Posts by Pascal Monett

Boffins find an 'actionable clock' hiding in your blood, ticking away to your death

"our completely unbiased approach"

I congratulate them if they have actually achieved that. Being totally unbiased about anything is already impressive.

SolarWinds issues software update – one it wrote for a change – to patch hole exploited in the wild

a patch it wrote this time

It is available on the SolarWinds FTP server, for which the access password security has been vastly reinforced.

It is now S0larWinds1234.

With a straight face, Putin agrees to do something about ransomware coming out of Russia, apparently

"mine cryptocurrency on smartphones"

I am aware that smartphones a quite powerful these days - for their form factor.

But it pays to know that entire racks of powerful machines are used in farms to mine funny monies ; a smartphone, as powerful as it may be, cannot hold a candle to a Nvidia GeForce RTX 3080.

So a mobile app to mine stupid money is about as useful as a tricycle in a Formula 1 competition. You'll get there one day, years after everyone else has forgotten you even exist.

But of course, the article used the right word when it said "marks". Yup, one born every minute.

Twitter U-turns after conferring society's highest honor – a blue check mark – on very obvious bot accounts

"profile pictures seemingly created by AI software"

Oh, so like TPDNE then ?

Lenovo says it’s crammed a workstation into a litre of space – less than three cans of beer

Re: Small RAM

That's not the way I understood it. I read it as a pair of SODIMM slots which can each handle 32GB.

So you can slot in 2 32GB DIMMs and get 64GB of DDRx RAM.

That's how I read it, in any case.

Re: Work from home

Agreed. That sentence felt strange to me as well.

Animators especially work with terabytes of data. Having a 6-screen setup at home with 64GB of RAM is not going to help them.

They're probably thirsting for a better connection with more bandwidth.

Kaseya restores SaaS, then 'performance issues' force a do-over

“With the large number of users coming back online in a short window"

Which is something you absolutely should have planned for and guarded against.

But no, you gave everyone the same startup time and then you're surprised that they all came in at that time.

Tsk, tsk.

Biden takes another step to discard Trump-era Chinese social media app ban

"China also fears the US gaining power through data"

With one caveat : the US already has boatloads more data than China, so China's fears are justified.

The US' fears are simply that China gets more data than it has.

And we are stuck in the middle, being data-raped all day long by everyone else.

Fun times, right ?

Google killed desktop Drive and replaced it with two apps. Now it’s killing those, and Drive for desktop is returning

Dancing to someone else's tune

It's great that someone offers a free product with useful functionality.

It's less great when that someone is an Internet behemoth that changes its mind on a whim. Disruptive is meant to improve the user experience, not destroy it.

Killing Drive and then ressurecting it to kill its successors demonstrates that nobody thought the whole thing through in the first place.

Google should test its products internally more thoroughly before offering them to the public, and then throwing everything away. Again.

NASA signs $1bn deal with Northrop Grumman to build studio apartment in lunar orbit with room for 3 vehicles

$187 million for a "small studio apartment"

Wow. Real-estate in space is one heck of a deal.

G20 finance ministers agree plan to make multinationals pay their 'fair share' of tax

"historic" [..] "seismic shift"

I'll believe that when I hear that, following the adoption of said proposals, Google/Facebook/Apple/etc is finally paying something in tax.

SteelSeries Apex Pro plays both sides of the mechanical keyboard fence – and wins

Re: I'm worried about longevity.

I have a Logitech G15 since a few years now.

Amber backlighting only, which is fine by me, and it is working like a charm.

I hope it will keep working like a charm for another good few years.

BOFH: Where there is darkness, let there be a light

Re: Anything with a network connection can be scanned

I'm sure that's true.

Now tell me how my keyboard, mouse, screens and other attached local hardware can be scanned over the network, whether you know about them or not.

Windows 11 still doesn't understand our complex lives – and it hurts

Re: Surprise surprise.

I disagree.

First of all, I doubt that the author of the article is an idiot.

Second, I do believe that he advanced a lot of valid arguments.

Teams is a nightmare for me and I only use it once a week. Microsoft is increasingly nightmarish and totally overstepping its bounds. Forcing me to log in with a corporate ID just to open Excel ? WTF ? Am I going to have to send a dick pic as well ?

Thankfully, my Borkzilla ID issues are constrained to an environment where an actual admin is available to solve issues since it is all for customers and I work on their own hardware (sent to me via UPS or whatever else last year).

I shudder to think of what I would have to go through if I had to deal with that shit on my personal hardware.

Thank God for Firefox + NoScript + uBlock Unity.

Indeed, but somehow it is not improving Firefox market penetration.

Ah, I see you found my PowerShell script called 'SiteReview' – that does not mean what you think it means

Re: Hands on...

Well it must be said : kudos all around.

Kudos to the lady who had the balls to go to her boss about it, and kudos to the boss who made a no-nonsense response with immediate effect.

If only there were more people like that at Uber and other such places of despicable behavior.

Uncle Sam sanctions Chinese AI outfits for links to Xinjiang Uyghur human-rights abuses

Do you really think they tag your photos for your convenience ?

Revealed: Perfect timings for creation of exemplary full English breakfast

Re: Frozen hash browns - I am shocked

I'm not awake enough before breakfast to go through all that.

I'll buy my hash browns in a proper frozen bag, thank you.

Besides, we're talking about breakfast. I'm not picky at that time of day.

Taiwan chip giant sees 20 per cent revenue spike as industry struggles to meet demand

1.5 million wafers a year

I wonder what this vast increase in production capability will have as an impact on water pollution.

All those additional millions of gallons of water aren't going to clense themselves.

Biden order calls for net neutrality, antitrust action, ISP competition – and right to repair your own damn phone

"if you buy a product, you own it"

Amen to that.

I have always found absolutely unbelievable that I can buy a $10,000 car and modify it any way I want, have it repaired anywhere I choose, but a $500 phone I can't ?

Nonsense.

I hope this cleans up the mess and sets things straight.

Giant predatory ancient insects pioneered mobile comms 310,000,000 years ago

Re: Wings...

Um, I doubt that.

It takes very little energy to stand still. It takes a lot more to hover.

The human-devoid AI-powered Saildrone Surveyor ship just made it to Hawaii from SF

I think I would have a lot more confidence in an autonomous sea taxi than in an autonomous land taxi.

If the sea is calm, you've got plenty of warning if something is coming and I'm sure the programming can handle that (aside from the fact that it would be using radar).

And if the sea is not calm, I won't be on it, so . . .

That time a startup tried to hire me just to push clients' products in job interviews

Block all social media - it'll be quicker and just as efficient.

If you've mastered Python 101, you're probably better at programming than OpenAI's prototype Codex

12 billion parameters, 159GB of Python source code scraped from [..] 50 million public repositories

So, you created a Frankenstein monster of cobbled-together code requiring an AI to configure it, and you're surprised that it's not good ?

12 billion parameters. That in itself amply demonstrates that there isn't a company in the world that has enough resources to configure this thing.

Erase it, start over. Use humans to evaluate the code. Yes, it's more expensive, but it works better.

We are not at the point where computers can code software for computers.

11-year-old graduate announces plans to achieve immortality by 'replacing body parts with mechanical parts'

Haven't you heard ?

People don't learn.

Individuals might, but people don't.

He's already thinking of transforming our bodies into machine-based parts.

All we need is to actually invent AI and we have the beginning of The Matrix.

Smuggler caught with 256 Intel Core processors wrapped around him in cling film

You haven't changed a CPU in a long time, I see.

Yeah. 60 bucks off a card that has been running 24/7 for God knows how long ?

Nope.

I might buy it for $100, not a penny more.

Kaseya delays SaaS restore to Sunday, CEO says ‘this sucks’ but decision was his alone

“This was the hardest decision of my career,”

I'm pretty sure that there will be harder ones in the future.

That said, I have come to believe that Kaseya should have the benefit of the doubt. White hats have pointed out that Kaseya reacted swiftly and properly to vulnerability alerts, and did everything it could to plug the holes as swiftly as possible.

Unfortunately, the criminals got in first. You cannot guard against bad luck.

I'm now convinced Kaseya is doing what it can to pick up the pieces and put everything back together again. All the noises being made point to a team that is working its ass off and trying its best to recover from the situation.

I no longer think that Kaseya was asleep at the wheel. I feel sorry for everyone involved, and I really wish someone could stop those despicable criminals.

Good luck, Voccola.

Epic vs. Apple Australian side quest allowed to resume

"its contract with Epic requires the two companies to conduct litigation in California"

Maybe so, but I wouldn't mind seeing Apple lose in Australia.

Focus on the camera, mobile devs: 48MP shooters about to become the sweet spot

"mobe-makers sometimes resort to less-capable cameras"

Sorry, but I don't think that pixel count defines camera capability.

I have a Canon EOS 400D. I have 3 different lenses I can put on it, 2 rechargeable batteries and two SD cards that, put together, can record a total of over 700 high-definition pictures.

There is no smartphone that can hold a candle to the picture quality of that camera, even if it only has 10MP.

The only issue is that I can't carry it in my shirt pocket.

Ah, too bad. Your post was great until those last two words.

Ex-IBM whistleblower's suit back in court, 8 years after he alleged irregularities in $265m IRS software deal

Ah, IBM

26 quarters of losing money and you're still trying to stiff your salespeople.

You're not even going to need an asteroid, are you ?

OpenUK's latest report paints a rosy picture of open source adoption

Citation needed.

Intel's Foveros tech hits a speedbump as Lakefield gets canned – one year after launch

10nm ?

Hey Intel, in ccase you haven't noticed, 7nm is all the rage these days.

You need to pull your finger out and get on the ball if you don't want to end like the dinosaurs.

YouTube's recommendation engine is pretty naff, Mozilla study finds

"connect viewers with content they love"

To do that, I use a revolutionary new technology. It's called bookmarks. The channels I'm actually interested in, I bookmark them.

I have scores of channels bookmarked. I don't have enough time in the day to watch all of them, especially since some of them regularly propose content that lasts 40+ minutes at a time (Timeline, Absolute History, etc).

I have absolutely no need for Youtube's homepage and I practically never go there unless I want to search for new channel that I got a referral for.

Really people, learn how to use your browser. And brain.

Salesforce's Patterson blazes a trail for humble-braggers everywhere

One gigantic circle jerk

Having "suffered annual revenue growth of 20 per cent" indeed.

Poor things.

Dell bigwig: Expect another 6 months of supply woes. Oh, hello Windows 11

"there are about 700 million PCs out there that are older than four years"

And most of them are likely very capable of handling a Zoom call and an Excel spreadsheet at the same time. It's more than likely that it's the Internet bandwidth that is an issue, not the CPU power.

No, Dell, you're not going to renew 700 million desktop PCs this year. Nor next year.

In conversation with Gene Hoffman, co-creator of the web's first ad blocker

Okay, now I get cryptocurrency

"I see this with banking. Unless you've actually recently sent an international wire transfer, you did not know how infuriating that process is. You don't know where it is, you don't know how long it's going to go and you don't know how many banks are going to take obscene amounts of cash off the top of your wire transfer. "

What I see is that the US banking system is so fucking shitty you had to go and invent something that makes global climate change worse instead of fixing your fucking shitty banking system.

I live in France. I have a company registered in Luxembourg. I have no problem with international bank transfers. They happen on the day I set them for, and the annual fee is ridiculously low (maybe I shouldn't have said that last bit).

In any case, now I know why Bitcoin and the rest of those funny money pyramid schemes are all the rage overseas. You have a shitty banking system and you can't be arsed to fix that.

Well I'll leave you to your toys and blame you when Florida is finally underwater.

Three-dozen US states plus DC sue Google over Play Store's revenue cut, payment system, and more

Oh, poor little Google

It just might have to give up on earning 29.94% more than it needs to run its App Store.

How sad.

Now get off your high horse and set your fee at 5% where it belongs, and you'll find that everybody will be happy and you'll still be making much more money than you need.

IBM insiders say CEO Arvind Krishna downplayed impact of email troubles, asked for a week to sort things out

"due to a lack of resources"

Oh, you mean all those competent 40+ people that you laid off ?

In other words, it's the CEO's fault ?

Not a baaa-d idea: Embracing the eunuch lifestyle slows ageing – for sheep anyway

Re: Humm...

Dear. God.

White hats reported key Kaseya VSA flaw months ago. Ransomware outran the patch

Point in Kaseya's favor then

They were working on the patches, but the miscreants got there first.

Bad luck.

In the meantime, Kaseya was doing the right thing, so kudos for that.

Five consultancies with severe branding difficulties win spots on UK government's £580m 'transformation' services framework

"outsourcing the decision of whether to outsource"

Government administration at its finest.

Sir Humphry would be proud.

Microsoft patches PrintNightmare – even on Windows 7 – but the terror isn't over

Re: Why?

That's funny. I asked that same question a while ago and I got downvoted.

Robots still suck. It's all they can do to stand up – never mind rise up

Robots suck

Well, at least they're good for vacuuming - maybe.

In any case, it seems that Real Humans are still a good ways off.

Maybe that's a good thing.

China Aerospace Investment Holdings chairman in custody after two academics assaulted

Yeah, but with one important difference : this one was caught on camera, and the video made its way to tha Intartubes, which means he will now forever be associated with his crime.

And that is justice in itself, because now his crime is public and the authorities must act.

Thirty years ago, this whole thing would have gone unnoticed, and this bastard would have beaten up an 80+ year old lady without consequence.

That thought is disgusting.

Kaseya’s VSA SaaS restart fails, service restoration delayed by at least ten hours

"anonymous currencies that are very difficult if not impossible to trace by the authorities"

Can people stop spouting that bull ? All of the funny money thingies rely on blockchain which, if memory serves, is a public ledger.

The only reason the FBI can't do anything is not because the transactions are "anonymous" (they're not), it's because the criminals are in Russia .

Kaseya says it's seen no sign of supply chain attack, sets SaaS restoration target of Tuesday afternoon, on-prem fix to follow

I discount buffer overflow attacks because, if I'm not mistaken, these are exclusively due to lazy coding.

Any coder worth the name writes code that is not susceptible to buffer overflow. And he validates his input data before treating it.

Kepler spots four rogue Earth-mass exoplanets floating in space, unbound to any star

Re: Spending eternity roaming space

I have the Universe Sandbox on Steam.

When I fire up the model of our solar system and put it in rapid advance, it generally takes around ten to fifteen minutes before one of the inner planets gets ejected.

I suppose the Universe Sandbox uses the GPU.

In any case, I think it is quite frightening to imagine that there are scores of planets out there that are just roaming around, not bound to a star. And to think that Hollywood has already made a film about that.