Posts by Pascal Monett

Uptime funk: Microsoft has lifted availability of Azure Key Vault to 99.99%

"And public clouds do tend to totter at the most inconvenient of times"

That is the most quintessentially British euphemism for "unreliable" I have ever seen.

Well done !

China all but bans cryptocurrencies

"And then there’s the Digital Yuan"

So, in essence, China is banning competition to its own funny money.

Par for the course, I guess, even though I completely agree with the ban and think all Western countries should do the same.

As for blockchain, could someone please tell me how that non-scalable technology is going to improve any economy whatsoever ?

More power to web apps, cries Google, and more privacy, too

"less intrusive and more tolerable"

There is only one solution to this : stop trying to use targetted advertising.

First of all, you're targetted adverts are laughable. Either you're showing ads on something I just bought, or you're showing ads on stuff other people bought concerning the stuff I just bought.

True targetted advertising would be you recording that I just bought a light bulb, then six months later, suggesting that I might want to buy a replacement (because light bulbs are shit these days). Or if I buy a lawnmower online (because I've obviously had an aneurysm), then you wait a year and show me ads for lawnmower repairmen in my area.

If you could actually be arsed to do something useful, I might not mind so much the massive invasion of my privacy, but you can't.

So just do regular advertising. Stop trying to track me since you can't actually make it meaningful.

Of course, the hit on your bottom line will be massive, but, to paraphrase, frankly my dear, I don't give a damn.

Google and Samsung merge their wearable OSes, tease Fitbit baked into the combo

The platform is the problem

You have a tiny screen, a minimal amount of input vectors, and less power than what it takes to make a cup of coffee.

With those limitations, you're not going to implement a wearable version of LibreOffice. What can you possibly create that will have any interest whatsoever ?

You basically can't connect to the Internet, the power drain will kill the thing in no time.

Watch a video ? Are you kidding me ?

MP3 ? Nope. Not until you have a wearable mini fusion reactor.

Tell time, alert to emails with a Blutooth link to your phone that is in your pocket or beltpouch, use existing sensors to give information on temperature and humidity, maybe heart rythm, and that's just about the limit. No wearable is going to do anything meaningful if it's not paired with a smartphone - that's where the power is.

There's not much room to get all hot and bothered.

New Zealand hospitals infected by ransomware, cancel some surgeries

Totally agree.

Unfortunately, we're talking hospital here. Nurses have other things to do than follow security seminars on email handling. Especially when governments are notorious for cutting down on healthcare spending.

Hospital personnel have been overworked for years, it's not new.

I don't know what the solution is, but to me it should be before the email reaches the inbox. Maybe have a system that scans email contents, quarantines anything with a link for further analysis, then checks all links for acceptability before depositing them at their destination.

The point is hospitals need better email scanning because the personnel doesn't have the time to think about it. It's the email filter that needs to up its game.

"The attack disabled all IT services except email"

Ain't that a shame. It took everything down except for the vector it used to get in.

Irony, anyone ?

Glimpse of 3GHz 128-core Ampere Altra Max server processor emerges as Oracle teases more cloudy Arms

"delivering linear scalability"

Okay, I readily admit that I am not a hardware CPU geek with full credentials, but how is it justified to say that ARM CPUs scale linearly and imply that x86 CPUs don't ?

The wiki page on ARM does not mention scalability in any way.

I've seen server motherboards with 4 CPU sockets for x86 CPUs. It seems to me that that means they scale.

Could someone enlighten me ?

The Microsoft Authenticator extension in the Chrome store wasn't actually made by Microsoft. Oops, Google

"Google declined to comment [,,] about how this add-on slipped through the net"

It slipped through because the net has links that are a mile wide.

Let's be clear : Google is not there to curate the content of its Store, it's there to make money. Anything goes until someone complains. That's when Google reacts and goes fishing for a reason not to remove the app.

In this case, it didn't find any, so it removed the app.

But if you think Google is going to pre-emptively deprive itself of revenue when nobody has noticed anything, I have a bridge to sell you.

Yahoo! Japan! offers! free! comment!-moderation!-as!-a!-service! API!

Re: By any other name

I'm sorry but I do not come to that conclusion after reading this article.

Especially since this paragraph is in rather direct contradiction with your words :

The tech, styled as a "constructive comment ranking model", prioritises posts that provoke positive discussions, especially when they suggest new ideas or are insightful. Comments that mention experiences related to articles also do well.

What I do think is that, even if this API works, it will only work in Japanese, and I tend to not comment in that language, for some reason.

I'd like to see someone port that to English and implement it on Twitter.

The silence will be deafening.

iFixit slams Samsung's phone 'upcycling' scheme for falling short of what was promised

"You buy a phone. Two years later, you buy another"

Nope. That's not how I do things.

I buy a phone, and I keep it until it dies.

It's a phone. I use it to <gasp> actually call people, and recieve calls.

For the rest, I have a desk, three computers and five screens, plus assorted keyboards and mice.

I'm not wasting my time squinting at a screen smaller than my hand where I have to be extra careful to push the exact right pixels not too hard with my fat fingers to send an SMS that ressembles English.

You've got the latest model ? Good for you. I don't care. I can replace the battery on mine in less than 60 seconds, no tools needed.

UK data watchdog fines 'pandemic partner' biz £8k: It sent 84,000 marketing emails to people who'd given info for track and trace

"it had faced technical difficulties"

It would appear that it faced no difficulty in hoovering up email addresses and then deciding to "inform" said people of a "special opportunity".

Don't come crying that you don't know how to handle someone who registers twice and only consents once. You should have a procedure on how to handle that, it's nothing technical.

I think the ICO was rather lenient on this matter. It seems obvious to me that TML's intent was to get consent using a purposefully vague definition of marketing "materials", which consent it could then use as it pleased to "accidentally" email 80K+ people.

You don't accidentally email tens of thousands of people based on a misunderstanding.

This was the plan, and it will happen again.

So, who still thinks that the NHS sharing patient data with 3rd parties is a good thing ? Outside of NHS management, obviously.

What you need to know from today's Google IO: Chatty AI, collab tools, TPU v4 chips, quantum computing

"Google intends to expand access to Project Starline to healthcare and media partners"

Sorry, but all the alerts go off when reading that.

Google is the last company I want accessing my medical records.

Business-intelligence-company-turned-Bitcoin-addict MicroStrategy grabs another $10m crypto-coin fix

It's not a bubble, it's a pyramid scheme

Those that got in first have the most coins, and all the (rich) idiots that came in later are just there to position themselves to cash in on the craze.

Not a single one of those billionnaires "believe" in funny money. What they believe in is the same thing as those scams hyping penny stocks : push many people to buy, the price goes up, you make out like a bandit.

Bitcoin has reached dizzying heights of value because of all the billionnaires throwing money at it and thus validating it in the eyes of Joe Schmuck.

Joe Schmuck needs to realize one thing : transfer fees are currently at $13.44.

So, that Pizza Hut pepperoni pizza you buy for fifteen bucks ? You can almost double the cost when you pay with funny money - if Pizza Hut takes it.

So, you tell me how great BitCoin is now.

I pay with VISA. If the cost is fifteen bucks, I'm charged fifteen bucks.

For that, I don't mind working with The Man.

Ex-Apple marketing bigwig tells Epic judge: Our revenue-sharing model is designed to stop money laundering

Money laundering, sure

And then spout some R&D expenses that look like real money.

And then mention a public event sponsored by and in the only interest of Apple, which has fuck all to do with the 30% extortion rate of the Apple Store (and I don't care if Apple is not the only one, it's extortion, period).

Since you're full of bullshitnumbers, how's about you give us the cost of actually running the Apple Store - which has no need of R&D - vs the returns you get from it ?

Hmm ?

Yeah, fat chance, I know.

I have said and I maintain : 5% is more than enough.

Colonial Pipeline suffers server gremlins, says it's not due to another ransomware infection

"but then opted to restore from its own backups anyway"

Great.

So you rewarded criminals for nothing.

I hope that gets put on your tombstone.

Us? Pwn SolarWinds? With our reputation? Russian spy chief makes laughable denial of supply chain attack

So, it's not the Russkies because of something the NSA did a decade ago

Yeah. Perfectly logical argument there. Nothing to say to that, apparently.

But, by that logic, it's the Russkies because Klaus Fuchs gave Soviet Russia all the data on atomic bombs they needed to make one, sparing them years of research and tons of money.

Checkmate.

Come on Naryshkin, you bloody well know that the information not made public does not exonerate you.

We're not talking about Huawei motherboards, we're talking about high-level spy stuff. The US is not going to say how it knows because that's classified.

Huawei motherboards are not classified. They are available to the public. If any one of them had indeed been suspiciously modified, we'd have a pic by now.

We don't, so that's bullshit.

You, however, have no such validation. You're just spreading bullshit as well.

We'd love to report on the outcome of the CREST exam cheatsheet probe, but UK infosec body won't publish it

We can confirm

"We can confirm that there are currently no senior staffers from NCC Group that hold key positions at CREST. "

And I can confirm that there is no need for someone from one company to hold "key positions" in another company for there to be, shall I say, parallel communication channels.

It is entirely illogical to withhold the report on an investigation to "protect whistleblowers". You just need to redact the parts that give identifying information about them.

What this is demonstrating is that CREST is intent on not revealing any information on its internal functioning, which already says damning things about what goes on.

Campaigns propose new rules to protect contractors from rogue umbrella companies

"[Umbrella companies are] allowing themselves to operate outside the law"

This is textbook capitalism. Never mind that the law is imperfect, this is the demonstration that capitalism does not, in fact, regulate itself. It operates at the very limit of what is legal, forget about moral.

Capitalism requires regulation. In this case, a company that purposefully waits until the employee can no longer easily go before a judge should be automatically fined the amount of money withheld, forced to pay said employee and pay the bill for treating the whole affair.

It is incredible that there are people who actually dream up these kinds of schemes, but the only reason they succeed is because the law is not clear enough about penalites.

Clear that up and the hustlers will have to comply. You need to nail them to the wall first, though.

Let us not forget that the HMRC is currently incapable of properly determining its own IR35 rules, so companies are not really at fault on this matter.

Until the day HMRC can clarify 100% of cases, companies can only do with what they are given.

Are you ready to take a stand? Flexispot E7 motorised desk should handle whatever you dump on it – but it's not cheap

"Disgusting cable management"

Do you want me to send a pic of my cable management ?

Yours is positively sparse in comparison.

Don't ask my wife about it, though.

Indonesian web giants Gojek and Tokopedia merge to create Asian super-app

2% of Indonesia’s GDP

That's nothing to sneeze at. And that's a lot synergy, going forward.

This group appears to have already sewn up a neat package with financial and delivery across the board. Amazon, you've got a threat on the horizon.

Apple sent my data to the FBI, says boss of controversial research paper trove Sci-Hub

"You have NO privacy. Get over it"

Scott, I think that you are going to learn the hard way that privacy is on the rise now. You're part of the clique that has been plundering our lives gratis for long enough, and telling us to just accept and bend over is, quite frankly, more than insulting.

Nice redirection on the government though, unfortunately the government is less than half of the problem. Google, Facebook, Apple and Android are not government institutions, or maybe you forgot that when you tried to blame the current situation on the electoral process.

But don't worry, we are on the path of corralling you Big Tech guys back into the pen you belong. It will take some time, granted, but GDPR has already shaken up your world in a major way, and it's not going to stop soon.

Privacy will be ours, get over it.

Mammoth grab of GP patient data in the UK set to benefit private-sector market access as rules remain unchanged

NHS Digital is without a CEO right now

According to Wikipedia, they're looking for a new CEO to replace Mrs Wlkinson who is already gone. I'm not sure that that is a good sign.

For the rest, the wiki paints a reassuring picture of the organization, but hey, it's a UK Gov IT project, what could possibly go wrong ?

This week in AI: Man arrested after cops say he rode in backseat of Autopilot Tesla

From the back seat

Is there a competition going on to see just how stupid Tesla drivers can get ?

If so, this guy should get the prize.

Samsung reveals DDR5 memory module that’s ready for Compute Express Link

Interesting points, and I think I get the gist of it.

But then my question is : why does RAM still have so many connectors ?

AMD promises to spend $1.6bn on 12nm, 14nm chips from GlobalFoundries

Re: Explanation

Smaller equals less power consumption and more components in the same space.

Less power consumption also means easier to cool.

The cutting edge these days is 7nm. 14 is positively ancient.

Apparently, there are Intel engineers that say that 2nm is possible. We'll see when they get there.

Facebook Giphy merger stays on ice after failed challenge to UK competition regulator

"web tracking beacons cunningly disguised as funny little animated images"

I always marvel at the intelligence of people who can purposely lie in order to get money.

Giphy is a company that wants to track you, just like Google. In order to do so, they imagined chat images, because everyone likes to add an emoticon now and then.

They made them funny, which makes them appealing, increasing their chance of use.

But all of this is to enhance their tracking ability, siphoning your private life to sell it to ad companies.

Giphy is a bunch of vampires.

Not surprising that El Zuck wants to get his hands on it.

Tor users, beware: 'Scheme flooding' technique may be used to deanonymize you

Okay, I bit the bullet

I came back to this article and decided to try the schemeflood link.

What I got was : "If you're seeing this message, that means JavaScript has been disabled on your browser, please enable JS to make this app work. "

NoScript FTW, again.

web links like "skype://" or "slack://"

These things should absolutely be forbidden and blocked by default.

I do not want a browser to be able to launch anything on my computer. A browser's job is to allow me to browse the Web, not my application list.

Apple's expert witness grilled by Epic over 'frictionless' spending outside the app

"Hitt blamed the error on his research team"

Nope.

You're the "expert". You can blame no one but yourself.

If your research team didn't do its job, you're supposed to be the one to control and double-check and make them do it right.

You're just a lazy slob who went before a judge without doing the job properly, but accepted the money to do so.

You will forever be associated with failure.

The lawyers always win.

Sometimes, they're the only ones that do.

20% ?!?

Are you out of your mind ?

5% and not a cent more.

It's code Apple didn't write and hardly bothers vetting, sitting on a hard disk waiting for a customer to click on a button that has already been coded a decade ago.

The Apple Store has paid for itself already, maintenance costs are next to nothing.

5% is already generous.

Audacity's new management hits rewind on telemetry plans following community outrage

"at odds with the public perception of trustworthiness"

In other words : We have no problem of trustworthyness in Yandex or Google, but apparently you do. We can't understand why.

Way to go to demonstrate just how deeply we're no longer able to trust you.

Protip: If Joe Public reports that your kit is broken, maybe check that it is actually broken

Blackberry's could take screenshots ?

For the marketeer that has everything – except a CPU fan

Re: I think the reason the users go for Windows PCs is simple. Management.

You're considering the wrong type of Management.

What you mean to say is : Management decided on Windows PCs, because they can't be arsed to imagine that there's anything else in the Universe that could fit the bill.

When you've got a hammer . . .

NHS-backed org reacted to GitHub leak disclosure with legal threats and police call, complains IT pro

My 2 cents

Stop bothering with Apperta.

Let them fuck up as large as they feel they can't be bothered to care.

Hospitals cancel outpatient appointments as Irish health service struck by ransomware

Despicable

I think this calls for a DDoHS : Direct Denial of Hospital Service - to be administered with a 9mm. Maybe even a Beretta.

Your private data has been nabbed: Please update your life as soon as possible while we deflect responsibility

"assurances that everything is being done too late to be of any use"

Indeed.

They might have had some use of calling in the expensive security consultants before the shit hit the fan, to ensure that, when it did, they would be prepared.

But, hey, that costs money.

These days, reputation costs nothing, so the beancounters say no.

Until it happens.

Then it becomes a PR exercise, and that goes into the marketing budget.

Still not important.

Colonial Pipeline was looking to hire cybersecurity manager before ransomware attack shut down operations

"assuming it was filled before the attack"

Whether it filled before or after the attack, the poor sod is going to have a helluva start.

If I'm not mistaken, that target has already been bull's-eyed.

Open-source developers under corporate pressure to adopt less-permissive licenses, Percona CEO says

"pressure from their boards"

This is just Capitalism at work, people. No surprise here.

What these boards would like is to benefit from actual Open Source, but not have to risk someone else benefitting from their company's work.

Capitalism : the definition of selfish.

If you don't want to share the results, don't use Open Source code.

I'm sorry, even if you're on the board, you can't have your cake and eat it.

Guy who wrote women are 'soft, weak, cosseted, naive' lasted about a month at Apple until internal revolt

"I'm actually honest, self-deprecating, and funny"

These days, it's what you say that counts, not what you do.

Women are soft ? Thank God they are. I love rubbing up against my wife's soft skin.

Women are weak ? Let's see how weak you are while giving birth. Oh right, you can't, mutherfucker.

Disparaging women and pursuing them is a sign not only of assholery, but of inherent lack of manitude.

A real man can respect women, because he's not afraid of them.

Ransomware victim Colonial Pipeline paid $5m to get oil pumping again, restored from backups anyway – report

$5 million for criminals

Well guys, looks like you can now budget $10 million for your backup procedures, because they'll be back in a quarter or two and you obviously need to lock down your backup procedures to something a bit more robust.

And there should be a fine of 10 times your blackmail money to prevent this kind of thing from happening.

Pentagon backs away from labeling smartphone maker Xiaomi a military org run by China's communist elite

As usual

"Nor does the Chinese government or military, or any entity affiliated with the defense industrial base, possess the ability to exert control over the management or affairs of the company "

can very well be replaced with

"Nor does the US government or military, or [the NSA], possess the ability to exert control over the management or affairs of the company"

and it will ring just as true.

National Security Letters are a thing. We know that. Stop screaming hysterically about another country's companies when you have set the example.

Microsoft bins Azure Blockchain without explanation, gives users four months to move

Yeah but, for Joe User, there are no alternatives.

He wants to use Outlook, because everyone he knows uses Outlook. He wants to use Office, because everyone is talking about Word and Excel. He wants to play some games, because they're all the rage these days.

He doesn't know about Linux and, if he did, he couldn't go about installing it himself. If he did install Linux, he would have to learn a different mail program. He would have to install LibreOffice, and that's not Word. And he couldn't play many of the games that "everyone else" is playing anyway.

Now that Borkzilla is laser-focused on The Cloud (TM), and has finally started porting parts of its software empire to be Linux-compatible, we have a chance to see the day when Office will run natively on Linux and DirectX maybe as well.

That will be the day that will signal the start of Linux on the Desktop, because there will be a real alternative, ironically brought about by the same entity that has done its level best to keep Linux out of the desktop.

SAP co-founder's charitable arm made investments in a joint venture with the software giant

Indeed, all those poor investment companies managing billions in funds, where would they be if SAP didn't lend a helping hand ?

Scratch my back and I'll scratch yours, right ?

Water's wet, the Pope's Catholic, and iOS is designed to stop folk switching to Android, Epic trial judge told

"They now need to spend hundreds more to get to where they are today"

Indeed. Because you put the barriers in place to ensure that would need to happen.

It's funny, in a way, because I've been hearing for decades now that buying a video gave me a "right to view", and not a right to own.

Of course, that discourse is a load of crap but still, I'd really like to see someone argue in court that their "right to view" transcends the platform and any restriction artificially implemented by a company is an illegal impediment to their right to view.

Heck, if I were a millionnaire I think I'd give it a try, just to scare them shitless.

Salesforce fell over so hard today, it took out its own server status page

Re: Business-speak I’ve missed?

You're on the cusp, the bleeding edge.

It's a bit like Preschoolers, they blabla and they blabla and, every now and then, they make a new noise they like.

Meanwhile, the adults translate their sounds into actual words.

Another week, another issue: Virgin Galactic mulls test flight restart as VSS Unity fixed – but VMS Eve might be borked

"he expected demand to be so great"

Sorry Richard, there may be quite a few millionnaires on this planet, but even so, I'd wager there are also quite a few that prefer to continue benefitting from their status and not risk getting presented before the Pearly Gates ahead of time.

Rackspace CEO: Offshoring, real estate closures and other cost cutting measures. Did NASDAQ cheer? Well? Nope

I skimmed over that transcript

It's nothing but growth and percentages of growth throughout.

If you take the transcript at face value, in every single category they mention it's year-on-year growth. Just growing like crazy.

Even their financial department apparently improved the cashflow. I wonder how beancounters can improve cashflow. I though it was sales people and the grunts on the ground that improved cashflow by working more deals, but no. Maybe they invested a lot in BitCoin and made out like bandits ?

In any case, there is absolutely no explanation whatsoever for delivering $1 instead of $1.10. Reading that blurg, they should have delivered $1.50.

It's all malarky anyway.