Posts by Pascal Monett

Not very sage rage over UK pay outage: Opayo says 'ohheyno' as payment processor's payments stop processing

It's all well and good to complain

If you're so unhappy with their services, what the hell are you doing still using them ?

Are there no other choices out there ? Is it that difficult to do a search on Internet ?

It beggars belief that commercial entities today can provide an apparently consistently shitty service, and yet people still continue paying them for their shitty service.

I mean, why has TSB not shut its doors ? Why is TalkTalk still in existence ? These massive failures still have customers, for frack's sake !

Ryuk ransomware recovery cost us $8.1m and counting, says Baltimore school authority

So, the bill amounts to $8 million

Great.

Now you know just how much you can afford to spend on proper backup procedures and network security in the future.

Because if you don't spend that money to shore up your digital infrastructure, you'll be paying again.

And again . . .

Amazon says it's all social media's fault for letting fake review schemes thrive

Poor little Amazon

Did its best to resist a consumer information bill under the spurious claim that it favored brick-and-mortar stores, now is moaning about social platform fake reviews.

Cry me a river. I don't see you losing either money or sleep over this.

Hubble Space Telescope to switch to backup memory module after instrument computer halts

This is Science we're talking about. I would suppose that, in the interest of fairness, the queue resumes at the point it was when the incident happened.

Hubble is a precious resource. Being granted time means you have something interesting and important to check out. It remains important when Hubble comes back online.

At least, I hope that's the way it works.

That is indeed a logical explanation.

South Korea has a huge problem with digital sex crimes against women says Human Rights Watch

"The women [..] were often blamed"

Of course. You got raped, it's your fault for being attractive and not wearing a trash bag.

Wow. What a progressive mentality.

I know we still need to make progress here in The West, but damn, if a woman goes to the police, I would at least expect a proper complaint to be filed and prosecuted. In South Korea, apparently, the cops will ask you for incriminating evidence, have a good laugh and send you on your way.

That's disgusting.

And the amount of spycams is absolutely intolerable. There must be a large proportion of perverts down there. I think some cattle-prod education would do wonders to clear up the atmosphere.

Biden to Putin: Get your ransomware gangs under control and don’t you dare cyber-attack our infrastructure

It goes both ways

We regularly hear, from Washington, about how a Russian hacker group is guilty of trying this or that. What we never hear of is what the NSA is doing in Russia, and nobody is going to be surprised to learn that the NSA has its fingers in Russia. I do not believe that the NSA is sitting pretty, hands away from keyboard, not doing anything in Russia.

Russia has sent 45 inquiries ? Why haven't we heard about that ?

If this situation is to be resolved, transparency will be needed on both sides. So come on, out with the dirty NSA laundry already.

Japan assembles superteam of aircraft component manufacturers to build supersonic passenger plane

Interesting

There seems to be a sudden rash of companies sprouting up to make supersonic jet planes.

We've been hearing about a supersonic future ever since Concorde bit the dust. Might it actually come into being ?

Microsoft CEO gets a side hustle — Satya Nadella made Chair of Microsoft board

"undoubtedly an endorsement of his achievements as CEO"

So, Ballmer not having been made Chair of the Board is undoubtedly admitting that his tenure was the worst in Borkzilla history ?

Well, at least there is some consequence.

British Medical Association calls for clarity on patient deadline for opting out of NHS Digital's GP data grab

And to think

that all this deadline and moaning and lack of clarity would disappear, if only NHS Digital had decided for everything to be opt-in.

On top of that, they would have had no Day 1 problems with the rollout, as servers would harldy be pounded. They'd have years to perfect everything and make sure it all worked !

Then, of course, they'd need to find some data. Maybe hand out lollipops for opt-ins ?

Spacewalk veterans take a trip outside the ISS to pump up the power with new solar arrays

The ISS is going to be scheduled to be de-orbited in the not-so-distant future, if I'm not mistaken, so there will be no more modules sent up any more. More scientific experiments, probably, in the time it has left, but they won't be needing plasma cutters any time soon.

I wonder what the de-orbit plan is ?

Lenovo refreshes workstation ThinkPads with 11th-gen Intel CPUs, RTX graphics, 5G

Just one question

How many do they have to sell ? Because, from what I've been hearing as of late, there's not a glut of CPUs lying around.

Dependable Debian is like a rock in a swirling gyre of 'move fast and break things', and version 11 is no different

Dependable Debian

It's nice to know that there are still people out there who know what an OS is and how to make one.

People who are not dazzled by the latest shiny, nor feel the unsurmountable urge to throw code out there ASAP because this is the new trend.

An Operating System is supposed to be the bedrock upon which the user can build his software experience. It is not supposed to be the software experience.

When I retire and get the chance to reconfigure my home office to my personal specifications, I know what I'm going to choose for my home server.

China launching first crew to its own space station on Thursday

Better not be claustrophobic

"this week’s crew will have to make do with Tianhe, the Tianzhou-2 cargo module and their own craft "

That's going to feel mighty cramped for a 3-month stay.

What Microsoft's Windows 11 will probably look like

Yes there's money to be made.

Nobody says Borkzilla can't make a closed-source Linux version of Office. There's nothing in any Linux license that says you have to use Open Source Software.

Bad Apple Safari update breaks IndexedDB JavaScript API, upsets web apps

"This should have been caught by basic unit testing."

But it was : the basic unit being - the user.

As for Apple forcing encouraging developers to create apps that Apple can shamelessly cream the profit from, gosh, I wonder how that came about.

Calendly’s new logo perceived as either bog-standard or kind of crappy

Apparently, they do meeting scheduling. Their "plus" is that they 'remove the hassle of email to schedule the meeting', whatever that means. I'm guessing they have a video platform as well.

Their logo is blurry because the hexagon in the middle has rounded corners. This is the Age Without Angles, everything must be soft and fuzzy because Heaven forbid we offend someone by showing a pointed corner. That's aggressive .

Amazon exec's husband jailed for two years for insider trading. Yes, with Amazon stock

Re: Brain fart

Indeed, I mixed up what the prosecution asked for with what the guy got :).

Thanks for the beer, and for the compliment !

Being a high-roller is a lot of fun

But it's a lot better when the money is legit.

The guy's an idiot. In barely two years he reaps almost $1.5 million and he thinks nobody is going to notice ?

And now he's ruined his wife's career.

I wonder if he'll still have a wife in 2 years and 9 months. If so, it'll be a cold reunion.

China's latest online crackdown targets mean girl online fan clubs that turn toxic

Yes, but at least they are Thinking Of The Children (TM).

We have our sob stories on this side where girls were actually driven to suicide. I think we could do with a bit of cleaning up as well.

Yes, it's China, and yes, it is a totalitarian state, but in this case, what it is doing is protecting children and young teenagers from their own excesses and from bad influence. There is no political bias here, it is not to impose the Will Of The Party and have them all sing the national anthem every time they log on.

I approve this move. Children must be safe online.

Canadian province's supreme court orders Dell to pay nearly $500,000 to sales rep fired in his twilight years

64 years old, $390K retirement package

Doesn't sound like he needs to find work to me.

Good for him and, as usual, shame on corporate behemoths who, apparently universally, cheat on the very people bringing in the contracts.

Mensa data spillage was due to 'unauthorised internal download'

It's Mensa

They'll figure it out.

Re: You have to look at the individual

I can't, there's a gigantic ego in the way.

Intel adds a new device – the ‘IPU’ – to its must-have modern data centre stack

I can't help but wonder

What kind of mischief are the miscreants going to wreak, and how are they looking at this ?

More "intelligence" on the network means more holes to slip through.

Samsung mulls delaying next 'fan edition' phone in light of semiconductor shortage

They're delaying the next model ?

Good.

Don't need a new model every year anyway.

'Welcome to Perth' mirth being milked for all it's worth

Thanks for the link

That is an awesome channel. I am going to be checking it out in detail.

Just in time too, I've spent my usual time-wasting channels' content :).

Fancy the ultimate no-Air-outside-bnb? NASA willing to rent out ISS for two weeks

I'll be ROFLing thinking about billionnaires drinking their own pee

Not to mention the toilets.

Or the absence of solid foods.

Do go have two weeks of fun being locked up with everyone else's farts, and remember, you're paying almost $1m per day for the experience !

When security gets physical: Mossad boss hints at less-than-subtle Stuxnet followup

"Stuxnet wasn't the only spanner in the works"

Spying 101 : keep your enemy looking for threats, whether they exist or not.

Of course he's going to say that. Mossad is full of actually competent people. They know that you keep your enemy under pressure, so that the enemy makes mistakes that can compound whatever it is you have in waiting, or make it easier or better to unleash at the right time.

Of course, if I were Iran and Mossad declared that they were done and didn't have anything ready, I wouldn't trust them either . . .

US Supreme Court gives LinkedIn another shot at stymieing web scraping

Re: Better Law

I agree completely, but they are judges, not soccer players. They cannot pass the buck, they must render a judgement based on the law that is.

I'm guessing that being a judge is not all bread and honey.

Indian government reverts to manual tax filings as new e-tax portal remains badly borked a week after launch

Because the release date was decided on following political requirements, not design requirements.

Basically, the devs got the specs in their hands and just had to get something running by a given day.

I'm not going to comment on Indian developer skills, but I'm sure that any group of developers is going to have a tough time on such a project if they need three more months than they have.

Thailand bans joke cryptocurrencies and non-fungible tokens

Can we do the same here ?

Please ?

NATO summit communiqué compares repeat cyberattacks to armed attacks – and stops short of saying 'one-in, all-in' rule will always apply

This is starting to look like playground scuffles

"Stop that you two !"

"But he started it !"

"No, you started it !" <cue more scuffling>.

I was going to say that we need to approach this matter as adults, but then I remembered that we just got out of OHSG's presidency, and we still have The Boris on our side.

So playground scuffles it is.

Inventor of the graphite anode – key Li-ion battery tech – says he can now charge an electric car in 10 minutes

This is impressive

And, contrary to carbon nanotubes, it looks like it will be available on the market sooner rather than later.

With all the Li-ion batteries out there, there is undoubtedly an immense drive to have a charger that can not only guarantee your battery recharged in minutes, but your battery life doubled as well.

I would soo like to get my hands on a charger like that !

The AN0M fake secure chat app may have been too clever for its own good

So, a backdoored encrypted chat, eh ?

"law enforcement authorities around the world are well and truly committed to finding ways through and around encryption, wherever it is used by criminals "

And I have no problem with that.

What I have a problem with is those same authorities arguing that my Sync encryption should be backdoored, or that my PGP mail should be backdoored, or that my communications over Internet with my bank should be backdoored.

No, they should not. It is what keeps criminals out of my affairs. If it so happens that it also keeps authorities out of my affairs, there is one big difference : criminals do not have warrants at their disposal.

FTC approves $61.7m settlement with Amazon for pocketing driver tips

So, let me see if I get this correctly

Step One : public announcement : drivers will get 100% of their tips.

First off, if you have to announce that, there's already something wrong.

Then, second step : switch to variable base pay rate without telling anyone.

Ok, for that to happen, there had to have been a meeting. Someone chaired a meeting with a group of other people and the question was, specifically : how do we not pay 100% of the tips, like we promised ?

And all the good little soldiers brainstormed that little switcheroo.

The next question was : how do we keep the drivers from learning about it ?

Well, at that point, anybody could think of lumping all the tips together without any possibility of checking which tip for which job. The less you communicate, the easier it is to hide things.

What this whole story tells me is that Bezos is far from being the only evil one in Amazon. He's got an army of evil minions who have absolutely no morals at all, and they're all in upper management.

Excuse me, what just happened? Resilience is tough when your failure is due to a 'sequence of events that was almost impossible to foresee'

Great article

Pure wisdom as well.

I will keep the link as a reference in all my discussions about testing components with my customers.

UK tells UN that nation-states should retaliate against cyber badness with no warning

"zero-notice digital punishment"

Because the Internet needs to become even more like the Wild, Wild West.

Oh, silly me, so that's what WWW stands for !

Blue passports, French service provider: Atos bags £21m UK Passport Office deal

So, this contract is for doing what the previous one didn't ?

The thing from 2017 that was supposed to revolutionize data treatment, remove paper, and be delivered in 2020, is where ?

Ah, silly me, nowhere, of course.

UK Gov IT at its best : promising the Moon, barely delivering a lorry.

Whatever you've been doing during lockdown, you better stop it right now

Thanks, Dabbsy

Exactly what I needed to end this week.

BOFH: Despite the extremely hazardous staircase, our IT insurance agreement is at an all-time low. Can't think why

Good one !

A properly cheerful BOFH just hinting at the terrifyingly evil one lurking just out of sight. Loved it !

I think this whole series could become the foundation of a new style of Tales from the Crypt. It could be called Tales from the Server Room, but someone would need to find something more catchy.

Someone call Hollywood . . .

Linus Torvalds tells kernel list poster to 'SHUT THE HELL UP' for saying COVID-19 vaccines create 'new humanoid race'

So, basically you're calling yourself a dickhead ?

Well, you know best.

Make no mistake, COVID is here. It's not going away. Countries are celebrating their vaccination schemes, and hell, I'm raring to get back to going to restaurants and being in public without that godawful mask, but you can be sure that, from now on, every year we'll have an updated COVID vaccine, just there's a flu vaccine.

COVID is here to stay.

How about wanting everyone to know the truth ?

We don't know why it's there, we don't know what it does – all we know is that the button makes everything OK again

Re: Dummy thermostats

The number of variations on this kind of story is bewildering.

It's almost as if someone in Manglement is reading El Reg !

Mounties messed up by using Clearview AI, says Canadian Privacy Commissioner

"Clearview AI claims Canadian privacy law shouldn’t apply to US-based companies"

It does not apply to US-based companies. As far as Canada is concerned, Clearview AI is free to leech anything they want.

It applies to Canadian companies and organizations.

Idiots.

China arrests over 1000 for using cryptocurrency to help launder proceeds of phone scams

But, but

They said I would be anonymous !

Apple, it's OK. Seriously. You don't need to blind your iOS 15 engineers to prevent leaks

"a thick shroud of secrecy"

More like a thick shroud of paranoia.

Apple operates in its own world, and thank $Deity that there are employment tribunals to set it straight every now and then, because otherwise it would forget that there is actually a Real World (TM) out there.

Except for Marketing. They know.

AWS Frankfurt experiences major breakdown that staff couldn’t fix for hours due to ‘environmental conditions’ on data centre floor

Once again, Single Point of Failure failed

It's interesting that, in an industry that can have just about redundant everything (switches, servers, firewalls, you name it), it would appear that nobody bothered to plan redundant aircon (at least, not that I can tell from the article).

I know aircon is expensive, but now the question is : how much more expensive is a day of 100% downtime ?

You might want to design a second aircon system as backup, just to be sure.

Perseverance Mars rover sets off on its first mission, to boldly drill and return samples as no rover has drilled before

Go Persy !

Science is going to go forward again. Great news !

Let's hope that Zhurong will find interesting things as well.

Exciting times.

Risk and reward: Nefilim ransomware gang mainly targets fewer, richer companies and that strategy is paying off, warns Trend Micro

"tools such as PowerShell"

Ah, Powershell. One more of the many "what could possibly go wrong ?" moments from Borkzilla.