Posts by Pascal Monett

Jury tells Apple to cough up two days of annual profit in 4G/LTE patent damages retrial

Re: Apple's threats

It does however demonstrate the toys-out-of-the-pram mentality of the Board.

Such a childish attitude from one of the richest companies in the world is pathetic.

Palantir abandons any attempt at curating nice-guy image with 'Global Information Dominance Experiments'

"China has an underground port for submarines on Hainan island"

Well if you know that I'm pretty sure the US Navy knows that as well and has a sub on station tasked with counting all sub activity.

Brilliant !

I see we have a Yes Minister historian at doctorate level here.

Well done !

Starliner takes off ... back to the factory and not space

Poor Starliner

On the other hand, it's not very surprising that a company that has forgotten how to make a plane properly has trouble making a rocket.

Just sayin'

See that last line in the access list? Yeah, that means you don't have an access list

"The contractors were fired."

And I hope they weren't paid.

Elevating bork to a new level (if the touchscreen worked)

Re: if someone adds another floor

Oh, right. Happens every day, that, doesn't it ?

I'm sure all buildings are built to ensure that any number of floors can be added on a whim. It's not like there are any structural issues, right ?

I'm pretty sure that I've already seen button-operated elevators that are quite efficient in managing the wait time before the user gets to go in.

A touchscreen, by itself, is not going to enhance anything. It's the software behind that does all the work, and the software doesn't care if the button is physical or not.

Perhaps regretting those Instagram, WhatsApp acquisitions, UK watchdog suggests Facebook offloads GIF haven Giphy

It's interesting to discover the consequences, sometimes

Who would've thought a GIF company could stir so much controversy.

And really, Zuck, denying Pepsi its GIF ? Are you so insecure that you can't graciously let a real-world company have a GIF ? Pathetic.

But we knew that.

Re: No it frikkin isn't.

Damn right.

United Nations calls for moratorium on sale of surveillance tech like NSO Group's Pegasus

"has little chance"

More like zero chance.

The UN is all nice and cuddly, but it has no teeth.

Every government is sovereign, and if that government wants to use surveillance tools on its own population, then By God it will, moratorium be damned.

The real issue is that, if there is a country somewhere that refuses to use said tools, it might become a haven for hardened criminals and, <gasp>, actual terrorists.

What then ?

China stops networked vehicle data going offshore under new infosec rules

Chief of network security

That is one job I would be very wary of taking in China. Over here, if a car gets hacked, it's "Oh well, we'll try better next time".

Over there, it's "Here's the invoice for the bullet".

Aside from that, and aside from sending data back to China, I rather like those rules. Ensuring vehicle data security is something I've been waiting for my European car makers to declare themselves on, but all they seem to want to do is ensure that every car's entertainment system is firmly embedded in the CAN bus.

Booo.

Thief hands back at least a third of $600m in crypto-coins stolen from Poly Network

If only it were that simple.

You need to factor in international borders, the limits of police authority, the lack of diplomatic agreements on the subject, and the fact that criminals have a tendency to target people in countries where they do not live.

The use case is valid. Unfortunately.

Singaporean telco leaked personal data of over 57,000 customers

"the company suspects the stolen data file was found within a day"

No. The company feverishly hopes that the stolen data file was found within a day.

Sounds more like it. Besides, there is absolutely no way to prove that declaration anyway. File creation dates can be fiddled with.

Good news: There's a slightly increased chance of asteroid Bennu hitting Earth. Bad news: It's still really slight

“We’ve never modeled an asteroid’s trajectory to this precision before”

I'm not entirely sure that that is actually reassuring . . .

Microsoft emits last preview of .NET 6 and C# 10, but is C# becoming as complex as C++?

"the ability to use operators on generic types."

Generic types.

I will likely be downvoted to hell on this, but IMO generic types are the bane of proper programming.

If you don't know what you're working with, how can you possibly write the proper code to deal with it ?

Obviously, I am for strong variable typing (in case you didn't guess). I like to know that I'm dealing with a String, or an Integer, or a Long. Variant makes my skin crawl, although there are some cases where I know I won't be able to avoid it.

Generic types is just handing over all the issues to the compiler and hoping for the best. That is not good when you're responsible for your code.

There, that was my 2 cents. Blast away.

India's return to space fails after first locally built cryogenic engine experiences 'anomaly'

Re: apparently needed more on the ground testing

It does indeed seem that the CE-7.5 needs a bit more "development".

It's the risk in everything related to rockets.

I wish them better luck next time.

It ain't called rocket science for nothing.

China plans laws for 'healthy' development of tech companies

China needs better "public opinion propaganda"

The word "propaganda" is unfortunate.

Propaganda means fake news, falsehoods erected into fact, and brainwashing of the public so everyone believes it.

China does not need better propaganda, no one does.

China, and every other country, needs journalists that can tell the actual truth without fear of reprisal.

If your news is filled with truth, you don't need propaganda.

Naughty karaoke is China's next tech crackdown target

"China is officially not very keen on that sort of thing"

Officially, of course.

In practice, Comrade Xi has his special waterhole and mistress waiting for him.

Salesforce gets into the vid-streaming with original content caper, promises digital inspriation

"four channels of virtual conference fun"

It will be interesting to see how well they perform.

Personally, I think we're all getting Zoom fatigue, but then there's a lot of people who would probably like to and can't, for whatever reason, so they'll likely jump at the chance to still attend virtually.

Hopefully it won't be just PR and marketing guff.

Google staff who work from home might see pay cut under corporate policy – reports

"reductions in pay for employees that [..] choose to work from home permanently"

No problem - they'll just work less hours to compensate.

GOP lawmakers ask for former Huawei handset biz Honor to be placed the Entity List

And all companies in the USA are not subject to National Security letters which they can tell no one about ?

Perfect example. The company that checks your phone for what it thinks are iffy pics and reports them to the police.

Just what we need.

Re: Biden is just Trump with a different hat

I don't think so, at least, not entirely.

He does not appear to be a neo-Nazi sympathizer, not does he appear to be a despicable idiot rambling incoherently when asked a question.

He answers questions, sometimes directly, but generally without hesitation.

He also knows how to stand up properly.

Oh and, incidentally, he takes decisions that actually benefit the US citizens that don't have a billion in their bank account.

Come fly with me. But first we need to find a boot device

Administrative definitions have nothing to do with distance.

PR director at Chinese Twitter analogue Weibo detained on bribery and fraud charges

"China's government [..] is always enormously intolerant of corruption"

That's funny, I've heard I can't count how many tales of how companies wanting to implement in China had to literally pay they way to get things done in any semblance of a reasonable timeframe.

Has that really changed ?

Microsoft responds to PrintNightmare by making life that little bit harder for admins

"Requiring an administrator for changes to printer drivers"

It is insane that a printer need any sort of admin access at all.

Then again, it's Windows, so insanity is baked in.

Boffins propose Pretty Good Phone Privacy to end pretty invasive location data harvesting by telcos

And if you're using a VPN, it could be entirely on the wrong continent.

The web was done right the first time. An ancient 3D banana shows Microsoft does a lot right, too

"Surely such an ancient piece of code [..] wouldn't launch?"

I had that kind of surprise with Chuck Yeager's Air Combat.

It's an old DOS game from, IIRC, a bit before Microsoft Flight Simulator, and it was a lot of fun to play because you could configure what you going up against to a rather impressive degree (for the time, especially).

I first played it on my trusty 8086, and it ran fine.

Years later, I was fiddling around on my brand-new 486DX66 and suddenly, I wondered how CYAC would react. Now, I have tried quite a few DOS games since the 286 was done and buried, and most of them end practically as soon as you start the game because they are generally tied to the CPU frequency.

Not CYAC. I don't know how they programmed that thing, but it ran just fine on my 486. I'm sure it would also run fine on a Pentium. Don't know about today's multi-core CPUs though.

Maybe I'll have to try that . . .

We'll drop SBOMs on UK.gov to solve Telecoms Security Bill's technical demands, beams Cisco

Oh really ?

"There's always that risk that customers come to you and say, I can't possibly buy your product, because you've got maybe one version out of date of OpenSSL. "

Are you trying to make me believe that you have customers that actually check out the technical aspects of your product before buying it ?

Because that would be a first, in my experience. Generally, the customer buys the product, then finds out what doesn't work and IT has to spend time (and possibly money) to solve the issue. Then the manager responsible can strutt his stuff in front of the Board and boast about how he made incredible gains for the company.

Bill for HMS Vanity Gin Palace swells by £50m in two months

Re: a very select few people knew of the existence of it

Plus you, Putin and half the Internet.

You can now live life like Paul Allen on Microsoft cofounder's luxury yacht for '£1m a week'

Indeed, my thought as well.

Unless, of course, the people sleeping in the crew quarters understood that they were the crew.

I don't think that would work very well.

Re: I can't think of a holiday venue I'd want less.

For a holiday, I completely agree with you, I'd go anywhere but on a boat.

But for a nice evening out with the missus, good meal, pleasant view ? I could do with that every now and then.

Except for the bill, obviously. I'd have a bit of trouble tipping . . .

Re: It must take a really special kind of character to remain a billionaire

Oh I'm sure the money helps.

Ask Bezos

Vietnamese province that hosts Big Tech's factories now fashionably COVID-free

We're going to have to live with it

COVID is not going away. We're going to have to deal with living our lives despite it.

After all, the flu claims hundreds of thousands of lives every year, and we don't quarantine for that.

Samsung boss Lee Jae-yong awarded Get Out Of Jail Free card

"the nation feels Samsung needs his leadership"

Hello Mister Crook, could you please go back to the very environment that you abused and got condemned for ? We've apparently got nothing better at this time.

Yes, please do help yourself to a cigar . . or the box.

GitHub's npm gave away a package name while it was in use, causing rethink

"What happens if the owner of a popular package dies"

That's a good point. If the package name management system is changed to ensure that only the owner of the name can relinquish it, then if said owner is no longer alive, there will be no one to relinquish it.

Stalemate.

So there will either have to be a process to take ownership by the package management authority, or the package owner should be prompted to nominate a "secondary" owner (and not himself with another email address) in case of non-response under 90 days or something like that.

In any case, it is not an easy situation to resolve.

He didn't say all the blame was on the package developer, he said some of it was.

And, as for "evidence of continuous use", NPM does not appear to have checked that since they just waited a month and basically decided "to hell with this".

Never Knowingly Underborked: Double trouble at Southampton's John Lewis

All the borkage

This is a clear sign that companies bring in outside competence to set up the displays and ensure the content, and then let it rot because nobody on-site has a clue how it works.

When working in a retail store that has an electronics department, that is particularly credibility-destroying.

Don't believe the hype that AI-generated 'master faces' can break into face recognition systems any time soon

Re: Be careful what you look like

What the research really demonstrates is that, in our AI future, if you're white, you're screwed because everything will recognize you.

You want privacy and security ?

Better off coloured.

“three leading deep face recognition systems”

Deep face ? What the hell is that expression for ?

I get deep fake. Statistical analysis applied to creating an image (or video) and inserting another one. Okay, that's fine.

But there is no deep face. There is facial recognition, period.

Stop gargling yourselves with meaningless verbiage just to make you seem capable.

The sideloader weeps tonight: Unsealed court docs claim Google said 'install friction' would ‘drastically limit' Epic's reach

"the experience of getting Fortnite on Android"

Sorry ?

There are people who play an FPS game on a smartphone ?

Fortnight is to be played on a proper PC, with keyboard and mouse.

Kids these days . . .

UK's Driver & Vehicle Standards Agency signs £15m in cloud contracts

It's a Standards website

It doesn't have interactive content.

It's a text website, with a few videos.

They can't handle a server ? They need to "outsource" their IT on that ?

Dammit, give the contract to me. I'll set up two servers on two seperate lines with failover and the job's done.

And I'll only take £1M/year.

NASA comes up empty on Perseverance rover's first Mars sample drilling attempt

Point taken.

I'm sure there's an alternate universe where we all live in peace and have invented computers and the Internet in an eco-friendly way.

It's just not ours.

Wireless powersats promise clean, permanent, abundant energy. Sound familiar?

Re: Lets do the maths

You're just repeating the article author's point : it ain't happening.

Smashing piece, BTW. I'm keeping this as a reference on the subject.

Alibaba fires manager accused of sexually assaulting colleague

"web giant lacks formal sexual harassment policy"

It shouldn't have to have one. You sexually assault someone ? You're fired and the police are called in.

It's simple.

The crackdown

"the ongoing government crackdown on big tech, which Beijing sees as callously indifferent to Chinese values and unhelpfully focused on profit "

Yup. They got that right.

Electrocution? All part of the service, sir!

Now that was a brilliant off-the-cuff quip.

Good on him !

"The power lead approached the PC..."

I lived a moment like that - and I was the one holding the power lead.

It was at the beginning of my career in Luxembourg, all those years ago (my daughter wasn't even born yet). Our company had just recieved shipment of a gaggle of tower PCs (they were for the training room that was being set up) and I was tasked with creating an application that required server access.

I needed a server.

I went to the head of IT and asked him if I could take one of the new arrivals to use as a server and he agreed. I went down and took one out of its box and brought it our corner office. I set up the requisite peripherals and went to plug in the PC.

POW !

Flash of light and short tongue of flame shot out of the PSU. The PC was dead.

What I didn't know is that the shipment came from the US. It was configured for 110V, and I hadn't thought to check that the tiny red switch on the PSU was in the proper configuration.

I went to explain myself to the head of IT, who was a bit miffed but told me to get another server. I completed my task, wiped the server from the machine and brought it back to storage.

By that time, all the boxes had "110V !" written on them in big red letters.

Ever since, I systematically check any new PSU or desktop box to ensure that it is in the right setting.