Posts by Pascal Monett

AMD opens wallet to lure scientific computing boffins away from Nvidia's CUDA onto its Instinct accelerators

Competition

There's nothing like it.

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

What ?

"redress the balance caused by people accessing music, films, and other creative material online without paying for it directly "

Hey, I'm all for supporting the Arts, but why choose to tax the equipment ? If people are consuming creative material online, they're going somewhere for that, so tax that place.

Are we going to start hearing a variation on VHS killed the film industry ?

Stop this nonsense.

Panasonic's Toughbook G2 comes Windows 11-ready even as TPM 2.0 supplies dwindle

That keyboard dock looks like a beast

And good on backlit keys. That is so useful.

I don't have the need for ruggedized, but I think Panasonic did a great job on this one.

Bezos v Branson: Battle of the wannabe Space Barons as Virgin Galactic cleared by FAA to start flying customers

Do you, by any chance, live at Boca Chica ?

Fujitsu wins £9m contract hike for Oracle HR system running nearly 3 years late at Northern Ireland Education Authority

So many project failures are being rewarded

And it feels like it's always the same names that come back to the trough.

How is it possible ?

Bitcoin doomed as a payment system and its novelty will fade, says Federal Reserve Board of Governors member

Re: It's the usefulness

In France, Luxembourg, Belgium, Germany and, I'm guessing, all of the EU, banks allow you to transfer money to any IBAN account number.

You just log on to your online account portal and type in the order, confirm it and it's done.

It baffles me that there are so many people in the world who need ad-hoc services for something that should be offered by the banks themselves.

Microsoft approved a Windows driver booby-trapped with rootkit malware

Ah, Microsoft

Now giving its blessing to malware authors through sheer lack of giving a fuck.

Water conditions in Jupiter's clouds could support 'life', say astroboffins

Water activity

Such is Science, ever adjusting its rules following new insights and new data.

It will be interesting to see how this definition pans out if we actually get a valid survey of Venusian atmosphere.

London Greenwich station: A reminder of former glories. Like Windows XP

How much longer will we have to endure this ?

I wonder how much longer it is going to take for companies to remove Borkzilla bloatware from platforms that don't need it and go with a rock-solid Linux implementation that Just Works.

India's IT minister angry that Twitter broke local law by following US law

Interesting dichotomy here

Time it took Twitter to ban Trump's lies : 4 years.

Time it took Twitter to ban another world leader who was just complaining about Twitter's non-compliance to local law : less than 4 days.

Hmm. Seems that Twitter has a rather unbalanced set of rules when it comes to managing world leader accounts.

Good news: Google no longer requires publishers to use the AMP format. Bad news: What replaces it might be worse

AMP is not a problem, nor is its replacement

As I read this article, the author is complaining that AMP redirects my click to a Google-cached page, and its successor does the same thing.

Except that I use ClearURLs. That is a Firefox addon that removes all extraneous, useless stuff from the link I want to click on.

So I have never been impacted by AMP. When I click on a link, ClearURLs ensures that I get to the page that was intended : the one on the website I wanted to visit, not Google's cached version of it.

The Internet remains the Internet. If you do a little bit of research, you can have the experience you want, not the experience other entities want for you.

The world has a plastics shortage, and PC makers may be responding with a little greenwashing

Re: the USA and most western nations do NOT dump plastic into the oceans

Sorry Bob, but have you seen the sides of the roads and highways these last few decades ?

Plastic bags full of trash are lying there. Sometimes it's just a plastic bag, or an empty plastic bottle.

The truth is, people are pigs. They do not hesitate to throw away anything they decide they don't need any more, and many don't give a damn about where they are when they throw something away.

My favorite example ? Smokers. When they're done with their cigarette, that butt will go flying, be it on the sidewalk or through a car window. Look for a trash can ? Are you kidding me ?

So plastic has got into the oceans not through any government program, obviously, but through the sheer don't-give-a-damn of a large part of the population that goes to the beach and doesn't care what they leave behind when they decide to leave. Some might attempt to look for a trash can, but if it's more than 20 meters away, or if it's already overflowing, fuck it, they'll just leave their trash right there.

Now, obviously, I'm not saying everyone does that, nor am I saying that that is happening on every single road or beach of the world. It has happened enough, though, so that there are several areas in our oceans that are choking with plastic residue.

That would not have happened if everyone was mindful of putting their trash where it belongs : in the bin.

Hmmmmm, how to cool that overheating CPU, if only there was a solution...

8 inches of water barely gets to cover half the height of the wheels. I don't see how a car of any kind can be totalled by that.

You might need to replace the wheels, depending on the corrosiveness of the liquid, but worse than that I can't think of.

And those sensible people will sensibly ask a plumber how to go about doing something concerning plumbing, otherwise they're not so sensible.

So I fail to see how Jake's comment falls down.

Hubble’s cosmic science is mind-blowing, but its soul celebrates something surprising about us

Beautiful piece which unfortunately almost reads like an obituary

Thank you for this take on the technical history of Hubble.

Now let us all cross our fingers that the boffins and engineers will once again wrest victory from the jaws of defeat.

Here's hoping, against all odds, that Hubble will once again grace us with Science, and more beautiful pictures.

AWS launches BugBust contest: Help fix a $100m problem for a $12 tshirt

Indeed

Amazon rakes in $90 million a day, and they're graciously promising $234,000 in bounties.

Wow, that really makes my heart race.

Jailed for seven years: Cyber-crook who broke into Big Biz to steal bank card info for FIN7 super-gang

Credit card security is improving.

Here in Europe, I have a OTP token assigned to my credit card. When I make online purchases, I must authenticate and provide the password given by the token at that time.

Works pretty well and it seems to me that that will very much thwart any miscreant's attempt to fleece me if he ever does manage to snaffle my credit card number somehow.

Plus, there's the fact that, if I ever do detect suspicious activity on my credit card ledger, I can report it and my bank will block it and send me a replacement credit card at no extra cost.

SolarWinds backdoor gang pwns Microsoft support agent to turn sights on customers

The perils of piracy

Malware has long been a staple of CD cracks and pirated games.

I buy my games, always have. But I freely admit that shoving the disc in the reader just to play quickly got on my nerves. I used to have a fairly reliable No-CD site, so I could avoid that hassle. Slowly but surely, even that site got taken over by the scum of the Earth and its cracks were no longer trustworthy.

These days, the problem is solved because I use Steam. GOG is also an option.

But you buy your games. Cracking them is just asking for trouble.

Green MSP calls on Scottish government to stop spending £4.7m a year with AWS after Amazon 'dumping' allegations

"we do not send items to landfill in the UK"

We send them to landfills in China.

It boggles the mind to imagine that millions of brand new items are destroyed. Why ? Can't they just stay on the shelves until they get sold ?

This is clearly the worst aspect of our wasteful society. We make things, use resources, and destroy them before they can ever become useful.

If Amazon has so much stuff it can't sell, it should seriously review its decision process on what items it acquires in the first place. And, if an item really does not sell well, then bite the bullet and put it in the dollar bin at 99 cents. I'm pretty sure that you'll ship a lot more and won't need to landfill them.

Wish you could play tabletop Dungeons & Dragons but have no friends? Solasta: Crown of the Magister offers a solution

Re: Friends ≥ null program

Same here. My old AD&D crew now all have lives, wives and children, plus no vacation time to spend three or four full afternoons sitting around a table with (badly) painted figurines, wierdly-shaped dice and a piece of paper with stats written on it.

Fond memories of those times, though. It was good while it lasted.

Nowadays, I have a different group of friends and we convene Mondays and Friday evenings for two hours of multiplayer gaming via Internet. We use a Teamspeak private server for voice, and our current gamelist is 7 Days to Die, Diablo III and Minecraft.

It's another sort of fun.

Google: About that whole getting rid of third-party cookies thing – we're gonna need another year or so

I use Chrome for one thing only

To log on to my professional Gmail account.

It's already borgified, why should I use anything else ?

For everything else, it's Firefox with Noscript and UBlock origin.

These six proposed bipartisan antitrust laws put Big Tech in the cross-hairs – and a House committee just OK'd them

Re: All very laudable but...

Better late than never.

And honestly, it is a bit harsh to blame lawmakers for not having the foresight to guess what Google, Facebook and Twitter would become a decade before they did.

Laws are made with hindsight, not with foresight. Unfortunately.

BOFH: Oh for Pete’s sake. Don’t make a spectacle of yourself

Ah, Threat-Detecting Boots

If only.

Google creates 'optimized' Android for one smartphone — that will only be sold in India

"an affordable price"

In other words, the marketing department is still trying to find out just how hard they can gouge their new customers and still make bank.

USA bars imports of Chinese polysilicon due to human rights violations

Alledged ? Really ?

Are you that scared of a lawsuit from China, El Reg ?

Come on, the Uyghur human rights violations are common knowledge. I very much doubt any complaint from not-Winnie-The-Pooh will have much traction in court.

AWS offers you the opportunity to pay cloud bills before they’ve been issued

Advance Pay

Put money on your account, and have that used to pay for your server. In other words, the same functionalty every game server provider has been offering for more than a decade now.

Wow. AWS has finally rejoined 2010. Impressive.

UK cuts ribbon on OpenRAN security and resiliency testing hubs to make sure kit works with 5G infrastructure

Digital Infrastructure minister Matt Warman

"Our investment is a crucial element of our strategy to tackle the world's over-reliance on a small number of telecoms vendors by growing our own cutting-edge solutions at home. "

It seems to me that the buzzword bingo mastery is gaining strength in this one.

Who would cross the Bridge of Death? Answer me these questions three! Oh and you'll need two-factor authentication

You're absolutely right, Dabbsy

All these websites that are pretending to "secure" my login by asking me my phone number for 2FA, and then they get hacked by miscreants and where's my security now ?

If I wanted my phone number to be available to the general public, I'd not have chosen to subscribe to the liste rouge, the French version of Do Not Call.

You're just a website. I can manage my own security better than you, thank you very much.

Ouch! When the IT equipment is sound, but the setup is hole-y inappropriate

Re: He had three degrees

I've met plenty of blithering idiots with degrees.

A degree means you have knowledge. It does not mean you have intelligence.

Mars race: China dreams of nuclear rockets, manned bases, and space elevators

Even if you do see the lovely glow of a nuclear spacecraft leaving Earth orbit, it still might not happen.

There are a lot of things that can go wrong, and if any one of them does go wrong, it is likely to spell doom for the would-be colonizers.

Sending people to Mars is going to require huge amounts of planning and preparation, to an extent that we have not yet, in my opinion, proven ourselves capable of. There is the issue of radiation exposure during the trip. There is the bigger issue of all the stuff that will be required to set up camp. One rocket will surely not be enough, but the bigger question is how to land all that stuff on Mars. And then there's the question of how to land it all on Mars within walking distance of the humans who are supposed to set it all up.

They won't have weeks to get it working. They'll likely need to have a habitat within the first 24 hours. If they waste days gathering all their stuff because it landed all helter-skelter, that will increase the difficulty exponentially.

As you can see, I'm not optimistic about colonizing Mars. On the other hand, we have to try. So, good luck China.

Three things that have vanished: $3.6bn in Bitcoin, a crypto investment biz, and the two brothers who ran it

"ten per cent daily returns"

That in itself is a huge warning sign.

Ten percent interest is somthing millionnaires can probably get - monthly.

A 21-year old promising that on a daily basis ? If you believe that I have a bridge to sell you.

Rich people lost money. No tears here.

$10 million

Do the math.

If you allocate yourself a budget of $5000 a month, one million lasts you 20 years - and that's without interest.

You tell me how you're going to lead a normal life and spend $5K per month. Obviously, you can forget owning a Ferrari, a yacht, having your entrance to the Lion's Club, or anything else fancy and socialite. Well, you don't have that now, do you ? Why would you need that simply because your bank account is stuffed to the gills ? Does that change you in any way ? No. It does not.

95% of lottery winners end up riddled with debt, because they confuse having money with having changed social status. If you have never had an interest in sailing, winning $10 million at a lottery does not justify your buying a yacht.

The only thing money is good for is to remove your problems. If you have money and you have problems, you don't understand what money is for.

Money is not for creating more problems. If you have more money than you can spend, you're fine. Stop trying to find excuses to spend more money.

He had his fun with the real stuff.

And he never actually set foot in jail, the fucker.

He destroyed the retirement plans of hundreds of thousands of people, and was consigned to house arrest, poor thing.

I would have had him locked in solitary and flogged daily.

UK urged to choo-choo-choose hydrogen-powered trains in pursuit of carbon-neutral economic growth

Hydrogen

The only economically-justified way to create hydrogen is nuclear energy.

And I'm not even touching storage and distribution.

If you want to create an ecosystem based on hydrogen transport, you can forget about wind and solar. Nuclear is the only option that can deliver.

However, nuclear does not have to mean pressure water reactors. Those were only made for the plutonium to make bombs. We don't need to make new bombs, we have enough. Go for Thorium reactors, or Natrium as they are called now. You will also be able to use up the 93% remaining energy in so-called "spent" fuel rods that PWRs cannot use any more.

Nuclear is the future. Especially in a world where everyone wants a mobile phone, a tablet, a laptop and an EV.

UK watchdog fines biz £130k for 900,000+ direct marketing calls to folk who had opted out

It is an unfortunate fact of life that there is a portion of the population who can be coerced into accepting a contract, even if they have no use for it and don't want it.

That is why we need laws to catch the bastards who try anyway.

Hiding phone numbers, telling porkies

You misrepresent yourself, you are automatically filed in "shyster".

You are a liar, and a potential thief.

970 thousand calls and only a £130k fine ? Okay, but put the CEO in jail for criminal activity. He knew what he was authorising.

It is high time we took to task the people who have ultimate responsability. Enough molly-cuddling companies who actively ignore the law.

Hungover Brits declare full English breakfast the solution to all their ills

Re: Monopoly

I agree that there is a laundry list of mind-altering substances out there.

Alcohol has a major advantage over most of them : it's legal.

It also has another advantage : you can control your consumption of it.

Now I know that that last point will raise the ire of those who will answer "but it's just as addictive !". I will not refute that alcohol can be addictive. Hell, I'd gladly have a whiskey every evening before supper.

But alcohol is not crack. Those who have the willpower can control their consumption. With crack, you take one and you're on it, willpower or not.

In any case, addiction is a difficult subject. Whatever the vehicle.

Advert for coronavirus 'destroying' air 'purifier' exterminated by UK watchdog

Interesting

So, first they said the tests had been done in France, then the tests had been done in Florida.

Obviously a simple keyboard mistake. I myself often type Florida instead of France, and I live in France. A common mistake, really, could happen to anyone </sarc>.

Now what I would like to know is, when the ASA asks for details on an ad, should that not include the results of the tests ? As in, proof that they were made, and here is why we claim what we claim ?

It's all well and good to promise that your kit has been tested, but if you have a shred of honesty, you provide the test results when an official governmental organization comes asking questions. You do so before the ASA needs to request them.

If you're honest, that is.

And if you're not, why is there not a full-blown inquiry including a police raid and prosecution follow-up ?

These shysters stuck their head up too far, it should be cut off sharply.

Nominet is back to 'the same old sh*t' says Public Benefit campaign chief as EGM actions grind to halt

"the company must be run on a commercial basis"

So you publicly acknowledge that you are managing Nominet as a commercial entity, and not as a not-for-profit.

When are you going to officially change status then ? Is there no judge that should take notice ?

The Nominet Board is rotten to the core. Get rid of them all, it's the only way to be sure.

US Navy starts an earthquake to see how its newest carrier withstands combat conditions

Three explosions to be followed by six month's maintenance ?

I hope that those six months were scheduled beforehand, because if all it takes to remove a carrier from the seas is a near-miss, then I am going to really start questioning their usefullness.

Re: Wildlife

I'm pretty sure that sonar confirmed there were no whales in the immediate vicinity before setting off the explosion.

But there are other fish than whales. Some of them must have been too close and bought the farm.

But that's classified data.

From I'm feeling lucky to I'm feeling Brave: Browser maker erects web search engine beta

Brave is a must-have on a mobile phone

It is faster because it cuts all the crap that websites try to side-load you with, so you get the page you want with the info you need, and nothing else.

Brave respects your privacy and your data allowance - not everybody has unlimited data on their phones.

Really, try Brave. You'll adopt it.

SEC still digging into SolarWinds fallout, nudges undeclared victims

Re: Team of 1000

Could be possible if you farm out the jobs in slices, keep the big picture to yourself and keep the teams from communicating with each other.

But that would require KGB-levels of team management and having one crack group putting all the pieces together properly.

Still, not impossible.

Sure looks like someone's pirating the REvil ransomware, tweaking the binary in a hex editor for their own crimes

No no, you misunderstod. REvil is not saying that its software partners should commit no crime.

What it is saying is that its partners should stay under the radar of local law enforcement. Set yourself up in New York, partner with REvil and infect computers in Mexico, that sort of thing.

Google cans engineering diversity training scheme after alumni complain of abysmal pay packages

Re: Talent should trump a sheepskin

But they are not doing the same work. From what I got from the article, they are being rotated in various departments and learning on the job.

They've been given a foot in the door, but they are not engineers and still have much to learn. Normal that they don't get the same benefits that are given to actual engineers.

Algorithm used to predict sepsis in hundreds of US hospitals isn’t as good as maker claims — study

Re: Billing != Action

I totally agree with you, but to the MBA, billing codes do not require human intervention. The software can scan them in an instant and make what it considers the appropriate decision.

All the rest of the stuff requires grabbing data from a plethora of places, maybe needing OCR to try and decipher the Egyptian hieroglyphics doctors specialise in, and then giving it some hard thought - something software is not very good at.

So they went the easy path, and produced something that is marginally better than flipping a coin.

Indian mega-corp Tata unveils surprise 5G networking business

So, 5G stacks are like buses

You wait years for a new one to arrive, and suddenly 3 show up at the same time.

A "surprise 5G networking business". I think that's quite a feat of secrecy. An entire business line ready to go and nobody heard about it before now ?

Impressive.

Facebook granted patent for 'artificial reality' baseball cap. Repeat, an 'artificial reality' baseball cap

"hats solve the problem presented by AR glasses"

Well I have to admit that, technically, it sure seems to be true.

It's Facebook, so I feel icky about even thinking this, but somebody got a good idea - for once.

The question now is how is this going to pan out on the market ? What contraption will see the light of day that keeps heating elements away from the wearer's skull ?

Final guidance on Schrems II ruling: Data from EU could be held up if a third country lets authorities access it

Re: There really is no way for a company in the EU to legally transfer personal data to the US

And I have no problem with that.

Max Schrems is my hero.

Germany's competition watchdog to investigate whether Apple's ecosystem damages other businesses

The temperature seems to be rising for Apple

Another investigation into its Store. By the Germans, no less. They tend very much to not appreciate bullshit. They are also sticklers for the law. Apple would do well to not be found guilty of intentional wall-raising.

I wonder if the Bundeskartellamt is going to find that Apple has systematically killed any app that reproduces functionality of its own apps, not to mention when Apple sees a useful app, steals its functionality then bans it because it reproduces "existing" functionality.

This is going to be interesting, aka probably painful for Apple.