Posts by Pascal Monett

Microsoft calls time on Timeline: Don't worry, more features that nobody asked for coming your way

"We can't wait to hear what you think!"

Really ? Here : TURN IT OFF !!

I want an OS, not a circus. Stop trying to transform Windows into the most interesting thing on my PC. It's there to run the stuff I need, not to remind me that I'm using a Borkzilla product.

Why can't Borkzilla understand ? You need to make an OS channel and a bullshit channel. The OS channel should be stable, reliable, no nonsense. The bullshit channel can have whatever brainfart you can concieve of, and users can subscribe to it if they want.

That would make things a lot simpler.

OMG! New free speech social network won’t allow members to take the Lord’s name in vain

Indeed. From a pillow maker, I will eagerly wait for the news that his "super secure" platform has been thoroughly pwned.

The clock is ticking, and just remember that you called the challenge.

Vote to turf out remainder of Nominet board looks inevitable after .uk registry ignores reform demands

"Nominet’s board has dug in and effectively dared their own members to force them out"

Challenge accepted !

Quash those cockroaches once and for all. And make sure they can never be elected/appointed to such a position ever again.

Irish privacy watchdog sticks GDPR probe into Facebook after that online giveaway of 533 million profiles

Another win for GDPR

My am I happy to live in the EU these days. Between Max Shrems and the European Court of Justice, there's no better place for a lover of privacy and Democracy.

Those multinational behemoths will bow to the Will of the People.

Some day.

Jackie 'You have no authority here' Weaver calls on the UK to extend Coronavirus Act provisions for online meetings

The right for members of the public to attend, in person, council meetings (of any type) should be retained as sacrosanct

That's a good point.

Yeah, but that is typical State-level shenanigans.

I live in France, so I don't have a voice in this issue, but I'll be damned if I accept my village council being managed by someone from another village.

It's the village council. It's supposed to be managed by people from that village.

Infosys says staff are leaving it again – a sign COVID crunch is receding

Translation

Infosys will be massively hiring inexperienced youngsters who will learn on the job.

The 130 new customers will undoubtedly be overjoyed.

Spy agency GCHQ told me Gmail's more secure than Microsoft 365, insists British MP as facepalming security bods tell him to zip it

Re: Conflicting statement....??

If your Exchange server is on-prem and properly firewalled, the Borkzilla is no more an external provider than all those workstations based on Windows.

In any case, don't worry about Borkzilla : it is comfortably in bed with all governments.

OVH services still not fully restored as boss rates ongoing recovery efforts a 'real nightmare'

Re: customers got burned

Only the customers that didn't check the appropriate box.

OVH has a DR plan, there are a number of other datacenters over Europe. Anyone who had included a DR zone is not having any problem.

Of course, it's the many, many OVH customers who looked at the price of the option and decided it wasn't worth it who are now crying in the corner.

No sympathy from me.

Neural networks give astronomers huge boost in identifying galaxies: 27 million done, 600 million to come

I agree with you, but the problem is that any modification of Einstein's theory to "make it work" hits a wall somewhere that makes things worse.

I've been reading up on this for some time now and, from what I understand, astronomers are not happy about the situation either.

This is Science, with a very capital S. Very educated people are making an educated guess to help explain why galaxies are not flying apart which, from the data we have, is what they should apparently be doing. We don't know why, and this is the best hypothesis we've got for the moment.

This lecture from one of the greatest scientific minds in recent history should help : Feyneman on The Scientific Method,

After years of dragging its feet, FCC finally starts tackling America's robocall scourge

Re: inertia by the incumbent telcos is also a big contributing factor

I think that the inertia of the FCC on this matter was the largest contributing factor. Now that the FCC is helmed by someone who apparently wants to do the job properly, things are likely to move forward a lot faster. And that is a Good Thing (TM).

The future is much more rosy when the knuckleheads are no longer in charge of things.

Cracked copies of Microsoft Office and Adobe Photoshop steal your session cookies, browser history, crypto-coins

Ah, warez

The good old days. The dawn of the New Information Highway, with plenty of people who wanted to show off their skills and make sure that you could run Settlers 2 or Battlefield Vietnam without needing to have the disk in the optical reader.

Bless them. They made my gaming life easier - without depriving authors of their revenue. Yes, I still have my Settlers 2 install CD. And Battlefield Vietnam, and about 600 others. I even bought two Battlefield 2 games because I played it so much that my first gamedisk shattered in the player. So much for my right to a license - in a normal world, I would have sent the pieces back and got a new DVD - because I only have license, right ? My license does not expire with the death of the disk.

So yeah, warez used to be good, until the crooks understood that they could distribute their version of a CD/DVD crack and include a nasty little package with it. It really didn't take all that long for the despicables to catch on.

Nowadays, warez is synonymous with malware. Thankfully, games no longer need to have a bloody plastic disc in a reader. Unfortunately, they do need to phone home every few minutes.

Progress ?

Re: You're cracked if you're running cracked software

Nonsense. Cracked software has nothing to do with free software.

Go download Notepad++ or Paint.net and tell me that they insist on getting ahold of your wallet or location.

MS Office works offline - at least, the versions before 365 did.

You can perfectly install MS Office 2016 and then unplug your computer from the Internet. That being said, I seriously doubt anyone posting in forums has disconnected his work PC from the Internet. If you're using Office, you're not just using Excel to do your monthly bank balance.

NSA helps out Microsoft with critical Exchange Server vulnerability disclosures in an April shower of patches

"updates to protect against new vulnerabilities in on-premise Exchange Servers"

How come there are always "new vulnerabilities" when it comes to Exchange ?

Frankly, it starting to look like Exchange is the new Flash.

Who'd have thought the US senator who fist pumped Jan 6 insurrectionists would propose totally unworkable anti-Big Tech law?

Oh sure

“A small group of woke mega-corporations control the products Americans can buy, the information Americans can receive, and the speech Americans can engage in ”

Right. Because calling for domestic terrorism and insurrection is now a right protected by the US Constitution.

Yeah.

Jackass.

1Password targets developers with Secrets Automation, acquisition of SecretHub

"GitHub also has its own Secrets API"

Okay. For the past two decades I have been working with RSA encryption and I have repeatedly been told that knowing how encryption works does not mean you know how to decrypt a specific set of data.

Despite the NSA, I do still hold that to be true, so, instead of everybody creating their own Secrets API, I think the community would be better served by an official, open-source Specrets API. One that even the NSA can't break into.

Sorry, I'm not intelligent enough to write it myself - not to mention that it needs community adoption - but I'm guesssing that until we do have such a globally-accepting, publicly-reviewed tool in place, all we're going to get is different solutions who all base their efficiency on the words "highly unlikely".

And that is not enough.

Key Perl Core developer quits, says he was bullied for daring to suggest programming language contained 'cruft'

Re: Toxicity

And that is definitely the right thing to do if that's how you feel about things.

Communication based on respect is a lost art, having been replaced by instant outrage by the Internet. People no longer think about what they type, they take it personally and just want to retaliate. And people who are capable of taking an argument at face value are very rare indeed.

The end result will obviously be communities who dwindle in size and either never say anything or never stop complaining and insulting each other.

Not anything I would want to be a part of, for sure.

Northrop Grumman's MEV-2 gives Intelsat satellite a new lease on life until the next rescue in another five years

How long can a MEV function ?

No word on that. Apparently, if it's in chunks of five years, it should at least be able to function ten years, otherwise it wouldn't be very good for servicing multiple satellites.

But I'd like to have more information on that. The wiki page hardly mentions any technical specs at all, and Grummans' site is only a polished marketing piece.

Could anyone get some cold, hard numbers on this thing ?

Clearview AI accused over free trials to US police that were plausibly deniable

"[he] did not explicitly say why he decided to leave"

Of course not. One needs to demonstrate loyalty and discretion if one wants to stay part of the team and remain a high-flyer.

Blurting out the truth would be sure-fire way of not ever getting that level of position any more.

Oracle vs Google: No, the Supreme Court did not say APIs aren't copyright – and that's a good thing

The future is FOSS

End of argument.

United States' plan to beat China includes dominating tech standards groups – especially for 5G

"the draft Strategic Competition Act of 2021"

Typical US hypocrisy. Government intervention is anathema when it concerns living standards, justice, getting companies to pay their taxes, but when there are handouts and bold statements to be made, then it's fine.

Look, either the market regulates itself, or it doesn't. You can't have it both ways.

If the golden rule of Capitalism is to be respected, it's up to Cisco to be competitive, not the US Government.

We have never given census data to anyone – not even the spy agencies, says the UK's Office for National Statistics

Ah, so it's an offence

"It is an offence to fraudulently request and use an online access code for a household that is not your own "

And that's supposed to deal with the issue ? Newflash : it's an offence to enter someone else's private property and make off with the money, jewelry and/or electronics. Happens every day, though.

Here's a tip : make your website procedures secure, then argue about what an offence is.

China whacks Alibaba with US$2.8bn fine for breaking antitrust rules

Re: Yet in the West.

Yes, curious isn't it ? For all the corruption that is alledgedly taking place in China, you have to admit that they don't waste time taking care of businesses that are not playing by the rules.

We could learn a thing or two there.

Stuxnet sibling theory surges after Iran says nuke facility shut down by electrical fault

What ?

The day after the inauguration and there's already a major issue ending in a shutdown ?

That didn't take long.

Iran should look into thorium reactors. If it's really for power, a thorium reactor would not create nearly as much tension.

NASA's Mars helicopter spins up its blades ahead of hoped-for 12 April hover

Re: I really don't know

Indeed, you don't.

So sit back, chill, and wait for the people who know what they're doing to do it.

Re: Fingers crossed

Absolutely. It is mind-blowing to imagine that our species can prepare and program a remote drone to operate on another planet.

Kudos to all boffins involved.

Texan's alleged Amazon bombing effort fizzles: Militia man wanted to take out 'about 70 per cent of the internet'

Re: Proof!

I think that some intelligence is leaking into space.

Apart from that, yeah.

Maybe so, but that does not diminish the fact that the Internet is resilient.

If I have a titanium wrench, I don't care that it was made out of titanium because that's all that was left, it's still a titanium wrench.

Wormhole encrypted file transfer app reboots Firefox Send after Mozilla fled

So, the service is free, and a Pro plan is being thought of

And you don't have ads, or tracking.

VC money is not going to carry you to success, guys. You need to monetize this or you will die. 10GB free is too much, 1GB free is enough and will incite the people who need this to splurge on a paid plan.

India uses controversial Aadhaar facial biometrics to identify COVID vaccination recipients

"A [..] facial recognition system therefore makes sense"

Well, at least they won't have any white bias in the data. Maybe they'll even have found a way to make the system accurate, contrary to the failures in the US and UK.

If that is the case, then India could be the first country to export an actual facial recognition system worth the name.

Gitpod ditches Eclipse Theia for Visual Studio Code under redesign, sponsors new dev experience event

"all things which just happen to be in tune with Gitpod's approach"

And just happen to justify its subscription model.

How convenient.

I've been a developer for 25 years now. I don't need no git's pod to do my work in.

Now get off my lawn.

W3C Technical Architecture Group slaps down Google's proposal to treat multiple domains as same origin

"No, we are not proposing to change the scope for permissions"

All we want is that everything Alphabet be recognized as a single entity, so we can scrape, pilfer and track everything with even more ease.

Google, go fuck yourself.

Airline software super-bug: Flight loads miscalculated because women using 'Miss' were treated as children

"the company ignored that question"

Not acceptable.

You do not program for how your own country interprets values. You program for how your client country interprets values.

Mistakes like that lead to losing a satellite because you transmitted data in metric values while the program treated them in imperial values.

Beloved pixel pusher Paint prepares to join Notepad for updates from Microsoft Store

Re: MS Paint has never been so bad

Well, I'm glad you're content with the basic shovel of the pixel realm. I guess you don't need to create/retouch images all that much.

As for me, I've been using Paint.net for over a decade, and before that I was using Paint Shop Pro.

Microsoft Paint is the kindergerden tool, as far as I'm concerned.

And let's not talk about Notepad. Notepad++ is the only text editor you'll ever need, and Microsoft's offering doesn't hold a candle to it.

Website maker Wix embarks on weird WordPress-trashing campaign, sends 'influencer' users headphones from 'WP'

So, Wix are just a bunch of assholes

A company that is far behind the competition, closed source in an environment that is apparently mostly open-source and competing fairly, and the cherry on top is that they send "promotional" material looking to be from their major competitor.

That combination speaks of a despicable mindset, and I don't even take into account the impossibility of exporting data.

Keep it up, Wix, and you'll stay at the bottom of the market barrel.

Indian defense chief admits China’s cyber-weapons would ‘disrupt large number of systems’ whenever Beijing presses the button

I'm not sure we can compare with MAD. Once your communications infrastructure is overwhelmed, you don't have any strike capability left.

UK government rings £1.5bn dinner bell for software design and implementation, 54 vendors come running

It doesn't really matter, it's going to be a vast waste of money anyway.

Greenland's elections just bolstered China's tech world domination plan

I definitely took that as sarcasm. I agree that it was slightly unexpected given the tone of the rest of the article, but it is standard Vulture writing and a reminder of the basic style : biting.

British gambling giant Betfred told to pay stiffed winner £1.7m jackpot after claiming 'software problem'

"not transparent or fair"

Ouch. There are a million websites out there that need to review their Ts&Cs in that case.

First time I've ever heard of a judge knocking down those carefully constructed piles of legal Get Out Of Jail Free (for the company) mumbo-jumbo. If this becomes a precedent, a lot of companies are going to feel the pain.

Sometimes British judges are just the best.

Privacy activist Max Schrems claims Google Advertising ID on Android is unlawful, files complaint in France

Re: However...

While I agree with basically everything you say, I can't see that happening any time soon.

Re: The BBC itself is just as damned bad

Well hey, you've taken back control. Deal with it.

No need. Just file a complaint under GDPR. I think you'll find that things will change quickly (for an administrative definition of "quickly").

'Our hosted pools are under attack by abusers': Azure DevOps enjoys a midweek TITSUP*

"convenient alternatives to self-hosting"

Am I glad that I don't work in the kind of environment that thinks that self-hosting is anathema.

It may work for some, but I have been self-hosting my data for over two decades and I have had no problem. That does not incite me to indulge in handing over my data to some faceless virtual hosting facility.

All the stories I hear about burning datacenters, entire swaths of hosted servers wiped by some "event", and the many, many stories about pilfered user data really do not make me think "hey, I just might try out that cloud stuff everyone is talking about".

US national parks to be smothered under blanket of liquid-hot Magma. Yes, the open-source 5G software

"vendor agnostic and free from lock-in"

The advantage of the free software movement is that, once the basic list of requirements are set up, things can be added under public scrutiny and the software can evolve according to the needs of the users, not the budgets of the providers.

Free Software is the death knell of closed voting machines, whose controller nobody knows. It is the end of Windows (yeah, okay, not anytime soon, but still), an OS that is decided by a company that thinks it knows better than you what you need. At some point in time, it will even make IoT reliable and secure (not holding my breath either).

Closed, proprietary software is dead, it just doesn't know it yet.

Software in space race heats up: Microsoft eyes satellite image processing with Thales Alenia Space's digital image analyst

"applying [ML] and [AI] (and their predecessors) to the field of satellite imagery"

Then it is perfectly logical that Borkzilla enters the field now, a decade after everyone else.

It's SOP, you see.

Astronomers have not waited on Borkzilla to wake up to their needs. This is just another soon-to-be-abandoned project.

Post Office awards Fujitsu a £42.5m contract extension for the IT system behind wrongful subpostmaster prosecutions

So, let me summarize

For "economic and technical reasons," the service could not be provided by any organisation other than the original contractor before the expiry of the Horizon Agreement

Okay, sure, that part I can accept. It would be highly unreasonable to throw everything away and have operation grind to a halt while you commission Crapita (because who else ?) to develop an entirely new set of bugs.

So fine, ensure the maintenance of your buggy, mololithic, outdated system. Got it.

Meanwhile, now that you have ensured its continuance, WHAT ARE YOU DOING TO REPLACE IT ? Now's the time. Throw another £100 million to somebody and get your non-monolithic, up-to-date, designed for multi-channel digital operations (do you really even know what that means ?), highly Agile system on its feet so that you can replace the dinosaur when the next end date expires.

Because 2024 is going to be here before you finish drawing up your next set of outdated specifications, I'll wager.

The JavaScript ecosystem is 'hopelessly fragmented'... so here is another runtime: Deno is now a company

Re: Mozilla clueless

Sorry, but where you get it from does not make it any less privacy-respecting.

Unless you have a recent Huawei phone, you've got the Google Play Store and there's no other option to get stuff without rooting the phone, so it's hardly a dent in Mozilla's efforts to get you a privacy-respecting browser.

Taiwan’s PC-fest COMPUTEX cancels real-world edition – three months after promising in-person gathering

"COMPUTEX will now revert to a virtual format"

As was inevitable even in December. But don't owrry, governments are forcing people to get untested vaccines so, by next December, everyone will either be vaccinated or dead and everything will be business as usual.

Well, for the businesses and business owners that survived the confinements, that is.

Can we get a Reaper icon ?

Jeff Bezos supports US tax rise after not paying it for two years – and paying tiny amount in 2019

Ah, tax laws

Instead of changing the rate at which corporations are taxed, it might be simpler to change the rules that allow them deductions on their tax bill.

I'm guessing that would bring in a few billion.