Posts by Pascal Monett

Things that needn't be said: Don't plonk a massive Starlink dish on the hood of your car

Re: Linky

Yep. Well, the only thing surprising me was that this didn't happen in Florida.

Not for children: Audacity fans drop the f-bomb after privacy agreement changes

8 hours

This morning I read that other article. It seemed rather reasonable to me. I went and checked the website, they were talking about opt-in telemetry.

I made a post where I stated that opt-in telemetry was better than most, because if you don't opt-in, it doesn't exist.

And now this.

I said this morning that if ever Muse got out of hand, I'd be the first to light the fire for the stake.

Well, I've got my lighter now. Point me in the right direction and we're going to have a bonfire.

Re: law enforcement and data sharing provisions are absolutely standard and reasonable

It's a program for manipulating audio, for frak's sake.

What the hell does law enforcement have to do with that ?

Would you also like law enforcement provisions for tying your shoelaces ?

Black screens in Windows 11? Bork has seen it all before

I like blue

But I think it would be better if all those stores with their fancy digital screens started to think about the ecological cost of their inane advertisements and risk of borkage, and just hung a printed banner that doesn't fall over if the lights go out.

New mystery AWS product 'Infinidash' goes viral — despite being entirely fictional

Here at Signal

We don't know what the fuck we're doing, but we have our finger on the pulse of the market and we're ready to spew bullshit bingo at a moment's notice.

Exactly the kind of thing that would make me avoid a company at all costs.

IT for service providers biz Kaseya defers decision about SaaS restoration following supply chain attack

"Only a very small percentage of our customers"

Ah, the gold standard of excuses.

Fuck that. You were asleep at the wheel, or too incompetent to provide actual security to your customers.

I don't care if only one customer got infected by your fault, it is one too many.

Solarwinds123 has already happened. You have no excuse.

Re: Surely they are finished as a company?

Is TSB finished ?

They'll recover. The Public is abysmally incapable of drawing the proper conclusions and all those companies would need to change their infrastructure and software stack, and that costs money, whereas risk can be insured.

Can we have a vomit icon ?

Opera browser tries to make sweet music for the ears of Chromebook users

Re: integrated WhatsApp, Telegram, Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook Messenger.

And, on the other hand, that is definitely putting me off of using Opera

Re: how is it that Chromebooks do not have the same requirement

Because nobody has thrown a lawsuit against Apple for that yet ?

NHS England staff voice concerns about access controls on US spy-tech firm Palantir's COVID-19 data store

What a surprise

Backroom dealings without scrutiny or supervision end up in unsatisfactory data handling. Count my gast flabbered.

Face it : it's Palantir's data now, not yours.

How anyone can decide to work with this slime is beyond me, but that's what you get when Democracy is not first in mind when the deciders go about their business.

Big Blue's big email blues signal terminal decline – unless it learns to migrate itself

"IBM has one chance of salvation"

Throw away the Board and the top 20 layers of management that encrusts it, and get back to having competent people on board - even if they're more than 40 years old.

Audacity is a poster child for what can be achieved with open-source software

Calm down, people

It would appear that, although telemetry is indeed included, it is optional and disabled by default.

Now, I'm just as annoyed by any telemtry at all as everyone else, but hey, if you have to opt-in (contrary to many), then it's basically not there.

Let's not burn something to the stake if it isn't actively trying to track us, okay ? Now, if it happens that somebody finds out that this is all a lie and Audacity is tracking whether you opt in or not, then I will gladly light the fire myself. In the mean time, let's not get all riled up over not much, shall we ?

One good deed leads to a storm in an Exchange Server

We've grown with email

And we've learned lots of things through lots of errors and surprises, but I think the one bit of email functionality that has to have caused the most trouble is the out of office auto-reply.

It is rather useful, generally speaking, but it can still cause havoc even now. Thankfully, email servers have been taught to not auto-reply to auto-replies.

Graphcore's AI chips may not be as powerful as Nvidia's GPUs, but may provide good bang for your buck

I think the idea is more on the line of the "AI" should not disregard any effort in diagnosing possible sickness just because the patient belongs to a particular subset of the human race.

So, basically, "AI" should treat everyone equally and work just hard for each case it is presented with.

Which is an obvious requirement. That said, certain populations may be more at risk of certain types of disease. It might not be that easy to ensure that the AI is not going to neglect any possible signs in populations that are not as much at risk of a specific disease if the markers are present.

IT management biz Kaseya's VSA abused to infect businesses with ransomware

"promising [..] a trade-in service for My Cloud accounts"

Oh sure. Now that you have demonstrated that you cannot keep my on-premise item secure, you want me to trust you with stuff on The Cloud.

Well of course ! Where do I sign ? </sarc>

While some Apple employees aren't happy with hybrid work plans, those on the retail front line are probably delighted

2 weeks a year ?

I believe it has been proven that Apple (among many others) has survived perfectly well with 99% of its staff working from home for around an entire year.

Now you pretend that 2 weeks is the acceptable maximum ?

Are you crazy ?

Stupid question. From a company with its own concealed-weapon-carrying police force that allows itself to raid its employees' homes, of course you are.

Still, 2 weeks is not going to cut the mustard.

You need to think different (don't know where I heard that).

Microsoft tells US lawmakers cloud has changed the game on data privacy, gets 10 info demands a day from cops

"7–10 secrecy orders per day"

And yet Huawei is still the big bad problem, right ?

A real go-GETTR: Former Trump aide tries to batter Twitter by ripping off its UI

Product is not the problem

Your problem is that you're a bunch of numbnuts with a slavery-era mentality that missed the fact that we are now in the 3rd Millennium and racism is no longer kosher.

Not to worry though, with your grip on reality I'm sure you'll get around to understanding things by the 4th Millenniium.

Google has second thoughts about cutting cookies, so serves up CHIPs

It's simple

Google is desperately trying to find some way to make us believe that its use of cookies is good for us, when it is actually only good for Google's ad business.

I don't care what Google proposes. Whatever it is is only destined to keep the money flowing in and our privacy being sold out.

Ex-boss of UK's Competition and Markets Authority asks: How can it tackle Big Tech when no one knows what the CMA is?

"come down like a ton of bricks"

So, does that mean that the fine will be 1% of the company's daily revenue, or 0.001 % ?

NASA talks up Perseverance Mars rover's self-driving rock-avoiding abilities

"any chance we could get more of that on Earth"

Okay, I'm really sorry to rain on anything that NASA has going, but we need to remember two things about this 'thinking while driving' thing :

1) Perseverance is driving at 3.33 cm/second - not exactly breakneck speed

2) there are no intersections on Mars, or stop signs, or school crossings, or basically any other unexpected event in any way possible

So no, Perseverance-style 'thinking while driving' is not going to be of much use on our Blue Planet.

Not unless we institute a global speed limit of "oh God I'd be better off walking".

Boffins boast of 'slidetronics' breakthrough enabling binary switch just two atoms thick

"it could be thinner"

Can we stop with that obsession ?

I know science-fiction films want us to have holographic phones and tablets springing up from a wristband, but we've already reached the point where your phone in your back pocket will snap if you forget to take it out before you sit down.

We have reached peak thinness.

It is time we get back to something that you can actually hold onto without fear of the screen snapping.

Oh, and we need to get back to having repaceable batteries, Apple be damned.

Devilish plans for your next app update ensure they never happen – unless you start praying

They generally are.

Xiaomi my heart is still beating: Reg hack takes Chinese giant's new fitness band for a spin

"[tech] needs to be slicker, bigger, and brighter to really get you faster and fitter"

No, it does not.

Getting fit is on you, not on whatever piece of tech you splurge on.

Rocky Linux release attracts 80,000 downloads as ex-CentOS users mull choices

"What I've learned was that simply being a non-profit is not a magic pill for honesty and integrity"

Ain't that right, Nominet ?

IT manager who swindled Essex hospital trust out of £800k gets 5 years in prison

Barry Stannard

Soon to be your new friendly face at the nearest McD's.

With a bit of luck and a lot of hard work, he might even rise to flipping the burgers.

A well-deserved fate.

Radioactive hybrid terror pigs have made themselves a home in Fukushima's exclusion zone

They don't have granite in Japan ?

Openreach to UK businesses: Switch is about to hit the fan. Prepare for withdrawal of the copper-based phone network now or risk disruption

"Openreach owner BT will pay minimal tax in the coming years"

So, after having spent years dilly-dallying and not putting any money into infrastructure, BT is now handsomely rewarded with a guaranteed low-to-nothing tax bill to make it do its job.

Isn't it great to be at the top ?

Former NASA astronaut and Shuttle boss weigh in on fixing Hubble Space Telescope

Re: So you're telling me there's a chance

And I choose to hang on to that chance with all my might.

Gotta learn how to cross my toes . . .

Who in America is standing up to privacy-bothering facial-recognition tech? Maine is right now leading the pack

"facial recognition is dangerous no matter who is using it"

Bless you Caitlin. Go on fighting the good fight.

I wish you the best of luck.

Robinhood hit with record $70m bill by financial watchdog for outages, misleading investors

"will not admit nor deny any wrongdoing"

I despise companies that are caught red-handed and yet still think they can save face by not admitting what everybody knows is true.

Data collected to promote public health must never be surrendered to police

Singapore's decision was disastrous

At the time, I remember very well the number of comments wondering whether or not these COVID tracking apps would be perverted like that, and then Singapore went and did exactly that.

Suprisingly, nobody else did, until now, that is, with Australia opening the way again.

There is clearly a problem in our so-called Western society. On the one hand, everyone is all about Freedom (and, increasingly, Privacy), on the other hand we are sliding slowly but surely into police states at a level Orwell would be amazed of.

Democracy is hard enough to keep going as it is. Let's keep the jackboots at bay.

You, robo-car maker, any serious accidents, I want to know about them, stat – US watchdog

Re: Circumvention by obfuscation

It will be significantly more difficult to obfuscate the fact that car needed to be towed, or that someone ended up in the hospital, but I'm sure they'll do their bloody best.

IBM's 18-month company-wide email system migration has been a disaster, sources say

"laid the blame on IBM CFO James Kavanaugh"

Okay, I am well aware that large companies do have the despicable habit of being run by the beancounters, but in this case shouldn't it be the CTO getting the flack ?

IBM does have a CTO, right ? If he can't stand up for what is needed, isn't it his fault in the first place ?

No, it's just a major disaster.

Microsoft wasn't joking about the Dev Channel not enforcing hardware checks: Windows 11 pops up on Pi, mobile phone

You're nuts

Windows 11 on a Raspberry Pi ? That's crazy. Kudos to the mad engineers who tried that.

That said, Windows hardware requirements have always been a joke. For starters, Borkzilla has systematically tried to make people believe that whatever version of Windows it was pushing, it could run fine on a quarter of the actual memory requirements.

For Windows 95, the official minimum RAM was 4MB. If you actually wanted to do anything other than boot the system, you needed 16MB.

For Windows XP, the official minimum RAM was 64MB. Again, having at least 256MB made the system actually useful and responsive.

For Windows 7, Borkzilla had the gall to state that 2GB was all that was needed (for the 64-bit version). What you actually needed was 8GB at the bare minimum, 16GB was much, much better.

And for Windows 1 0, Borkzilla is still trying to convince people that 2GB for the 64-bit version is enough. If you want to look at the logon screen, maybe, but if you want to work, I'm pretty sure that 16GB is the bare minimum.

International law enforcement op nukes Russian-language DoubleVPN service allegedly favoured by cybercriminals

I have nothing to hide and I demand that you justify what right you have to ask.

Leaked print spooler exploit lets Windows users remotely execute code as system on your domain controller

What the ever-loving frak ?

"people need to prioritize disabling the print spooler service on domain controllers and mission critical servers "

What the hell is the print spooler doing enabled on a domain controller ? Since when do you print from a domain controller ?

I wager this situation would never happen on a Linux server, because Linux admins only enable what is needed on the server. Windows admins, on the other hand, just install Windows and let it run.

I never print from my main PC, because the printer is on the other side of the office and the USB cord is not long enough. Do you really think I have the print spooler service enabled on my main PC ? Of course not.

New Yorkers react to strikingly indifferent statue of Elon Musk with cheerful hostility

Not sure that that argument applies : money is being made off of it.

America tops ITU's Global Cyber Security Index, UK in tie for second with Saudi Arabia

You're not answering the question.

Is Saudi Arabia ahead of the UK or not and why ?

They decided to give countries with the same score the same rank, so no, Estonia ranks 3rd because both the UK and Saudi Arabia rank 2nd.

Then you have Korea, Singapore and Spain that all rank 4th.

Once you understand the process, it becomes logical.

How would you rank the difference between the UK and Saudi Arabia given that they have the same score of 99.54 ?

I wondered about that myself

Is there some sort of anathema around the words Middle East ?

Is it because the news has been referring to conflicts in the Middle East for the past fourty years (if not more) ?

Like it or not, it's the Middle East. Isreal is not part of Europe. It's not even guaranteed that the movements of tectonic plates will ever make that happen.

Revealed: Why Windows Task Manager took a cuddlier approach to (process) death and destruction

Re: "shutdown" doesn't really shut down the computer fully anymore

You're talking about a laptop.

I can assure you that when my tower case shuts down, it's shut down. The PSU is off, no LEDs are shining and even the USB ports are shut off.

Financial watchdog says Google's clampdown on scam ads might not be enough to prevent stricter laws in Britain

"we think a permanent and consistent solution requires legislation"

Yes it does, otherwise you're counting on a private company to Do What's Right.

And that has never backfired, now has it ?

Cross-discipline boffin dream team issues social media warning: FIX IT NOW!

Academics

They are top notch for defining what happened in the past. If we have to wait on them to define how we need to manage social media now, we'll be dead before we get the report.

Social media has been here for a decade already. It's perfectly in academic timing to start worrying about it now.

Re: Gutenberg's printing press did immense harm - short term

The Maleficarum clearly did it for mainland Europe, but it was James Ist' book Daemonologie that kicked off the worst period of witch hunting in the UK.

The fact that it had been authored by a king, and not an obscure monk, had a lot to do with its influence.

This always-on culture we're in is awful. How do we stop it? Oh, sorry, hold on – just had another notification

"measure what they deliver"

I will never forget that time I accompanied a friend of mine to a presentation concerning an accounting package. He wanted me to come with him because, in the early 90s, I was an accountant.

At the presentation, there was the two of us, and two guys from an accounting company. Two young, cocky guys.

They spent the entire presentation asking about the the functionalities allowing them to trace employees down to the keystroke.

Remember, this was the early 90s, when the 486DX2 was the pinnacle of technology. And here I was, discovering that an accounting package was spending more CPU resources on spying on its users for the pleasure of management than actually doing its job of managing accounts.

That was one hell of an eye-opener for me.

My friend chose to not take that package.

You wait ages for a neutron star and black hole to collide, then two pairs come along at once

Don't forget, people

Whatever the event, the black hole always wins.

UK artists seek 'luvvie levy' on new gadgets to make up for all the media that consumers access online

I have a hunch that people who sell drugs or stolen property have a tendancy to not declare that revenue on their income tax.

Five words everyone wants to hear: Microsoft has 'visually refreshed' Office

Windows Search

That has to be the least efficient Search module that has ever been invented.

I cannot help but imagine that Windows Search has been expressely tweaked by Borkzilla engineers to ensure that, despite every improvement in hardware performance, Windows Search remains just as sluggish as it was in Windows 3.1.

I disable that monstrosity, and use Everything Search instead. Everything Search is free, it installs in less than half a minute and, once it is done looking through your hard drives, it takes less than 10 milliseconds to find any file name you might be looking for.

You know, like a proper search function should do in the 3rd Millennium, with computers that are a million times more performant than they were when the 286 came out.