Posts by Pascal Monett

Exsparko-destructus! What happens when wand waving meets extremely poor wiring

Cue next week's On Call about a company whose terminals suddenly start randomly disconnecting . . .

Google fixes 'Chromebork' one-character code typo that prevented Chrome OS logins

"All three mitigations, however, clear local data on the device"

So Google screws up and you get to lose your data in order to keep using your device.

You might as well be using a Windows laptop.

Some people are going to learn the value of backups the hard way.

With Alphabet's legendary commitment to products, we can't wait to see what its robotics biz Intrinsic achieves

"the AI can work out the best way to achieve its goal"

No. The Statistical Analysis Machine is going to use and break a million industrial robots in order to find the best way to do one job without breaking either the machine or the piece it is supposed to work on.

IBM finally made a computer that could soundly beat a master chess player - but only because said computer played 60 million games against itself before being confronted to a human, which doesn't have a chance in hell of playing more than a few thousand in his lifetime.

Industrial robots are built for one task. A riveting robot is not going to paint, a painting robot is not going to cut metal.

Intrinsic might be an interesting experiment in applied computing science, but I doubt companies will want their expensive equipment "finding out" how to do the one thing they were bought for.

Apologetic Audacity rewrites privacy policy after 'significant lapse in communication'

Re: any new project forks?

I think that, with the amount of forks already in existence, Muse can continue doing whatever it wants, it no longer makes any difference.

Muse made the mistake of confusing Open Source with My Private Data-Gathering Platform.

Open Source is not going to forget.

Rackspace literally decimates workforce: One in ten staffers let go this week

So they are openly admitting to firing US workers and replace them with foreign ones

Shouldn't there be a law against that ?

They not firing the US guys (and gals) because they're no good. They're perfectly good at their job, they're just more expensive than foreign workers. Who just might be not so good at their job, but they're cheaper.

I'm looking forward to the reports on how Rackspace hosting is plagued with problems because their new workforce doesn't know their job or how to read the procedures.

Is it broken yet? Is it? Is it? Ooh that means I can buy a sparkly, new but otherwise hard-to-justify replacement!

Bliss !

You lucky dog you.

Make-me-admin holes found in Windows, Linux kernel

Re: Was there ever a time when it did make sense ?

Only to Microsoft, and only for DRM.

We've been saddled with it ever since.

I'm not surprised to learn that it can also be a security risk, it was a bad idea right from the start.

My oh my

I've never had to make so many side searches as I did to be able to understand this article.

Silver ticket ? Ok, now I know what that is.

VSS ? Should be called VSC. It's disabled on my machine.

Mimikatz ? Never heard of it. Thankfully, its home page is quite simple to understand.

I think I've already hit my quota of learning for the day, and it's not even beer o'clock.

Peers question experts over UK police use of AI, facial recognition tech

Stop calling it AI !

It is not Artificial Intelligence in any way, shape or form.

It is statistical analysis, that's all.

Call it what it is, that will do wonders to dehumanize it.

Of course, marketing won't like that.

Apple delays recalling staff to offices until October as Delta variant romps across US

I really would like some government somewhere to post an official notice on these things.

I'm tired of hearing "he said" stuff thirdhand.

Open-source dev and critic of Beijing claims Audacity owner Muse threatened him with deportation to China in row over copyright

Re: they're actually trying to be reasonable

Oh yes, putting a paywall on stuff they don't actually own is eminently reasonable, of course.

Did you actually read the article, or are you a manager at Muse ?

Journo who went to prison for 2 years for breaking US cyber-security law is jailed again

Some people never learn

How stupid do you have to be to be on probation and redo the same stupid stuff that landed you in jail the first time ?

Back to the clink with you, moron, and good luck on ever finding anyone that will once again trust you with a keyboard.

Mountains on neutron stars are not even a millimetre tall due to extreme gravity

"extreme gravitational fields"

IIRC, I once read that, if you could hold an object 1 meter above the surface of a neutron star, when you let it go it would impact said surface at a speed of 1000km/h.

So 0 to 1000 in one meter. Talk about acceleration !

South Korea tables law to remove app stores' in-app purchase monopolies

Five per cent

If Google and Apple had reigned in their lust for money and set the tax at 5%, we wouldn't be having any of these discussions.

But no, they had to go all rapacious and greedy and set their tax at 30%, which is 29.994% more than the cost of running their Store.

I'm not against making money, but there comes a point where you have to admit that the rate is largely exaggerated.

30% is definitely in the exaggerated category. Then there is the added insult of not allowing in-app purchases from outside the Store - but even that would be less of an issue if the tax was 5%.

Verified: UK.gov launching plans for yet another digital identity scheme

Re: Three of mine

Well that comes as news to me and I'm very sorry to hear that you've had such a string of bad luck.

I would like to think that my bank would be a bit more attentive. Once I set up a transfer of over €3000 to plumber for the work he did, and the next day I got a call from the bank inquiring if the transfer was legitimate. Of course, I told them that it was and they definitely needed to make the transfer because my plumber needed to get paid for his work.

But they called.

Re: bank security is handwavy nonsense

Oh really ?

Show me one bank account that has been hacked.

I'm not talking about credit cards, I'm talking about the account itself.

Go on, show me one case where a bank account was hacked and money transferred without the authorization of its actual owner.

AWS gave Parler a chance, won't say if it talked to NSO before axing spyware biz's backend systems

So they're all working with NSO

All cloud providers are working with them, knowing full well what NSO is up to and what it does.

That paints a rather bleak picture of the contrast between morals and money.

Not that that is surprising, or new.

UK.gov's Huawei watchdog says firm made 'no overall improvement' on firmware security but won't say why

Yes, Huawei is the big bad

Meanwhile, Microsoft and all other US-based tech firms are constantly bombarded with police information requests - which they have to answer.

But Huawei is the danger.

Of course.

England's controversial extraction of personal medical histories from GP systems is delayed for a second time

"they would not share data with the scheme"

Good on them.

All this data sharing shenanigans is just driving me nuts. Finally some people are taking a stand and thank God it's the doctors.

They took the Hippocratic Oath, not the Hypocratic Oath, and they're doing their job.

It may very well be that there can be a legitimate use and benefit from a centralized national health database, but the UK Government is not exactly in the best of positions when it comes to providing any sort of guarantee on how that data will be protected and managed.

Especially not if any US private company is involved.

India IT minister denies illegal use of NSO Pegasus spyware

"has denied the nation illegally used the NSO Group's Pegasus spyware"

The obligatory conclusion from that statement is that there has been "legal" use of the Pegasus spyware.

Logic is extremely simple. If India didn't use the software, the Minister would have been boasting about it.

He's not, so they're using it.

I think the Chinese like money just as much as anyone else.

Booming balance sheets for India's big four outsourcers after horrible quarter at home

Re: Outsourcing profits too

Well, they're companies. It's at the expense of their customers, obviously. They don't have a line on your income tax, although the government may well be using their services.

US legal eagles representing Apple, IBM, and more take 5 months to inform clients of ransomware data breach

"Campbell is committed to, and takes very seriously, its responsibility . ."

Yes. Of course. The usual bullshit.

You're committed to, of course. You take very seriously, obviously.

And you took five fucking months to reveal the problem.

That is a brilliant demonstration of your actual commitment.

Five months, during which your responsability to protect data left your customers exposed.

Burning at the stake is too good for you.

I no longer have a burning hatred for Jewish people, says Googler now suddenly no longer at Google

Re: So, what if...

Obviously not : he's rich, so everything is fine.

True words.

But it is also true that you can be influenced by people you have respect for, and those people do not necessarily have enlightened views.

I am, obviously, referring primarily to your parents and elders, because that's where all this nonsense starts.

The one thing to hope for is that it ends with you.

Re: (and genuinely)

Really ?

How do you determine that his stance is now genuine ?

Just asking.

Yeah but white supremacists don't "come clean", they already deem themselves cleaner than anything else.

They're white, after all.

Our Friends Electric: A pair of alternative options for getting around town

Agreed.

Additionally, I'm rather more comfortable with the idea of a programmatically-driven car than with the notion that someone I don't know who's never been where I am is "driving" me to my destination.

Not to mention the hacking opportunities that will no doubt abound.

Tomorrow's wireless world will be fatter, faster, and creepier

"as frequency goes up antenna size goes down"

That comes as a surprise to me.

Okay, I'm just a programmer and I have zero qualifications when it comes to physics, but I would have thought that if the size of the wave is smaller, you'd need a larger antenna to properly capture it. The rules of physics have spoken, and I bow before them.

But what is this love affair with 802.11 ? Instead of suffixing with an endless array of letters, couldn't they finally pass on to 802.12 ?

Let it go, guys. There are more numbers available.

Ad tech ruined the web – and PDF files are here to save it, allegedly

Re: re-sizing and re-wrapping text

I agree with you. The sentiment is most assuredly well-placed, but plain HTML would have been a much more valid demonstration.

What is killing the Web's usefulness is JavaScript. The over-reliance on this demonstrably dangerous technology is not just a nuisance, it is responsible for 99% of all malware infestations and, at the best of times, just transforms a web site into something you can't even bookmark properly.

Long live NoScript !

Not only is Hubble back online after outage, it's already taking photos of the cosmos

“This is a moment to celebrate the success of a team"

All hail the engineers at NASA, who were once again able to snatch victory from the jaws of defeat.

I hope that these celebratory words were followed by an actual something to drink. They most certainly deserve it.

Engineers' Laurel and Hardy moment caused British Airways 787 to take an accidental knee

I would assume that it would generally be "crunch", or, in the worst of cases, "boom".

Short is not equal to young. We don't let five year olds drive because they're not mature enough to handle driving, not because they can't reach the pedals. Short adults are very capable of driving.

Additionally, short people have eyes that generally work. He could very well have controlled that the pin was placed in the right socket.

He didn't.

P.S. : why is Danny 2's post no longer open to votes ? What is the reason of this special treatment ?

Open-source RAW image editor Darktable releases major update to version 3.6 – and it's very accessible

Interesting

I've been a fan so far of Paint.Net, but your article has piqued my interest in this product and I will be investigating it shortly.

USA warns Hong Kong government may demand business and customer data, run surveillance without warrants

"Heightened Risks Regarding Data Privacy"

That's rich coming from a country with National Security letters and more than 10 official requests per day to Microsoft - that we know of.

Where on Gartner's Hype Cycle is Gartner's Hype Cycle?

Customers who think ?

Does that exist ?

"the square root of strategy"

Oooh, that's a good one.

Impromptu game of Robot Wars sparks fire in warehouse at UK e-tailer Ocado

Re: But a collision of robots resulting in a fire?

A collision of three robots. Two I can understand, but three ?

And how exactly did they catch fire ? Were they carrying flammable cargo, or did their batteries overload and if so, how is it that they have batteries that can do that ? Shouldn't there be some temperature monitoring ?

So many questions . . .

How to keep your enterprise up to date by deploying the very latest malware

Re: this apha code is not fit for production!

I work in Luxembourg.

Check it out on the world map. It's a very small country. You can cross it in an hour on the highway.

It's even smaller in the workplace. I learned that very early on in my career.

If you want to chew someone out, you had better be damn sure you're right, because your reputation can be trash quicker than you can blink.

OpenAI shuts down robotics team because it doesn't have enough data yet

Does it matter ?

Does it matter, seeing as Bourdain did express those sentiments albeit in an email and not into a microphone?

Yes it matters.

We most definitely should not get into the habit of bending the ghosts of dead people whichever we choose simply because we can.

The only case where I would accept recreating a specific person's voice is when the actual recording of said person has bad audio quality. That, for me, would be acceptable, especially in the case of a documentary or such, but I would still prefer that there be a banner or some notification that the portion had been recreated.

If we are already faking people's voices to make them say things they never actually pronounced in public when we are the very beginning of this technology, just how far are we going to go with it ?

Knowing the basic (absence of) principle of the Human race, we'll go too far.

So let's reign it in now.

Wanted: State-backed bandits planning cyberattacks on US infrastructure. Reward: $10m

I think we've already seen some real damage.

Go ask the hospitals that have been hacked if the damage wasn't real.

As for an online ID ? Pie-in-the-sky. Won't ever happen until the Internet is managed by a single entity, and that's not happening for the forseeable future if only because China ain't going to let anyone else manage its local part of the Internet.

You'll want to shut down the Windows Print Spooler service (yes, again): Another privilege escalation bug found

Re: SYSTEM

Insane, absolutely, but it's Windows, so . . .

Re: Wasn't it earlier this week

Well, as you can see, you're being downvoted again.

So at least it's consistent.

LibreOffice can export to PDF, and Office can save as PDF.

Why do you need your printer for that ?

Refreshing: An Office update that won't frighten the horses

Re: How liberating it was when Microsoft introduced the ribbon!

Oh yes. I've had so many people thank Borkzilla for having completely erased their long-acquired keyboard shortcut habits.

You know, the people who actually work for a living.

NASA fixes Hubble Space Telescope using backup power supply unit, payload computer

Re: YAY NASA!

Absolutely.

Hallelujah, Amen and thank God for NASA engineers !

Microsoft, Google, Citizen Lab blow lid off zero-day bug-exploiting spyware sold to governments

I wanted to check out the details of those vulns

Borkzilla's reports are useless.

You get a bunch of metrics, but zero explanation on what the exploit does.

It's been patched, can't we get some functional details ?

JavaScript, GitHub, AWS crowned winners in massive survey of 32,000 developers

"developers are young"

Except for those who still know COBOL.

Or LotusScript, for that matter.

But they obviously weren't part of the survey.

Google demonstrates impractical improvement in quantum error correction – but it does work

"1,000 to 10,000 error-correction qubits for each logical qubit"

So you need up to 10K times the physical nodes to approach a reliable qbit.

Well, looks like we might just have a fusion reactor before we have quantum computing.

Teen turned away from roller rink after AI wrongly identifies her as banned troublemaker

"that's not right"

No it is not.

But that's what you get in a society that accepts flawed results from a technology that heas been proven time and time again to not be reliable.