Posts by Pascal Monett

Sainsbury's eyes up shoplifters with live facial recognition

Re: Records [..] will be immediately deleted if the software does not recognize their mug.

Exactly that.

How can it "recognize" if the previous record is erased ?

I smell a load of bull here.

Congressional panel throws cyber threat intel-sharing, funding a lifeline

"global head of government affairs at Google-owned cloud security firm Wiz"

Well, now you can't ignore who's actually running your country.

US puts $10M bounty on three Russians accused of attacking critical infrastructure

Thank goodness we got rid of Huawei

I mean, thank God we only have Cisco bugs to contend with . . .

Oh, and well done with the bounty on Russian citizens you'll never get your hands on. Very impressive.

IBM Cloud to end free human support, suggests customers use enhanced AI instead

"enhanced AI"

Enhanced with what ? More hallucinations ?

Ok, go for it. Full speed right into the wall. Because that's where you're going. Fire all humans and the secretaries you fuck at the end of the day, and see how long your company is going to survive on AI.

I dare you.

Space Command gets Trumped out of Colorado, voting conspiracy cited

"I don't think that influenced my decision, though, right?"

Oh congratulations on pointing out exactly what motivated you.

My God this idiot is so stupid it's pathetic.

Good, Sound, Reason

Three words the orange shitgibbon doesn't understand.

Investors throw another $13B on the Anthropic cash bonfire

Re: Too big to fail?

I'm thinking there's soon going to be some shareholders somewhere who are going to raise a stink when they're presented with yet another bag of billions thrown to something that has no ROI.

This is one case where I will accept that the selfish cunts put a stop to the project.

GNOME Foundation boss exits after just four months

"so I can meditate a 10-Day 'self course' "

Does that course include not touching the wrong butts ?

Supermarket giant Tesco sues VMware, warns lack of support could disrupt food supply

Re: [..] why Broadcom isn't automatically forced to honour the existing VMware contracts

Exactly that.

You buy a company, you buy its obligations.

Personally I'm surprised that it took this long for someone to drag Broadcom to court.

This should be a class-action issue.

Salesforce sacrifices 4,000 support jobs on the altar of AI

No, it's not just you.

He needs less heads ? Why doesn't he cut off his own ?

Apple iOS 26 set to dump 75M iPhones on the e-waste pile

"75 million iPhones"

Apple is the richest company on Earth.

They practically print their own money.

Why can't they show the right example and create a program to exchange old phones for an acceptable amount (don't know what that is) and sell a replacement for the usual your-first-born-child-and-a-leg and demonstrate some true ecological prowess in recycling their own stuff ?

Oh, I forgot.

Shareholders.

Reg readers have spoken: 93% back move away from Microsoft in UK public sector

"create unforeseen risks"

Oh, you mean like the risk of a 1100% increase in yearly subscription costs ?

In the rush to adopt hot new tech, security is often forgotten. AI is no exception

"security is often forgotten"

No. Security is ALWAYS forgotten. Because it gets in the way of selling product.

Until, oh shit, we've got to secure this thing because, otherwise, customers will complain. And if they complain, they might leave, so now security is important.

So, developers who warned us before, implement security on top of all the bullshit we made you do, because otherwise, you're fired.

Laravel inventor tells devs to quit writing 'cathedrals of complexity'

"simple and disposable and easy to change."

More importantly, code needs to be obvious.

And I'm not talking about clear to code wizards. I'm talking about the new hire in a company that is tasked with making a change to a business-critical application.

If the code has been written by the kind of C++ wizard who thought that his one-line incredible unreadable function was a good idea, guess again.

You're not coding to show your skills. You're coding to solve a problem and to ensure that the next guy understands what you did and why.

If you expect the next guy to be a code deity, you have nothing to do with business coding.

Azure budget alerts go berserk after Microsoft account migration misfire

Keep it up, Borkzilla

The more your greed dictates your actions, the sooner companies will understand that managing their own servers is the best option in the long run.

So they have to over-provision the hardware ? That doesn't mean a surprise increase of 1100% in cost.

Hardware doesn't cost all that much, these days. One day, CTOs will wake up and stop listening to the siren chant. You're just helping them speed up the inevitable.

Traffic to government domains often crosses national borders, or flows through risky bottlenecks

Re: It's called the internet

In the absolute, you're right.

Unfortunately, some organizations (NSA) and some countries (USA, China among others) do everything they can to hoover up every bit of data they can get their hands on, whether or not they have a court order authorizing them to do so.

So it is becoming useful, if not imperative, to control where the data flows in you own country.

UK government dragged for incomplete security reforms after Afghan leak fallout

"a secret review following the 2021 Afghan data breach"

Of course it had to be a secret review. After having publicly abandoned most of them to the Taliban for judgement by extreme prejudice, it wouldn't do to show that, on top of abandoning them, you also gave up their names through shoddy security.

Well done. They were "allies" as long as they were useful, after that they were nothing but cannon fodder.

The whole story of Afghanistan is one pile of shame on top of another.

Kilopixel creator kills livestream switch before woodblock display hits Crysis point

So, good bye kilopixel

When is the megapixel coming ?

Researcher who found McDonald's free-food hack turns her attention to Chinese restaurant robots

Pudu ?

More like Poodoo.

Uncle Sam doesn't want Samsung, SK Hynix making memories in China

Astounding

Look, I am not ignorant of the past. I am grateful for all the men who stormed the beaches of Normandy and drove back the Nazi fascists. Unfortunately, men of Eisenhower's caliber have apparently died out.

But hey, the USA has no right to dictate what companies in other sovereign states decide to do. This nonsense has to stop. The CIA is not entitled to rig elections in foreign countries (with the disastrous results that followed). The White House is not entitled to dictate what foreign companies decide to do.

The consequence is easily predictable. The USA is, currently, 340 million people. The world population is estimated at 8 billion.

Guess what matters most ?

The White House has less and less weight to throw around. The time of reckoning is approaching.

How Windows 11 is breaking from its bedrock and moving away

Brilliant article

That was a great read, and a refreshing take on Borkzilla's existence.

I have kept a copy for my files.

Cloud computing has become so normal, it's invisible

And the wheel turns again

We went from mainframe and terminals, to PCs, to PCs connected to (a) local server(s), and we are now at PCs connected to remote servers run by someone else.

So, given that we're already hearing about "local cloud", how long is it going to be before we're back to terminals connected to a local server ?

Techie fooled a panicked daemon and manipulated time itself to get servers in sync

You know what they say about "assume" . . .

Re: amusing phenomena

Nice euphemism.

Not in my browser! Vivaldi capo doubles down on generative AI ban

Re: Good to see Vivaldi getting the attention it deserves

Sounds like something I'm going to have to look in to.

DOGE delayed deals, says Nutanix

"harder to do business with the US federal government"

Oh, the poor widdle company can't suck on the government funds tit like it used to. Ain't that a shame.

I'm sure a meeting with His Orangeness (with a great big envelope and a lot of arse-kissing) would solve the problem.

Five years – that's how long Anthropic will store Claude chats unless you opt out

"unless you opt out"

No.

The default option should be "opt in", and anyone doing the contrary should be put in jail for five years.

Solo.io boss: I was wrong, I made mistakes – and that made me a better CEO

Whatever you think about Solo.io, you have to admit it takes guts to be a female CEO and it takes even more guts to freely admit that you made mistakes.

I'd like to see more male CEOs admit that, eh Léo Apotheker ?

If you thought China's Salt Typhoon was booted off critical networks, think again

"Active since at least 2019 [..] across 80 countries"

If this is proven, why don't you just cut China off ?

It's not like there are that many Chinese who like perusing English web sites . . .

AI arms dealer Nvidia laments the many billions lost to US-China trade war

Re: The real problem is

You forgot the sarcasm tag.

That said, the orange shitgibbon has indeed done a lot to push China into technological independance, so , well done ?

By the way, where will MAGA hats be made next, Arizona or Texas ?

Online property ad reveals looted Nazi war art, triggers police raid

"the search for ill-gotten Nazi-loot continues"

Go search in Swiss bank vaults. But arrive by surprise and don't ask for authorization.

I'm sure you'll find something . . .

Japan exploring whether AI could help inspect its nuclear power plants

"Japan exploring whether AI could help"

Quick answer : no, it won't.

Get your engineers on the job and avoid using a hallucinating bullshit generator.

Word to autosave new docs to the cloud before you can even hit Ctrl+S

Where are the legal breaks to stop this nonsense ?

Why is it that a company can unilaterally decide to redirect everythin to their own servers without user consent ?

Oh, sure, users consent because if they don't they can no longer use the product. In any other domain that's called blackmail.

So ?

Unlike most of Musk's other ventures, Starship keeps it together for Flight Test 10

Re: I am impressed by what SpaceX has achieved, despite him

Exactly.

I don't know who is in charge, but that person is obviously capable of keeping His Muskiness at arm's length (maybe suggesting another problem with X to keep him away) while doing real, actual Science (and work).

Well done to that wizard.

CIO made a dangerous mistake and ordered his security team to implement it

Just for reference, in my records I bought in 1992 4Mb of 70ns EDO RAM for what would have been, at the time, €154.36.

I'll leave the financial wizards to calculate the price per GB at the time and the equivalent price today.

Also, following my records, in 2014 I bought 16Gb of DDR3 1866Mhz CL9 for €167.95 (value at that time).

I'm sorry, but I think this indeed proves that RAM prices have dropped so far that it's a wonder people still make them.

Tell me that you sent a fat invoice.

"leave operations to us techies and focus on management"

Yeah, that'll indeed bruise an ego, especially one who doesn't know he doesn't know but thinks he does. Ergo, this was obviously the nicest decision they could take.

That said, it's nice when you get a manager who knows the nuts and bolts. There's less waffling about with business-speak in meetings and when you explain why something can't be done that way, there is agreement without much discussion (that's supposing that you know what you're talking about). Plus, if you're doing things right, you get his entire support when things still go pear-shaped.

Trump stomps feet, pulls out 't-word' again over China rare earths ban

I'm betting that, when the time comes to replace the batteries in those EVs, a lot of people are going to look at the invoice and go rethink their position on EVs.

Toyota got it right : hybrids are the way to go.

Re: I cannot decide who I want to win this tussle ...

There is no winner.

And the option not to play has been lost . . .

Re: What goes around comes around

I have to agree with you.

The world was already an unstable place before The Stable Genius^TM took power (and tried to keep it). But ever since the orange shitgibbon has been flinging it all over the place, major changes are coming about, the consequences of which we will witness in the coming years.

You have tremendous power over China ? I seem to recall that, first : China is a sovereign country and you don't have the means to invade it ; second : China owns hundreds of billions in US debt.

If ever China decided to cash in, you'd be in deep doo-doo.

You can rant and shout "TARIFFS" as much as you want (how much will the tariff on MAGA hats be, I wonder ?), but China can play the game better than you, and it doesn't owe magnets.

On the other hand, if you don't get them, it'll hurt your defense industry and you energy industry a whole lot more.

So, who really has the power ?

The air is hissing out of the overinflated AI balloon

The AI bubble

So the air is coming out. I'm waiting for someone to slash the tires.

What will this mean for the dozens of bitbarns that are programmed ? I've got the feeling that the electric grid has a chance of surviving the next decade just fine.

Death to AI, and end of career to all the besuited snake-oil salesmen who charmed the Boards all over into believing in it.

Junk is the new punk: Why we're falling back in love with retro tech

Re: One of the biggest draws of this older tech...

Absolutely.

Old tech works on its own. The besuited CEOs and MBAs cannot extract monthly revenue from it, and so cannot increase their bonuses.

So the resurgence of this tech is more than an annoyance, it's the barbarians at the gates.

Unfortunately for them, while preaching Sun-Tsu until breathless, they know only too well how Rome ended.

Australian university used Wi-Fi location data to identify student protestors

I'm sorry to disagree with your cookie-cutter argument.

Warning students that they can be expelled if they protest is already a blatant disregard for democracy.

One would think that a University, of all places, would want to demonstrate intellectual enlightenment and enter into discussions to find out what the problem was and what was needed to solve it.

Instead, they used Stasi-like tools to find the troublemakers.

Whatever happened afterwards, I call that facism.

"The University used Wi-Fi to identify students who participated in July 2024 sit-in protest"

Fascism always finds a way.

Mysterious X-37B spaceplane flies again, this time carrying a quantum GPS alternative

It's like children.

Ooh, you're not playing fair ! (meanwhile developing hypersonic missiles which are a weapon)

US government snaps up 10% of Intel for $8.9B

Re: a complete U-turn

That is Trump's specialty.

Re: the Highly Respected Chief Executive Officer of the Company

Yeah, the guy he was calling on to step down just a week ago.

Trump. Government by weathervane. Except the wind is wherever his ego gets the biggest boost from.

Don't cave to Euro censorship or backdoor demands, Uncle Sam warns US tech firms

"restricting people from saying what they want to online could have serious consequences"

Bullshit.

This waffling about Free Speech is just the veil used to ensure that banking will continue to be secure.

It's all about the money, don't be mistaken.

Japan’s Fugaku supercomputer follow-up adds Nvidia GPUs

“a hundredfold increase in application performance”

So, Moore's Law is still more or less alive . . .

Dwarf planet Ceres may have been habitable - for microbes - a couple of billion years back

"LGMs – little green microbes"

So, that's how much we have lowered our expectations. We'll be happy to find the dead, fried remains of some bacteria somewhere before Jupiter.

I remain convinced that there is intelligent life out there in the Universe. You can point a telescope anywhere in the night sky and, with enough time, you'll find entire galaxies. You can't expect me to believe that none of them have developed intelligent life. Beings that look up into the night sky and wonder, who else is out there ?

The only problem is the trillions upon trillions of kilometers between us and them.

And there's no Universal Postal Service.