Posts by Pascal Monett

Quantum computing: Confusion can mask a good story, but don't take anyone's word for it

QC Monte Carlo

It's a startup. Another one. Another in a long line of startups that somebody promises will change the world. Magic Leap, anyone ?

I'll believe it if they've actually accomplished something in 5 years' time.

Uncle Sam wants 'ethical hackers' to crack its planetary defenses, but don't expect a pay-day from this bug bounty

"The US DoD has opened up all of its publicly facing systems and apps to investigation"

I'm sure the FSB will help with gleeful abandon.

They might not give much feedback, though.

UK's competition watchdog sniffs around AMD's proposed $35bn all-stock buy of Xilinx

So AMD has $35bn to throw around

Good news. It would seem, however, that I'm going to have to revise my rating of AMD as "plucky underdog" and upgrade it to full-blown dog.

Even better news, actually. Intel is going to need to up its game.

Consumers will benefit.

China to enforce social distancing on peak of Mount Everest

China sent a team

It's impressive to think that climbing the Everest is a life goal for many people, and these guys just go up like janitors to string a barrier.

"What are you doing this week, honey ?"

"Oh, just gonna climb Everest again. Be back by Wednesday, dear. Bye !"

Namecheap hosted 25%+ of fake UK govt phishing sites last year – NCSC report

"a 28.8 per cent share of known UK government-themed phishing sites"

Methinks that NameCheap is going to be forced to clean up their act if they don't manage to do it on their own.

Now that they have been named and shamed by a government report, Kirkendall is not going to be bale to brush it off like an angry Twitter rant.

If you regularly host government scam sites, there's a good change the government is going to come and have a word with you.

China’s top three telcos advise of imminent delisting from New York Stock Exchange

So they've been delisted from the NYSE

They're still listed elsewhere, meaning that US investors can still buy shares if they absolutely want to.

Obviously, big holdings and such are going to want to set their records straight, but Joe Schmuck who bought 20 shares is not going to be bothered about all this.

Microsoft reveals what a growth mindset does to the letter ‘A’

"to small details like graphics and icons"

Nice to know that Azure is working so well they have to waste on the useless details like logos.

Then again, the marketing department has to have something to do.

Gone in 60 electrons: Digital art swaggers down the cul-de-sac of obsolescence

Re: And you'll never find a Blue Ray of the Star Wars that you used to know.

Guilty of still having the first trilogy in two VHS versions, plus the DVD version, obviously.

Russian cyber-spies changed tactics after the UK and US outed their techniques – so here's a list of those changes

Re: "what makes you think they have stopped now?"

Nobody but the NSA is saying that they've stopped.

Repeatedly, each time they're caught doing it.

British bank TSB says it will fix days-long transaction troubles tonight

"El Reg readers excepted of course"

Except that there are still El Reg readers who bank at TSB. WTF ?

TSB is not a joke now, TSB has been a joke for over two years, if not more.

Anyone with an ounce of sense should have gotten the hell out of there by now. Changing banks is not that difficult.

On the other hand, in the UK, there is the question of finding a bank that is actually reliable.

That may be an issue.

'A massive middle finger': Open-source audio fans up in arms after Audacity opts to add telemetry capture

Good-bye Audacity

It's a shame, but you had a good run.

You can listen right here to the whir of a robot helicopter flying on an alien world

"Sounds below 80Hz and above 90Hz have been turned down in volume"

Almost disappointed. I think I would prefer listening to the actual recording.

Don't misunderstand me, this was another awesome video, but I would like to hear what is really happening, not just what NASA wants me to hear.

The untouched audio is reality. This is great, but I prefer reality.

We were 'blindsided' by Epic's cheek, claims Apple exec on 4th day of antitrust wrangling

30% is extortion, pure and simple

As a freelance consultant, and a consultant for the past 25 years, I can vouch for the fact that 10% is an acceptable fee when someone is offering you a post somewhere.

And I'm talking about real work being done by a person through someone else's contacts.

If someone told me that I could have a contract somewhere but they were taking 30% I would laugh out loud and tell them to get stuffed. Yes, they have the contact, but I'm doing the work. I'm the one with the expenses.

In Apple's magic land, Apple believes it has the right to demand 30% of someone else's work which it is only just selling and reselling endlessly, having done nothing more than provide the platform to do so.

Come on. Apple is one of the companies in the world that has the most money in the bank. It's platform is proven and all it's doing is selling bytes. Bytes that someone else sweated to create. 5% is what Apple should be getting. Not a cent more.

Perl changes dev's permaban for 'unacceptable' behaviour to a year-long lockout after community response

Wondering about that as well. Wikipedia explains that philo-semitism is basically "an interest in, respect for and an appreciation of Jewish people, their history and the influence of Judaism".

Of course, associating that with antisemitism makes me think that whoever it was was dishing out racial hatred under the guise of good words.

I guess that's possible.

Cisco HyperFlex web interface has critical flaw that lets attackers get root and execute arbitrary commands

"insufficient validation of user-supplied input"

Aka sloppy programming.

On a platform that is specifically touted to be the tool to manage VMs.

Well done, Cisco. With you around, who needs Huawei ?

Which? warns that more than 2 million Brits are on old and insecure routers – wagging a finger at Huawei-made kit

"white-label devices sourced from China"

Meaning, UK ISPs dictating what kit they are willing to pay for happens to be made in China.

I'm not sure Huawei is the issue here. To me, the issue is UK ISPs that did not put the money on the table to get secure kit. If that had been in the specs, Huawei or not, the Chinese would have had to deliver.

NHS Digital booking website had unexpected side effect: It leaked people's jab status

"run vaccine checks on the status of random people with no authentication"

Well thank goodness you're out of the EU now - that would have been a prime violation of GDPR.

But you've taken back control, so there's no problem, right ?

OVH outlines three-point 'hyper resilience' plan after Strasbourg fire

"3.6 million websites across 464,000 distinct domains... taken offline."

Yay for Single Point of Failure. Nice to know that the ol' buddy is still alive and kicking.

I think that, in the past few months, we've had largely enough demonstrations that UPSs should be quarantined far from actual servers.

In any case, whether you appreciate OVH's customers or not, I think OVH has done a fine job of openness and transparency on this issue. We are far from the usual "only a small number of customers have been impacted / we take customer data security very seriously / etc".

I'm hoping that OVH will publich a complete, official DR report with step-by-step instructions. As painful as this was for some, it is a priceless opportunity for all other datacenters to check against their own environment and start implementing mitigations now, before it's too late.

Chrome on Windows turns on Intel, AMD chip-level defenses against malicious websites

Google Chrome security engineer

Making sure that only Google has access to all that delicious private data.

If you're the 1% and have 10 mins to spare this July, bid for a place on first Blue Origin space tourism launch

I think it's a great idea

To let rich people be the guinea pigs for a change.

As for me, even I had millions I'll still wait for the first hundred successful flights before I sign up to sit atop a gigantic fireworks that just might go boom quicker than expected.

Facebook Oversight Board upholds decision to ban Trump, asks FB to look at own 'potential contribution' to 'narrative of electoral fraud'

"repeatedly and falsely claiming"

That just about sums up OHSG's entire presidency.

UK's Department for Work and Pensions continues to move off Oracle Enterprise Data Warehouse in pursuit of a single version of the truth

Re: Why should pension data be a secret

Because it has to do with personal revenue and that is generally considered private data ?

Are you ready to publicly post your yearly revenue ?

If not, that means that you wouldn't mind checking on other people's revenue, but you would mind people checking on yours.

In my book, that's called hypocrisy. Also, meddling in other people's business. There's a category of people who love doing that.

I don't need to know how much your earn, nor how much you pay in taxes. I do not consider that to be my business, there's an entire government branch that takes care of that.

As for my taxes, I pay them and that's all you need to know.

What not to expect when you're expecting: Fertility apps may be selling intimate health secrets

"30 free, popular, fertility apps available"

They're free.

Which means you are the product.

It's 2021. This is supposed to be a surprise ?

How to hide a backdoor in AI software – such as a bank app depositing checks or a security cam checking faces

"consider a bank that is building a mobile app to do things like process check deposits"

Any bank that uses today's pseudo-AI to process my money is a bank I am going to leave.

Numbers are not subject to interpretation. OCR is good enough for recognizing what's written on a check, and when the code gets the numbers, there is no fuzzy logic needed, nor any AI required to know what to do. It's done already. No bank is going to replace what works with something that might go wrong.

That is a stupid example.

Microsoft reassures Teams freebie fans: We're not going to delete all your data, honest

Re: Whut?

Indeed.

I wonder what kind of individual would apply for a position where obsession is specifically part of the job.

Pega set to launch 'context-aware' APIs that let users tweak back-end processes without breaking front end

Low-code

Every time I hear that I get a headache.

Coding is not for the ignorant.

By definition, if you are coding, you are supposed to know what the hell you're dealing with. It is the user who doesn't need to know.

You are the coder. Okay, today you don't need to know Assembly language or the exact interface to the hardware, but if you're expecting MS Word to save your web page in the most concise and byte-preserving file size, I have a bridge to sell you.

Low-code is just another excuse for a gigabyte's worth of DLL files to be required to run your Hello World popup.

'Millions' of Dell PCs will grant malware, rogue users admin-level access if asked nicely

That is today's security environment

"Essentially, Dell's driver accepts system calls from any user or program on a machine; there are no security checks nor an access control list to see if the caller is sufficiently authorized or privileged "

No security checks, no ACL.

You tell me that there isn't a single rogue engineer that thought that wasn't a good idea.

American schools' phone apps send children's info to ad networks, analytics firms

Really ?

"The majority of Android and iOS apps created for US public and private schools send student data to assorted third parties "

Well, thank goodness for GDPR. Maybe, someday, the world's Most Powerful Country will join civilization and the respect of privacy.

Maybe.

Spent Chinese rocket stage set to make an uncontrolled return to Earth

Yeah, it would be better. But, if it really had to come down on Mar-a-lago, well, I'd understand.

Samsung stops providing security updates to the Galaxy S8 at grand old age of four years

"signifying its end of life"

I'm sorry, the end-of-life of a product should not be when the vendor is tired of supporting it, it should be when the last example of the model has ceased functioning.

Okay, one might argue about security and such, but in that case, the vendor should be required to provide an up-to-date model at bargain price to replace the model that is no longer secure.

It's time we stop allowing companies arbitrarily decide what they wish to support. You put it out there, you deal with it until nobody is using it anymore.

WTH are NFTs? Here is the token, there is the Beeple....

"distributed blockchain-based programs"

"the only limit is your imagination "

What could possibly go wrong ?

Flash, say hello to blockchain NFTs, your spiritual successor.

In China, the Smart TV watches you, shares IP address, Wi-Fi SSIDs, viewing habits, and more

"smart decision making for connected TVs”

The only smart decision is to not connect it.

I want a screen, not an integrated streaming service.

If you want to give additional functionality fine, make a box that connects to the screen, but don't fuck with my screen.

This is something I really don't get. You can buy a stereo system in one block, or you can buy the amplifier, the CD reader, the radio reciever and the speakers of the quality you want all separately and connect them together and this has been the standard for the past fifty years.

If I buy a TV, I still need to be able to hook up the DVD player, an eventual BluRay player, and my good ol' VHS (yes, I still have one and it functions fine). Now, of course, I also need to hook up my ISP's TV box, otherwise I don't get the local channels. So what is the point in connecting the TV on top of all that ?

Yes, I know, money, but I don't see the point for me.

I have a Philips MatchLine Pixel Plus that has been working for two decades now. It looks pretty much like this. It's a beast. It takes two sturdy guys to move it, but it works flawlessly and the image quality is exceptional.

I'm hoping that it will hold out for a while longer because I just know that, when it dies, I'm in for a world of hurt finding a replacement that will not only give me the same or better image quality, but also respect my privacy.

Stuck in R/3verse: East Sussex County Council struggles to move forward with £25m SAP replacement

"no longer be supported by the supplier beyond 2025"

Well at least they're trying to do something before the end date.

Not like some other councils.

Not so fast, SpaceX: $3bn NASA Moon landing contract blocked by rivals' gripes

Because nothing spacegoing is standard.

It's always bespoke hardware, and we can't have it otherwise because every company tries to find its own solutions to the various problems.

It's what we had when we started making tractors and that worked out pretty well.

China cracks down on ‘excessive’ user data harvesting, gives 33 apps ten days to clean up their acts

"No wonder Facebook doesn’t operate behind the Great Firewall"

And if it did, El Zuck had better not respond to any convocation to explain himself.

Contrary to US Congress, which he has brushed off and ignored more than once, I doubt China would be so accepting of his lies and would probably lock him up until changes were made.

One can always dream.

Bitcoin is ‘disgusting and contrary to the interests of civilization’ says famed investor Charlie Munger

"the whole damn development is disgusting and contrary to the interests of civilization"

I completely agree with that argument.

Every single funny money scheme is just a blatant pyramid scam where the first in will have the most coins and hope that all the other idiots signing up will make the coin interesting enough that they can get rich off other people's stupidity.

Oh, and some criminals also use it because, apparently, a blockchain ledger is not enough for law enforcement to find out where the transaction goes.

Fail on all counts.

Terminal trickery, or how to improve a novel immeasurably

A Jive translator ?

Found one :

And so, uh course, dey wo'ked out which terminals wuz visible and began doin' similar wahtahmelluns t'de staff in de lab. Sheeeiit. "Sequences uh multiple inverse, non inverse and bell characters would create quite some stunnin' result," said Anne happily. Slap mah fro. Right On! De users – probably some little less happy. Slap mah fro. Right On!

De IT Managa' would be called but, plum as he arrived, de terminals would be set back t'no'mal. Den, plum as he tried t'leave, wahtahmelluns would go 'wrong' once mo'e. What it is, Mama. Right On! All it lacked wuz de Benny 'Sup, dudell soundtrack.

Re: Novel interference

Using Word, aren't you ?

So what if I pay peanuts for my home broadband? I demand you fix it NOW!

When they got rid of POTS and switched everything over to TCP/IP.

Everything.

Happened ten years ago where I live, and I was on ADSL at the time.

Lambda School, a coding bootcamp that takes a cut of your next tech salary, now takes a 30% cut in staff

Better than regular loans

I'll bet they are - for Lambda School.

How is it legal to be able to arbitrairily exempt oneself from class-action lawsuits, or decide that the contract remains in force even in case of bankruptcy ? How is it that you get to decide that ?

On the subject of bankruptcy, check this out. It's an eye-opener.

Intel laid me off for being too old, engineer claims in lawsuit

Paperwork.

HR needs to look busy and having piles of papers to sift through is a great time-waster.

Palantir co-founder, CEO Alexander Karp gets $1.1bn bumper payday in IPO year

Re: AI

AI does not exist. Not in the original, science-fiction view of a thinking machine.

What we have today are statistical analysis machines. Check out Google's free Machine Learning crash course. Especially this page, The terms used include "linear regression", and the repeated use of the word "median".

That's statistics. Not AI.

Appeals court nixes online blueprint sharing ban on 3D-printed 'ghost guns'

Re: We are talking room temperature superconductors

Which do not exist, either at scale or not.

The best we have working at normal atmospheric pressure requires -135°C.

There is one recently discovered that works at 15°C, but requires an atmospheric pressure equal to about the center of the Earth.

I'd like to see you replicate that in a phone charger pack-sized thingy.

Out of curiosity, I just checked Amazon and they have two available for €690.

I have no idea if it is the right model though.

Major shift in smartphone market sees Chinese kit win the middle while Apple and Samsung skim the cream

"a healthy appetite for smartphones globally"

Great. More toxic landfill trash to come.

Big Tech bankrolling AI ethics research and events seems very familiar. Ah, yes, Big Tobacco all over again

It's the same thing as herd immunity : it requires thought and effort from 80% of the population.

Right now, 60% of the population is just begging for football season to start.

Vivaldi update unleashes the 'Cookie Crumbler' to simply block any services asking for consent (sites may break)

Re: This.

More and more, I am seeing websites that have the popup contain two buttons : ont to accept all, in green (obviously), and one to check - in red.

Psychological wars aside, I am often surprised by a page that lists possible cookies in 3 sections : indispensable, operational and marketing - and often it's only the indispensable that is pre-allowed.

In other words, good behavior is spreading.

Of course, that may be a statistical quirk of the subset of websites that I visit vs the rest of them. YMMV.

The eternal popup predicament

"While the aim of the questions is noble, for users it can be annoying and can leave them preferring to hit the Accept All button rather than wading through what can sometimes be pages of options to turn off every setting, "

This problem is not new. It is the eternal issue of the fact that users invariably view a popup as an impediment to Get Stuff Done, so the knee-jerk reaction is to get rid of it the fastest way possible.

It is well known that users can click OK, Accept or whatever without even reading the text of the popup. They are even capable of spending more time making sure they get rid of said popup as fast as possible than they would reading it.

48 ways you can avoid file-scrambling, data-stealing miscreants – or so says the Ransomware Task Force

Re: Reactive, not Proactive

We cannot change, at least, not yet. Excel, Word & Outlook, not to mention Access, are way too engrained in our IT environment to allow for upsetting the boat.

Ironically, all the big names are doing their damndest to make change possible. Once everything is in The Cloud (TM), it'll be a cinch to ditch Windows and go for a more secure Linux environment.

So support The Cloud (TM) and we'll be able to kill Windows at some point in an undetermined future.

Billions in data protection lawsuits rides on Google's last-ditch UK Supreme Court defence for Safari Workaround sueball

Re: errmmm

Wondering the same thing. This is the UK though, there isn't the same shark culture in the legal area, if I'm not mistaken.

In any case, it's hardly surprising that Google is fighting this tooth and nail. If this goes through it could cost Google an arm and a leg.

It would be a first though.