Posts by Pascal Monett

ESA's XMM-Newton finds huge filament of missing matter

"the filament clocks at over ten million degrees"

Far be it from me to question scientific observation, but how is it that a disparate cloud of gas in the middle of the nothingness of space can retain such a temperature ?

That's a bloody high level of activity for electrons that haven't been doing anything for eons.

Given a few more eons, I'm guessing they'll cool down enough to coalesce into stars and solar systems, maybe even whole galaxies, but still I have to wonder : what was their initial temperature ?

Europe slams online tat bazaar AliExpress for dodging obligation to stop dodgy traders

AliExpress

I'm not convinced that AliExpress has the same notion of illegal that the EU does.

After all, it is well known that, for Windows 95, tat bazaars in China were openly selling hacked copies of the CD without any trouble from Chinese authorities.

Microsoft testing PC-to-Cloud-PC failover for those times your machine dies or disappears

"connect to their Reserve Cloud PC within minutes from any device"

I take that to mean that Borkzilla is mirroring your PC 100% of the time, instantly.

You had better not be on an ADSL link for this service. I'm guessing GB fiber is mandatory.

Just another excuse for Redmond to have control over all your data, but this one will really cost you.

But all that aside, I'm just wondering : if this is an instant copy of your PC environment, what happens when you get pwned by malware ?

What are the use cases for this tech ? Is Redmond promising that its Reserve Cloud PC will be immune to malware (it can't) ? What happens if you've lost your connection and only notice half an hour later ? A PC is, after all, made for working locally.

And when you do recover the use of your PC, what synchronization options are there ? And why should you trust them ?

Trump administration set to waive TikTok sell-or-die deadline for a third time

Re: 4. Lifestyle hacks with less credibility than Trump

Now that is an impressive accomplishment !

Re: rational

You need intelligence to be rational.

The MAGA crowd put all together does not have enough neurons to be intelligent, so forget about rational.

"ban TikTok on grounds that it represented a threat to national security"

So ? Is it ?

Because if it is, then what are you waiting for ?

Military-tech upstart Anduril pushes further into NATO with German arms maker deal

Anduril

As a Tolkien fan, I know exactly what that refers to. No, no link. Look it up.

As a European, it amuses me immensly to see just how successful the orange baboon is in isolating his country from the rest of the world.

A wall for Mexico ? My good sir (I'm being polite here), you're making a much greater wall of indifference and distrust and its cost will be the matter of debate for decades to come.

Eat or be eaten by AI, Amazon CEO warns staff

Re: It will take that long

No it won't.

AI is already a flop.

It's only manglement that hasn't realized it yet.

Minecraft cheaters never win ... but they may get malware

You do not cheat at Minecraft

I know there are people who absolutely have to have infinite life and whatever. I knew one of those guys (yeah, he was a guy, somehow I don't think girls are that much into cheating in games - so sue me), and was tremendously amused at his rage with Half Life 2. You see, there was a life cheat, but the developers had found an extremely clever way to block it : at one point, you had to die to continue playing.

Cue said cheater bitterly complaining that the game was blocking his progress. Cue me laughing my head off.

But cheating at Minecraft ? What's the point ?

You can create a Build world where you have access to everything and mobs (enemy monsters) ignore you.

Oh, you're part of the scum that just have to have every advantage you can whatever game you play. On a public server, of course. Actually learning something does not interest you, even when you're playing a game that allows you all the time in the world to learn the mechanics and get used to how it plays.

I pity you. Poor Neanderthal.

Microsoft broke DHCP for Windows Server last Patch Tuesday

Yay !

Congratulations Redmond, you've just found another justification in having revoked your QA department : you have your entire customer base doing it for you !

Isn't that the ultimate savings ?

Because none of them are going to leave, now are they ? Of course not. They stay tied hands and feet to your benevolence, and totally ignore how much money it costs them to remain under your control instead of hiring some competent network specialists and going to Linux, which would condemn you to the dustbin that you deserve.

Because that would mean making their management learn something, instead of going for the tried and true Excel charts and Powerpoint presentations.

Dear God forgive me, but sometimes I wish our entire economical world would collapse so that we could migrate to something that is actually functional.

Unfortunately, that would mean something like this, and the cost in innocent lives would be more than I could bear.

So we'll just have to slog it through and wait for the current generation of useless manglement to die out before maybe having a chance at getting true performance and professionals back into the enterprise arena.

I'll be dead by then anyway, so good luck, kids.

Do you trust Xi with your 'private' browsing data? Apple, Google stores still offer China-based VPNs, report says

Interesting.

I stand corrected.

Not that it makes much of a difference.

Not the same subject.

That is Beijing managing China and suppression of Free Speech, which has never been included in whatever serves them as a Constitution. That is not hoovering up browsing data.

I don't trust ANYONE with my private browsing data

But there's fuck all I can do about it. Somebody has to answer my request to connect to El Reg, and the first in line is my Internet provider, or my phone company if I'm using my "smart"phone. I have no choice about that, and what they do with that data vs what they say they do is beyond my control.

Google has its sticky fingers everywhere, thanks to its "free" libraries every web developer is using these days, and it's kind of difficult to block that 100% of the time (but I try my best with NoScript and uBlock Origin - obviously my default browser is not Chrome). Facebook is easier to block, but only because I don't have an account, so I don't care and no website will refuse to work if I do. As for Apple, I don't have an iPhone or anything Cupertino-based, so that is also blocked by default (thank God for NoScript).

Xi is not my problem. As mentioned before, he doesn't give a gnat's fart about me and there's nothing he can do to me. If he gets my browsing info from my VPN provider, so be it.

But there is one thing that gets my hackles up every time :

"Chinese law can force any China-based company to assist national intelligence agencies and share customer data with Beijing "

That kind of declaration should automatically be followed by "just like the USA can do to any American-based company with its National Security letters".

Enough of this gratuitious China bashing. NSA letters have existed since 1978, so I think it is safe to say that Beijing is just following Washington's lead on this subject.

Firefox is dead to me – and I'm not the only one who is fed up

Don't forget NoScript.

The day FireFox manages to make NoScript unavailable is the day I will ditch it.

Not before.

Defense Department signs OpenAI for $200 million 'frontier AI' pilot project

“Don’t use our service to harm yourself or others."

Do No Evil, unless you're giving us a boatload of money in which case : how can we help you ?

Florida man expands crypto empire with new wireless service and phone

Trump Mobile

I'll just file that next to Trump Steak . . . in the circular filing cabinet.

Microsoft brings 365 suite on-prem as part of sovereign cloud push

"as part of a move to satisfy European regulations"

And mostly to give Redmond a shield against those mounting rumors about moving to Linux.

Hey look ! You can stay with us, everything is on-prem now (like it ussed to be) !

AFRINIC election delayed after ISP Association wins injunction over voter rights

Nice

"ICANN learned that members of the Nominations Committee overseeing the election may have a conflict of interest and called for their replacement "

Nice to see that ICANN is doing its job again.

Can't help but wonder if a certain slice of Pai would have bothered.

Eurocops arrest suspected Archetyp admin, shut down mega dark web drug shop

"there is no safe haven for those who profit from harm"

It'll just take us fifteen years to find you and take you down.

Re: And the game of whack a mole continues

Indeed, but with that kind of money involved, what do you expect ?

Salesforce study finds LLM agents flunk CRM and confidentiality tests

"a very high margin opportunity"

And therein lies the rub. It's inefficient, it hallucinates, but we promise you it'll make you save money (on salaries) and might even make you money (maybe even more than us).

Yeah. Looks like we're getting closer to the peak of inflated expectations, though.

Researchers claim spoof-proof random number generator breakthrough

"recorded publicly on a hash chain"

What ?

Did someone finally find a good use for blockchain ?

And have they thought about scaling and concurrent use ?

Cyber weapons in the Israel-Iran conflict may hit the US

"fully reversible DDoS attacks"

Um, sorry but I don't see the use an attack method that can be "reversed". Does that mean it can be bounced back to the attacker ?

I've tried to search for this, but the best reference I get is this one, and they don't mention that kind of attack.

Could someone enlighten me ?

Re: Macron: "France reaffirms Israel’s right to defend itself"

Every time that idiot opens his mouth, he manages to put his foot in it.

Thank goodness he can't be reelected.

Enterprise AI adoption stalls as inferencing costs confound cloud customers

"it becomes unsustainable from a cost perspective"

But, but . . we've been told for nearly two decades now that The Cloud<supTM</sup> is the best-performing and most cost-effective computing environment there is ! That businesses should all move massively to cloudy platforms because their costs will become negligeable !

Was that all, <gasp>, a lie ?!?

Apple fixes zero-click exploit underpinning Paragon spyware attacks

"keep updating their devices and turning on Lockdown Mode"

What ? You mean I have to actually do something ?

Well I never . . .

User demanded a 'wireless' computer and was outraged when its battery died

Well it certainly defied their normal conventions.

Wanted: Junior cybersecurity staff with 10 years' experience and a PhD

Re: Crisis

I have to say that I agree with absolutely everything in your post.

Although I am getting close to pensionable age, so I'd rather it wait a bit longer to become a true relic.

Let's be clear

Recruitment offer that demands you to be young and highly qualified and experienced at the same time ? What a surprise.

This has been going on for decades already. Companies want to put you to work and pay you peanuts for the priviledge. Everybody knows the stupidity of this, but somehow it keeps on happening.

BOFH: Rerouting responsibility via firewall configs

The BOFH is back to his true form

It's not a real BOFH episode if there isn't someone missing by its end.

A great read from start to finish !

Danish department determined to dump Microsoft

Re: I've heard this too many times to believe it.

May I remind you that China has it's own version of Linux (that it uses) ?

That, thanks to Trump and his crass ignorance of the slightest notion of diplomacy, China is now gearing up its own, homegrown semiconductor industry ?

That China has its own automobile industry, its own smartphone industry, and is going to be the first country in the world with a functional Thorium power plant ?

If there is one country on this planet that will have no problem kicking out Microsoft, it's China.

I seriously doubt that Bejing is using OneDrive to store its administrative papers.

Re: Well good luck, seriously ...

Ask Munich. If I recall correctly, it made a lot of noise about going full Open Source twice, and failed miserably.

My understanding, at the time, is that it was just a move to get Redmond to lower license costs.

You are definitely right though, times have indeed changed and the blind trust the world has given to the USA for decades is now pretty much gone.

I will be very interested in seeing what happens with the Danish.

They're not particularly known for making bold statements without following them with acts.

DeepSeek installer or just malware in disguise? Click around and find out

CAPTCHA

Now used to ensure that crminals are not wasting their time.

Will wonders never cease ?

Canva to job candidates: Thou shalt use AI during interviews

"Understanding when and how to leverage AI effectively"

Simple : never.

Canva is apparently in the business of making pretty pictures. I have tried Leonardo. While it is honestly rather impressive, Leonardo apparently doesn't know what an Imperial Star Destroyer looks like and cannot reproduce anything closer than a triangular blob. One would think that, since 1977, the image of an ISD is basically public domain but, apparently, George Lucas' lawyers are much more efficient than the lawyes of all the authors whose books have been scraped as fodder to "teach" LLMs.

DARPA is testing a device soldiers can swallow to make them less stressed

I'd prefer a glass of whisky if you don't mind . . .

Half of businesses rethink ditching humans for customer service bots

Go ahead

And die.

Huawei founder says USA overestimates its semiconductor prowess

"Huawei is not that great yet"

I'm not so sure, what with all the efforts to get it banned, surely it must be rather good . . .

Waymo problems in La La Land as robotaxis set aflame

"business is going on as normal in most areas"

Of course it is.

It's not like a few burning automated vehicles is going to keep Silicon Valley startups from getting more venture capital and setting themselves up for going public, right ?

As AI gallops through the federal workforce, lawmakers once again call for expanded training

"expanded training"

You do not train humans on AI. AI trains itself on humans.

And Terminator is going to become a documentary.

ICANN waves hands in protest at AFRINIC election arrangement

"not a hostile takeover or power grab"

No, of course not. Lu Peng is based in Hong Kong. It's not like this is China attempting to extend its influence in Africa.

Oh, wait . . .

China orders trial of aged care robots that can cook, clean, and provide emotional support

"provide emotional support"

A hunk of metal and plastic is supposed to be able to provide emotional support ?

I'm absolutely not surprised that Elon Musk is going along with this. Actually, I would have thought Zuckerberg would have been first in line.

But the day some mechanical contraption is supposed to be my emotional support is the day I'm asking Dirty Harry to put me out of my misery.

Musk and Trump take slap fight public as bromance ends

Re: two men enter

Neither of them are Men.

Two man-childs enter, and I definitely hope they both die of heart attack.

Given that they are both cowards, it will be a lot of posturing and bold words, then silence in the Thunderdome when they both find medical reasons for not attending.

Ukraine strikes Russian bomber-maker with hack attack

Re: The Best Description Of Trump

I liked that so much I searched for a link to save the article.

I found this.

I think I will have that framed.

Trump lifts US supersonic flight ban, says he's 'Making Aviation Great Again'

Re: Absolutely insane, as usual from the trump white house.

One can only hope.

Unfortunately, Idiocracy is looking more and more like a documentary every day.

Broadcom sends VMware to record revenue, margins, as most big customers sign for private cloud bundles

"87% of VMware’s top 10,000 customers"

. . have rewarded selfishness and greed.

Congratulations on continuing the time-honored tradition of going to Hell in a handbasket.

Japan's latest Moon landing written off as a failure after ispace probe goes dark

"The company says it can't communicate with the spacecraft"

It's kind of difficult to communicate with a pancake . . .

Better luck next time.

Trump’s cyber czar pick grilled over CISA cuts: ‘If we have a cyber 9/11, you’re the guy’

"We feel vulnerable"

You are vulnerable.

And the orange buffoon sitting in the Oval Office thinks that a TIVO is the height of technology.

The Soviet Union fell because of systemic corruption and the inability to accept reality.

It seems to me that the USA is following the same path.

More than a hundred backdoored malware repos traced to single GitHub user

No honor among thieves

Not the image I was looking for, but good enough.

HMRC: Crooks broke into 100k accounts, stole £43M from British taxpayer in late 2024

"This was not a cyberattack"

No, it was just our normal incompetence and lack of oversight, plus some outsiders being more intelligent about our systems than we are.

Everything is fine, move along, citizen. Move along.

China accuses Taiwan of running five feeble APT gangs, with US help

"Beijing complains it’s under relentless attack"

Oh, the poor little things.

Let me try and find a tear to shed . . . nope, none available.