Posts by Pascal Monett

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

"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.

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)

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

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

Fascism always finds a way.

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.

Anthropic scanning Claude chats for queries about DIY nukes for some reason

Claude

I prefer using Charlotte myself . . .

Not again! Microsoft blames config tweak for 365 outage in parts of North America

Learn ? You do that in school.

Microsoft is a company. It doesn't learn, it decides.

Congressman proposes bringing back letters of marque for cyber privateers

I'm not sure people from "the democratic world" are so "desperate" to get in.

People from poor countries are understandably looking to improve their lives. Mexico, Venezuela, yes. But there isn't a massive influx of immigrants from Germany, France, Italy or Spain, now is there ?

Developer jailed for taking down employer's network with kill switch malware

"Eaton had no comment on the sentence"

Just like he won't have any comment when working the fries.

And nothing of value will have been lost.

Bank reverses decision to replace 45 customer service staff with AI chatbot

"bring advanced AI to customers and employees"

Yeah, sure. Whenever we get "advanced" AI I'll agree.

We don't even have AI now, what gives you the right to talk about advanced AI ? Do you have access to some special version that no one knows about yet ?

Marketing will remain marketing, but a fucking reality check is in order here.

FydeOS offers ChromeOS without the Google strings attached

Google-account-free operation

I like that. Anything that allows me to manage my hardware and software the way I decide it should work is a Good Thing^TM for me.

Google tries to trump iPhone launch with AI-powered Pixel 10 range

Adaptive Audio

You need AI for that now ? I thought you just needed a sensor, like, for exmple, off the top of my mind, the microphone that's already included, plus a bit of local CPU code to adjust the volume "automagically".

But no, now you to send the data God knows where to have it treated by God knows what and spend a portion of your Internet bandwidth on that simple function.

I am curious to see just how fast and how far this new AI-Pixel version will crater. I hope the hole will be deep.

The UK Online Safety Act is about censorship, not safety

Re: "adult content providers"

I dispute that.

Nobody is saying that Blade, Die Hard or Predator are adult content films. They are for mature audiences, for sure, but they have no adult content.

Adult content is porn.

Just look at the other posts.

"adult content providers"

I love how far we all go to avoid the word "PORN".

It's PORN.

PORN.

If you're an actual adult, you should be able to deal with the word.

AWS CEO says using AI to replace junior staff is 'Dumbest thing I've ever heard'

How refreshing

It is reassuring to learn that an important industrial figure is aware that you need to educate and train actual humans if you want your company to thrive in the future.

Pseudo-AI can eventually be a useful crutch, but it is nothing but a crutch. If you don't have a human to ask the proper questions, pseudo-AI will never be able to answer (whether right or, more likely, wrong).

Baidu robocabs break even on one metric in low-fare China, company expects to cash in elsewhere

Baidu : 45% guaranteed non-human code.

You can keep it. I'm not riding in that.

Post-privacy AI glasses claim to listen to your every word

will make people "super intelligent"

Take them behind the chemical shed and shoot them.

Now.

Microsoft stays mum about M365 Copilot on-demand security bypass

“We appreciate"

Another bullshit answer from a bullshit mouthpiece employed by a bullshit company.

China cut itself off from the global internet for an hour on Wednesday

"Chinese netizens couldn’t reach most websites hosted outside China, which is inconvenient"

Inconvenient why ?

Almost nobody outside China speaks Chinese (Mandarin), and almost no one in the billion-plus population under Bejing's iron rule speaks English, so where's the problem ?

If China's own network admins cut off access to the world for their state-sponsored network terrorists, I think that that is that much time saved from bothering about them.

Amazon quietly fixed Q Developer flaws that made AI agent vulnerable to prompt injection, RCE

prompt injection

How is it that, in 2025, we still have stupendous idiots that leave known attack vectors open to anyone ?

This is not a new thing. It's almost as old as I am, and well documented.

Stop using pimply-faced teenagers with a fresh diploma and zero experience to do important work.

Talk to the bot: Salesforce AI agents could replace US govt employees

"assisted by an AI agent"

Assisted ? Are you sure that that's the right word ?

Fried chips: UK's nascent semi industry risks faltering

"you have to keep it up"

That's what she said . . .

Latest Windows 11 insider builds hide secret File Explorer dark mode

Okay, I made the mistake of actually searching for this horror.

Now excuse me while I bleach my eyeballs.

Wouah

So now, you've got Dark Mode, and Full Dark Mode.

Because they couldn't be arsed to do it right the first time.

What an advancement ! What an achievement ! What a waste of time.

AWS still cares enough about Intel to order up a fresh batch of custom Xeons

"order up a fresh batch of custom Xeons"

Well everyone can make a mistake now and then . . .

McDonald's not lovin' it when hacker exposes nuggets of rotten security

"thanks to a faulty OAuth implementation"

Yup.

Security is complicated. You need to know what you're doing. It's not enough to read an online how to.

Welcome to the real world.

Deal with it.

Intel ghosts researcher who found web apps spilled 270K staff records

"Intel ghosts researcher"

Well, yes.

Poor little Intel. Already bleeding from a thousand cuts to its billions in the bank.

You wouldn't want it to waste another piddling thousands on an idiot who actually helped it, now would you ?

Microsoft crams Copilot AI directly into Excel cells

I protest.

Borkzilla is the definition of shite.

Uncle Sam asks industry if it has AI that'll make procurement suck less

"Uncle Sam asks industry if it has AI"

Quick answer : it doesn't.

You want to spend a fortune and look like you're doing something without actually accomplishing anything ? Step right here . . .

End well, this won't: UK commissioner suggests govt stops kids from using VPNs

"stops kids from using VPNs"

And how exactly are you going to manage that ?

First of all, you'd have to have the means to determine that it's a child using the VPN (because guess what ? Adults have professional reasons to use VPNs. I know that because I have a Swiss customer that requires that I join its network from Switzerland. I'm not going to drive 300km every time I need to connect to their network).

Then, you'd have to determine that "the child" is doing something that you have decided is "unwholesome". Who are you to decide what is "wholesome" ?

Molten salt nuclear reactors slated to power Google datacenters in 2030

Thorium reactors are the future - until fusion

Thorium reactors have the advantage of passive security, and being able to recyle the nuclear waste of PWR reactors as well.

We need Thorium reactors to clean up our bad choices, even if/when fusion comes into being.

Every question you ask, every comment you make, I'll be recording you

the option to 'Make this chat discoverable.'

I'm sorry, this is 2025.

How many times do you need to be warned that social media is just milking you to get the message ?

If you can't understand by now, then there's only a cluebat to the face - or a great big hole in your bank account - that will get the message across.

And I'm sorry if I do not sympathize.

Boffins say tool can sniff 5G traffic, launch 'attacks' without using rogue base stations

Re: Snee-five-ject...

Well, it's pretty simple.

When you can submit better code, you can name whatever you want.

From PAYE to P45: HMRC staff fired for prying into taxpayer data

"helping themselves to taxpayer records"

"anxiety clouded his judgment"

Anxiety about what ? Finding out that some people earn more than you do ?

Welcome to the real world. Now go look for a job that pays better and where you do not have acceee to other people's data.

Good luck with that.

Google admits anticompetitive conduct in Australia, agrees to modest fine

"agrees to modest fine"

Isn't that nice of them ?

The next time I get stopped for speeding, I'll agree a "modest" fine of €10.

For fuck's sake, who is running the economy already ?

Generative AI isn't just a matter of life and death. It's far more important than that

"this is gonna get ugly"

The quicker it gets uglier, the sooner we might be rid of this bullshit.

Teen interns brute-forced a disk install, with predictable results

The real lesson here

" is how little some most companies care about training"

FTFY

Training is expensive. It is based on the idea that the emplyee is going to stick around and benefit the company from the training.

Interns are not really expected to stick around.

Especially in the days of low-capacity (compared to today) hard disks whose fragility was easily demonstrated, they should not have been in charge of testing that disk without supervision.

Failure on the part of the manager. He didn't do his job. So it's normal that he deals with a replacement.

Sysadmin cured a medical mystery by shifting a single cable

“applauded me as a real wizard.”

Which he obviously was.

The £9 billion question: To Microsoft or not to Microsoft?

"Are UK taxpayers getting real value from SPA24"

The question should be : Are UK taxpayers is anyone getting real value from SPA24 Microsoft ?

Sharepoint ? Excuse me while I ROLFL. SQL databases are 1000 times more efficient.

Active Directory ? Does Linux need that ? I don't think so.

Anything Borkzilla does is a vector of attack. That is not the case of Linux.

But I'm just pissing in the wind here . . .

Back to being FOSS, Redis delivers a new, faster version

Sorry, but why do we need so many Open Source licenses ?

Color me stupid, but Open Source is Open Source. How come there are different versions of it ?

Yes, I understand that various entities see an interest in subverting Open Source for their own selfish interests, but if they cite that are based on Open Source, then Open Source should be the rule.

If you don't want to publish your code under Open Source, that you fucking stay Closed Source and shut the fuck up about it.

Desktop-as-a-service now often cheaper to run than laptops - even after thin client costs

"Cost is a big reason for the shift"

The cost of what ?

Dealing with one employees daily work, or dealing with risk of having your entire worforce's date on someone else's server that can be hacked any time ?

I swear, if ever I am in a situation to have a meeting with a Gartner marketing representative, I'll start the meeting by putting a loaded Smith&Wesson on the table and then I'll say : "Okay, let's talk reality.".

Datacenter diplomacy: Australia commits to help Vanuatu build bit barns

prime minister Jotham Napat

Smells like a profiteer looking to sweeten his retirement.

Are you pro-independance, or are you insane ?

Accepting Beijing's influence will only tranform you into another Hong Kong.

How many more examples do you need ?

Doctors get dopey if they rely too much on AI, study suggests

Expert systems are not pseudo-AI

I don't care what interface you are using to consult a true expert system in your domain.

An expert system hasn't been "trained" on scraping posts from Reddit. It has been build on actual experience in the field.

But morons don't care about that, and they vastly outnumber intelligent people who know what they're dealing with.

Tsunami forecasting about to get a lot faster thanks to El Capitan super

Re: Very cool

Did you copy that from ChatGPT ?

No "AI" involved

So the results are likely to be reliable.

Given the known consequences of tsunamis, the last thing we want is have a hallucinating bullshit generator involved in tsunami warnings.

Gov't HR department latest to get nastygram from auditors

"a nastygram from federal auditors"

And that will change what, exactly, with the orange shitgibbon in charge at the White House ?

If he cares to take a look at this, it's a coin toss whether he'll fire the director or support him.

UK expands police facial recognition rollout with 10 new vans heading to a town near you

"10 new vans heading to a town near you"

And here is the true beginning of V.