Posts by Pascal Monett

India’s services giant TCS lays off over 10,000 for reasons including AI, hikes wages for survivors

"deploying AI at scale for our clients and ourselves"

Oh great. You're deploying at scale a bullshit generator for the only reason that, apparently, it's the Thing To Do^TM at the moment.

God I can't wait for that fucking bubble to burst . . .

Trend Micro offers weak workaround for already-exploited critical vuln in management console

"restricted to authorized and trusted administrators only"

Yeah, duh.

Why is it that well-paid besuited idiots can't realize what security actually means ?

I mean, they aren't going to bed while leaving the front door open, are they ?

If you're not going to leave the front door open on your pitifiul little million-dollar mansion, then how about not leaving it open on the multi-million critical infrastructure you're actually responsible for ?

How OpenAI used a new data type to cut inference costs by 75%

"smaller, faster, and more importantly, cheaper"

How about more accurate and reliable ?

Because getting bullshit results faster and cheaper doesn't seem all that interesting to me.

The inside story of the Telemessage saga, and how you can view the data

Congratulations

Once again, that band of untrained monkeys demonstrate their complete incompetence when it comes to affairs of state.

They only have one thing to do : ask the Secret Service for the secure communication protocols and use them, instead of downloading anything that calls itself "secure" without having been vetted and then finding out the hard way that it wasn't.

It's Government, for fuck's sake, not a flying circus.

The dead need right to delete their data so they can't be AI-ified, lawyer says

Seance AI, StoryFile, Replika, MindBank Ai, and HereAfter AI

Sorry, but apparently the cat's already out of the bag, the horses have made a run for it and anything you try to lock this down is going to have the almighty shareholders screaming about how you are impeding Capitalism.

And since they have larger brown envelopes than you, good luck with your crusade.

UK unveils plans to 'transform' the consumer smart meter experience

"transform the consumer smart meter experience"

So, they're going to install dumb meters that work ?

Nah, that would be revolutionary.

NASA boss calls for nuclear reactor on the Moon

You don't even need to drill a hole. The Moon is criscrossed with ancient lava tunnels.

Stick the power plant in there and you avoid the problem of lunar regolith and the issue of solar heat in one go.

you just have to find a tunnel that is conveniently placed.

Tech support team won pay rise for teaching customers how to RTFM

"It really was one of the most employee-focused companies I ever worked for"

Lucky you.

I was also lucky enough to find employment in an employee-focused company.

Then it got bought by Americans, and everything went to shit.

Re: Manuals

Those were the days . . .

Why blow up satellites when you can just hack them?

"no satellites were harmed during the course of the presentation"

Ain't that a shame.

Confirmed: PCIe 8.0 will double version 7.0’s speed and reach 256.0 GT/s

A new treadmill in the works

We have PCIe5. We're going to have PCIe 6 - which datacenters are going to gobble up like the data-bandwidth alcoholics they are. We are now alerted to PCIe 7 and 8.

Excuse me, but what is the point of 7 since 8 is already on the cards ?

I don't think gaming PCs need 1 TB/s bandwidth, but I'm pretty sure datacenters do. I'm also of the mind that datacenters prefer to minimize hardware modifications when they can.

So, does PCIe 7 have any chance of being deployed, or will it be another Osborn ?

Microsoft, CISA warn yet another Exchange server bug can lead to 'total domain compromise'

yet another Exchange server bug

Is there any other company that is valued in the trillions of dollars and can consistently deliver bug-ridden products while still being considered indispensable for corporate IT ?

If Borkzilla made cars, it would have been consigned to historic failure decades ago. In the best case, like the Delorean. More realistically, it would have become a Yugo.

When will we finally get rid of this shit and move to something that is actually reliable ?

Faced with £40B budget hole, UK public sector commits £9B to Microsoft

UK public sector commits £9B to Microsoft

Of course. When you run out of money, the first thing you do is spend more.

If you're government, that is.

If you're a private individual, then you're accused of being a spendthrift and no bank is going to lend you the money,

But government doesn't care. It doesn't need a loan, it can raise taxes . . .

Microsoft researchers bullish on AI security agent even though it let 74% of malware slip through

26%

Well, when you're trusting a Big Mac, you can only be happy that it detects 1 in 4.

The pseudo-AI is too busy eating the fries to notice the rest . . .

Trump teases ‘approximately’ 100 percent tariff for imported semiconductors

Oh really ?

Still waiting for him to make good on his promise to cut pharmaceuticals by 1200%, 1300%, 1400%, up to 1600%.

He's not really good with numbers. That might explain this.

Mauritius investigates AFRINIC as African institutions show support ahead of new elections

"the Police is investigating the matter"

And what is the conclusion of the Police ?

It is astounding, and quite disheartening, to conclude that so-called law-enforcement agencies have no power when it comes to enforcing Internet equality and respect of privacy, or indeed, simple respect of the Constitution of a country (yes, I'm looking at you, USA).

AWS wiped my account of 10 years, says open source dev

Re: Sympathy?

Absolutely agree.

If it's that important, you've got a local copy.

Well, another one learns the hard way . . .

Make Redmond angry by setting up Windows 11 with a local account

I am.

Borkzilla is making Windows more shitty with every update and I'm fed up with that. But, until I retire, I'm stuck with it because all my customers use Windows. And gaming is still easier on a Windows platform. I am under no illusion that Windows is superior. It's a pile of dogfood laying on a pile of shit.

But seeing those holier-than-thou comments from people who are not concerned is starting to grate on me.

When I retire, I'm moving everything to Mint (that's my decision for now - I'll take stock of the situation when the day comes). Until then, I'll grit my teeth and bear it.

Re: Far Too Complicated!!

Ah, Penguinistas.

Always surfing Windows article to show just how superior they are. But they do it anonymously. What courage.

Guess what ? Most people (have to) use Windows.

Deal with it.

Re: Nice article, thanks

Yes indeed. I have saved it for personal reference in case I need it.

Atlassian's Trello redesign may be 'worst in tech history' say frustrated users

So, Atlassian has decided to do a Broadcom

“We are changing Trello to become an entirely different product ”

Yeah, apparently one that no one wants.

What is it with these stupid UI coders who change everything ? Don't they understand that a UI is something users get used to and they need to keep it that way ?

Move fast and break things DOES NOT APPLY to user workflow.

Get that into your thick skulls.

Perplexity vexed by Cloudflare's claims its bots are bad

"If you can't tell a helpful digital assistant from a malicious scraper"

Then you should ban them all and Perplexity can go fuck itself.

Or Perplexity proves how it is not bad by showing its code.

Not gonna happen.

Microsoft promises to eventually make WinUI 'truly open source'

Microsoft promises

Sorry, you lost me at that point.

Study finds humans not completely useless at malware detection

"missed real malware when the clue was unusual system behavior, like high processor usage"

If you have to use CPU usage to flag something as malware, it's already too late.

Eutelsat LEO revenue rockets 84% as governments cool on Starlink

"recent mixed messaging from US President Donald Trump's administration"

There is nothing recent in Trump's mixed messaging.

He doesn't know how to make a clear message. For that, the Stable Genius would have to have an actual idea of what he was going to do.

The orange baboon is not intelligent enough for that.

Three US agencies get failing grades for not following IT best practices

The Government Accountability Office

If I were its president I would be wondering if Trump isn't going to fire me right now.

Government Accountability. You'd better steer clear of the White House.

Germany and Japan teamed their ISS robots for seek-and-photograph mission

Impressive

But how did CIMON know to convert the verbal instructions into Int-Ball2 code ?

It would seem to me that somebody had to upload the syntax, at the very least. Some work must have been done to prepare this. It surely wasn't just a "hey, let's try this" moment.

Foxconn says EV sales are so slow it's converting a factory to build AI servers instead

Foxconn : management by weathervane

And here I was thinking that major industrial sites are heavy investments that you don't go changing on a whim.

So, the EV market is saturated now. And you couldn't tell that four years ago ? Surely there were indicators, no ?

Now it's datacenter equipment. Granted, that market doesn't look like it'll be saturated any time soon, but I would like to point out that there is growing hostility for those energy-gobblers.

But, when the time comes, you obviously won't have problem stripping that down to build Gorilla glass or something.

Carry on !

Antivirus vendors fail to spot persistent, nasty, stealthy Linux backdoor

Wow, that's no script kiddie

the malware “integrates deeply into the authentication stack, survives system updates, and leaves almost no forensic traces. Combined with layered obfuscation and environment tampering, this makes it exceptionally hard to detect using traditional tools.”

Once again miscreants prove that they are not always stupid. The knowledge one must have to simply envision this kind of hack must be phenominal.

Or it was built by a state-sponsored group of very intelligent people.

In any case, I almost admire the work.

Now, Linus, your baby is under threat. What are you going to do about it ?

China's IPv6 adoption takes a decent leap forward, especially on fixed networks

“Let’s create a world where every interaction with governments is assisted by digital agents”

Let's not.

Those pseudo-AI agents never understand what it is you're trying to explain, because they can't. They respond to a fixed set of rules and if you don't fit, you end up literally cut off (the "agent" hangs up on you).

Back in 2019, I had my fiber connection installed (finally). I'd had it for one month when a passing tractor ripped it off the post - it wasn't broken, it still worked, but it was on the ground (living in the countryside has its drawbacks). The problem was, the connection still worked. I phoned the nearest police station to ask what I had to do, and the officer politely told me that it was a dangerous situation and that, if anyone got hurt, I was liable to end up responsible.

So I called my provider's support line. The automated agent drilled my down through choices 2, 1, 2, 4, and then decided to test my connection and hung up. I knew that wasn't going to work, so I waited for the test to finish and I called again. Same rigmarole. I was starting to get angry by that point when the phone rang and an actual human being from the support line asked me what the problem was. I still had to explain twice that no, my connection was fine, but the physical wire was on the street. When he finally got the message, he promised that I would have a ticket and he would see what he could do.

Three weeks later, nothing had been done. Then a passing motorcycle ripped the line in two. This time, no more connection. Call support again and, lo and behold, there is a real problem (for them, that is). Two days later, a new line was installed and, after explaining to the technician, he installed it a meter higher on the pole.

And that happened with actual humans answering the phone. I shudder to think how a pseudo-AI would handle the issue.

OpenAI removes ChatGPT self-doxing option

Trash is disgusting wherever it is.

Florida jury throws huge fine at Tesla in Autopilot crash

"thought the car would take care of things"

Yeah. Welcome to the real world.

You're the driver. Forget the fucking phone, or park on the side to get it.

This civilisation is breeding morons. Might be time for an asteroid.

Rampant emoji use suggests crypto-stealing NPM package was written by AI

"it calls itself Enhanced Stealth Wallet Drainer"

Incredible.

That's kind of like walking down the street with a giant "I'm a criminal" sign hanging over your head when you pass in front of the police station.

That said, they'd have to get off their donuts long enough to notice . . .

Unless you're black, of course, in which case they've have you on radar from 300 meters away.

Gadget geeks aghast at guru's geriatric GPU

What's the problem ?

He could be using an Apple II for all I care. He's dealing with the nuts and bolts of the system. He's not a manager who needs to masturbate his status with the latest and greatest to view his emails.

Tested: Microsoft Recall can still capture credit cards and passwords, a treasure trove for crooks

Recall

Borkzilla's best abomination since the Registry.

Court upholds Epic win in Google Play Store antitrust battle

YES !

Anything that eats at Google's dominance is an automatic win in my book.

Knock 'em down a notch or ten.

You have the right to be successful. You do not have the right to deprive others of success.

Florida prison email blunder exposes visitor contact info to inmates

How come they have phones ?

They're in prison, for fuck's sake.

Another one bites the dust as KubeSphere kills open source edition

"we sincerely apologize for any inconvenience caused"

Sure you do.

You used Open Source as a boost to your reputation. Now you've realized that you're not making money out of it.

You're not Red Hat.

So you stop your support. Fine. The problem is, you published the code. What you published ramins available and, if it's any good, someone will build something out of it and you will be left with your tears to dry.

Serves you right.

Open Source is a commitment, not an excuse, and certainly not a tool to get to an IPO faster.

Enterprise software giants weaponize AI to kill discounts and deepen lock-in

"tightening the screws"

And that surprises who, exactly ?

BOFH: Deepfake or just an idiot? We'll need an audit to confirm

Re: Security as a service

An AI bot couldn't do as well. You need a true intelligence (albeit a devious one) to achieve such brilliance.

Servers hated Mondays until techie quit quaffing coffee in their company

Typical

As soon as manglement complains, there is immediate reaction.

Those at the coalface explain that there's an issue ? It's not a problem - deal with it.

Re: the company couldn't be bothered to spend any money to fix the problem

Then it wasn't a problem.

No urgency. The servers are down again ? Well, let's go for a stroll. Oh, you have urgent business to do ? I suggest you take that up with the CTO.

Kremlin goons caught abusing ISPs to spy on Moscow-based diplomats, Microsoft says

Moscow using everything to catch foreign embassy comms, that's news ?

Sorry, but Tom Clancy already wrote about that ages ago.

Say what you want about Clancy, but I'm pretty sure that no US embassy in Moscow would ever consider using Internet - going through a Russia-controlled provider - for anything like secure communication.

They'd use a US-controlled satellite if they wanted anything near confidentiality.

NHS disability equipment provider on brink of collapse a year after cyberattack

Oh sure

"a pre-planned six-month digital transformation project being accelerated and delivered in just three weeks "

Okay, so either your initial planning was shit, or the results you got are shit, but you cannot tell me that a 6-month project was properly done in 3 weeks.

If that is indeed the case, you need to review your planning procedures, because they are shit.

Banning VPNs to protect kids? Good luck with that

423K e-signatures - government response has already stated it has no plans to repeal the Act

Democracy in motion. Well done on telling the peons that you don't give a damn about either their opinion or their votes.

Internet exchange points are ignored, vulnerable, and absent from infrastructure protection plans

"get rid of cash.

I gotta learn to proofread better.

"to build diverse, neutral, and well-governed interconnection points"

Diverse ? Neutral ?

As far as Government is concerned, if it can't be taxed, it's not well-governed.

That's why governments all over are trying to get of cash. Cash is the ultimate anonymous transaction and it cannot be taxed.

Ergo, it has to go.

I'm sure the grandchildren of those politicians are going to be forever grateful . . .

Bitter fight over 2020 Microsoft quantum paper both resolved and unresolved

What is this nonsense ?

"the challenge of maintaining civil peer review norms in the social media era "

What the heck does "social" media have to do with peer review ?

Peer review is conducted on scientific sites, not social media.

At least, that's the way it should be and, if it isn't, then Science is going down the drain just like the rest of us - no need for Trump.

The TSA likes facial recognition at airports. Passengers and politicians, not so much

"you should consider just allowing the photo next time"

So, the little Nazi bitch thinks she made a point.

She did indeed, but not the one she thought she was making.

TSA is useless, overbearing and exceeds its authority with clockwork regularity. I have yet to see a report where the TSA caught any dangerous person. So what's the point ?

Apart from enabling some power-hungry psychopaths to have a job where they can legally indulge in their power fantasies.

Trump officials float plan for Americans to share their medical data more freely

Oh really ?

"The benefits to millions of Americans for me will be enormous. We I will save time, we'll save make money, and most importantly, we'll save lives sell more merch."

TFTFY

Trump never does anything for anyone but himself. He has a great opportunity here to look good, but just wait to see how the usual suspects are going to be the ones benefitting the most.