to the past in 64 colours

"because you'll still be in the same job, I bet"

You say that like it's a bad thing.

Nothing's working, and I've checked everything, so it must be YOUR fault

Re: The kind whom disaster stalks daily

Seems like disaster hardly needed to stalk him, more like just look around and, "ah, there he is".

Moving an industrial electrical equipment without shutting it down and unplugging it first ? Where did he learn the job, at McDonalds ?

GPU makers promise relief is at hand over chip shortages, prices expected to fall in second half of the year

Re: I, for one, shall remain patient.

I have upgraded, last November, and I don't recall any specific issues with the RTX 3080 I ordered.

I didn't have to wait for weeks to get it. When I ordered it, it was marked as In Stock, and I got it with the rest of the kit.

Maybe in Europe there aren't that many cryptominers ?

Time to party like it's 2002: Acura and Honda car clocks knocked back 20 years by bug

Re: And Furuno!

That's interesting. Furuno makes satnavs for boats. Seafaring boats are typically (but not always) bought by people who have a lot of money - or, at least, who want other people to think they have a lot of money.

In any case, those people are generally not inclined to appreciate that something on their precious boat is not working as it should, and they generally make sure that the provider of said knicknack knows about it.

It's too much of a coincidence to not imagine that the bug on Furuno is not the same bug on Honda. The fallout from this is going to be interesting to watch.

Seems to be a wet finger estimate to me.

You know, you wet your finger, find out which way the wind is blowing now and announce a number.

Honestly, if Honda knows that the issue will resolve itself in 7 months, then they know what the issue is and can explain what the hell is going on.

Otherwise, they're just pulling numbers out from where the sun don't shine.

North Korea worried a lot of countries when it said it test-fired a hypersonic missile in Japan's direction

Wikipedia confirms that a hypersonic missile goes at Mach 5.

Since you mention terminal velocity, I'm guessing that the ballistic missile attains that speed at re-entry. By definition, a ballistic trajectory has a high point. Before that point, it's going up, after that point, it's going down. Only when going down can it increase its speed, and it can only increase its speed while the atmosphere is not thick enough to slow it down.

"North Korea is banned from launching ballistic missiles"

Mmm yes, so now what ? A strongly-worded reprimand ? Send it to the corner for ten minutes ?

Oh, I know : no ice cream for a week. That'll show 'em !

The inevitability of the Windows 11 UI: New Notepad enters the beta channel

Re: What a suprise...

Yeah, we really needed that Dark Mode.

Mine's the black one with the darker collar . . .

Bitcoin 'inventor' will face forgery claims over his Satoshi Nakamoto proof, rules High Court

The guy's a fraud - and a douche

If I were sitting on a million BitCoin, I wouldn't be shouting about it or claiming anything, much less suing people for calling me a liar.

I'd be retired, quietly selling a coin every now and then and living a comfortable, quiet life.

The last thing I would want is everyone knowing I had a million BitCoin.

Planning on buying a new motor? Chip shortages set to hit UK carmakers this year and next

"planning to increase their inventory levels"

Ah, so having stock is getting back into fashion now ?

Looks like the beancounters have come around to realize that the cost of stock is less than the cost of not doing business.

Never too late, I guess.

Remember Norton 360's bundled cryptominer? Irritated folk realise Ethereum crafter is tricky to delete

Let us agree to disagree.

First of all, I'm not talking about software. That's a minefield I will not go into. But the hardware is MINE. There is no discussion about that and I don't need to know about hidden bits and bobs to know that I bought it with my money and it BELONGS TO ME.

Just like my car. I have no notion of automotive engineering, but if I want to put a spoiler on it, it is MINE, so I can.

You, however, have no right to hop over and install a spoiler without my permission. Yet, because we're talking about software in the end, Norton believes that it does have permission.

Well it doesn't.

Not in my world.

It takes more clicks to reject their cookies than accept them, so France fines Facebook and Google over €200m

This site is one of the rare ones that, when you ask to check which cookies are enabled, only list essential cookies as on - the rest are unchecked.

So El Reg is a step above many others in this regard.

Car makers lock in long-term deals with chip giants for future autonomous vehicles

Good news, I guess

Now, what happens when everyone has long-term deals and there's a drought ?

Because no water means no chips, IIRC.

UK government stacks up to £1.8bn in vertical application framework

No rush

It'll all go to Crapita anyway.