Posts by Pascal Monett

Inside the belly of the beast: A technical walk through Intel's 18A production facility at Fab52

Re: Awesome

I second that. Okay, AMD took the lead, and not entirely witthout reason. But that certainly does not mean that Intel should just lie down and die.

This can be proof that Intel still has a bite, and there is largely enough room for two chip companies to make an honest living without trying to shoot each other in the legs.

I wish the best for this foundry and for Intel's futur in the business. I just hope they won't go back to the childish antics of skewed marketing presentations and charts that are presented to make Intel look much better than it is.

I won't hold my breath, though.

Chinese phishing kit helps scammers who send fake texts impersonate TikTok, Coinbase, others

Ah, scammers. Well placed in the Scum Of The Earth' top ten.

It's Sunday, right ?

Get a bit of revenge schadenfreud : here.

Kyndryl sued for firing non-white workers, disabled vet

[terminations] based on race, national origin, age, disability, and whistleblowing activities

Well, as soon as you wrote "IBM spinoff" I thought, duh.

In a just world, everyone in that company should have walked out, leaving those manglegers and CxOs with the liberty to hire all-white inexperienced youngsters and revel in the lack of profits that that would generate.

But this world is not just, especially in the US at this time, and nobody who has a job is going to resign over petty detail like Mohammed got canned.

Hundreds of millions of business PCs are still on Windows 10 as D-Day nears

"100s of millions of computers that have yet to upgrade to Windows 11"

Sorry Redmond, you yourself defined that a vast majority of them didn't have the hardware to do so.

Fuck you.

McKinsey wonders how to sell AI apps with no measurable benefits

"navigate the minefield of hype that surrounds AI"

Be honest.

Don't sell AI.

Of course, I am fully aware that snake-oil vendors can't keep their slimy hands off of a new get-rich-quick scam, and it is quite a shame that such companies can't be forced to pay for the benefits they promised that never appeared, but really : intelligent CEOs (I'm supposing there are a few of them left) will not be taken in by the siren song, and will tell companies like McKinsey to fuck the hell off.

Yes, I am an idealist. Sometimes even, a poet. In other words, I believe people generally actually want to make things better, not worse.

I do realize that, as far as the Dow Jones is concerned, that is rarely true.

Please don't burst my bubble . . .

Hobble your AI agents to prevent them from hurting you too badly

Nah, don't hobble them

Let them run wild and discover which wonderful lands you can discover.

After all, it's AI, ain't it ? How can you know what you will discover if you don't let it loose ?

Don't pay attention to your stock price, this is more important.

Right ?

RIGHT ?

Mars’ powerful whirlwinds blow dust everywhere, could affect future missions

This is a wierd read

I seem to remember that there was a rover that was actually saved by said winds which scoured its solar panels and allowed it to go farther and longer than ever thought possible.

Now this is painted as a threat. Why ?

Take this rob and shove it! Salesforce issues stern retort to ransomware extort

I applaud the declaration

There are two things that are indispensable to stop ransomware.

One is to harden your systems and up security. That costs money and implies expertise and employee education - none of which are simple. One would think that, after 3 decades now of businesse integrating IT, it would be a given, but here we are.

The second is to never, ever give the scumbags a single dime. They want money, they're not going to waste their time if it is clear that no money will be forthcoming.

Now, the only thing left is to hope that Salesforce will be true to its word and not do like the US Government, who always said loud and clear that they "do not negociate with terrorists" and yet have been caught red-handed doing just that.

Exchange Online will start archiving your oldest emails before your inbox bursts

"reimagining archiving"

You'd have to have imagined it properly at first. You're just discovering archiving now.

The way things are going at Redmond, I wouldn't be surprised if your archiving strategy depends on Yet Another Sharepoint Server.

Blech.

AI companion bots use emotional manipulation to boost usage

"emotional manipulation"

Oh thanks.

I already have a wife, a daughter and a cat. Do you really think I need more emotional manipulation ?

Teens arrested in London preschool ransomware attack

17 eh ?

And even other criminal groups found it disgusting. That's saying something.

In other news, complaint registered on the 25th of September, arrests made on October 7th. That is quite the quick action on the part of the police. Well done.

Now chain them to a fucking huge ball of iron in a stone quarry and have them break rocks for the next twenty years.

You do not touch the children. Period.

Employees regularly paste company secrets into ChatGPT

Re: Personal access at work

And it is possible.

Right now one of my clients in Luxembourg is a government institution. When I work there, I have no access to my gmail account. From the mail account I have there, I am forbidden to send or recieve mail to/from the Internet. I cannot install anything on my computer - I can't even change the background wallpaper. I have the possibility of placing the desktop icons where I want them, but I cannot delete any of them, nor can I change their properties. My on-site desktop is locked down tighter than a gnats ass. And, as for browser access, you can bet that there are a bunch of sites that are on the blacklist and, since you don't know which ones are, you're careful to not trip the firewall warning too often. My only zone of "freedom" is the taskbar, where I have the right to place and remove any shortcut I want.

So it can be done.

Re: CoPilot is fucking useless

Instead of wasting your time like that, you could have launched Excel (since you're at work) and entered a cell formula of "=WeekNum(Today)".

Excel doesn't lie on that.

Re: circumvent our policies to access chatbots

How exactly do you circumvent a firewall interdiction rule ?

I would think that forbidding the IP address(es) of ChatGPT should be an iron-clad protection, no ?

How your mouse could eavesdrop on you and rat you out

"each key sounds different"

Not to me, but I will acknowledge that my hearing isn't what it used to be.

That said, if each key does sound different, then each keyboard sounds different as well. Seems to be a bit difficult to have a standard library, so it means calibrating the keys to specific frequencies.

Okay, congrats on having found a new attack vector, even if it is only 60% reliable.

Still, this whole thing stikes me as a bit of intellectual masturbation. If you can get malware onto a PC via an pseudo-open-source program, you've got better things to do than listen to mouse vibrations.

Starlink is burning up one or two satellites a day in Earth’s atmosphere

"there's already a possibility we're damaging the upper atmosphere"

Well with how Humanity generally behaves, let's cut the waffling and just admit that we are damaging the upper atmosphere.

After all, we've damaged every else, so . . .

AI: The ultimate slacker's dream come true

What a poetic article

The author has taken every opportunity to wax lyrical in a beautiful way :

- work avoidance is actually one of the finest acts of self-empowerment in the corporate world

- a subversive rebellion against oppression, a shining bulwark against erosion of the soul, and a just response to the disrespect in which so many organizations hold their employees

- true laziness requires the moral fortitude to reject materialist hedonism and accept the social exclusion that poverty brings

- achieve their preferred level of intellectual indolence while seeming to serve their masters

- the clothes of usefulness around a skeletal body bereft of life

- it exists in dynamic equilibrium in the whole framework of hypocrisy

- the working environment denies the dignity that comes from making a difference

That was a very pleasant read on a subject that could have been just a dry repetition of survey results.

Well done !

AI chatbots that butter you up make you worse at conflict, study finds

Re: Limited role

Resolving pub quiz disputes can be done with a proper Internet search. AI is not needed.

Re: that is true leadership

You're talking about a Naval commander. Someone who is responsible for two things : the mission (where he might save the lives of many people on multiple vessels) and his men.

The little snowflakes who use pseudo-AI to validate themselves have no idea what the word responsability means. They're also giving up their brains to a hallucinating bullshit generator.

That's how you end up with morons falling in love with a female chatbot. On the other hand, they're also doing a service to humanity by slef-removing themselves from the gene pool, so . . .

Bezos plan for solar powered datacenters is out of this world… literally

Bezos can put every cent he has in this

He still won't be able to make it reliable enough to work.

First, there's the need for an outer shell that can minimize cosmic radiation. Just getting that shell in orbit is going to cost him mountains of cash. Then there's the cost of putting people up there to assemble the damn thing, while sending them the mountains of kit they're going to need to put together. Supposing that his cash reserves hold up (and that he doesn't just abandon the project like billionnaires are wont to do when the results take too long), in space that is a project that is going to take years. And we can only hope that there won't be too many lost screws adding to the trash that's already in orbit.

Getting the huge radiators that will be needed up there is going to cost another mountain of cash, not to mention the continuous money bleed of keeping a human construction crew (trained for space) well fed, protected and managing their waste and oxygen.

Bezos, you're not going to like the bill on this one, nor the timescale.

And that is before the complete automation of disk replacement comes into play, and you can only pray that disks are the only things that are going to fail (hint : they won't be). I'm guessing that when you get the $200 million bill for replacing a motherboard, you're going to have a hard rethink about the viability of this lunatic idea of yours.

UK government says digital ID won't be compulsory – honest

Don't worry. It's fucked up by design.

Energy drink company punished ERP graybeard for going too fast

Oh really ?

"It turned out the HR department decided I had encroached on her critical job of editing inter-departmental emails "

If editing emails is your critical job then you don't have enough to do.

Amazon grounds drone deliveries in Arizona after two crashed into a crane

"two [..] delivery drones hit the boom of a crane"

But there is no problem with the technology, of course.

Except for the fact that, apparently, the drone software isn't looking for obstacles in its path. Or, in any case, obstacles that are smaller than a building.

Maybe all the empty spaces in a crane confused the drone's software into thinking that it would just pass through ?

Amazon is going to have to make updates to drone software, ergo there is a problem with its technology. But hey, it's PR, so . . .

Goebbels would be proud.

Salesforce pickin' up good vibrations

Oh great

"The idea, she explained, is that business users, rather than developers, can jumpstart the development process, and once the proof-of-concept application has taken shape, developers can then add refinements. "

Translation : some stupid PHB can cobble together one input screen, then hand over his grand idea to the dev team which will have to work its ass off to make a sloppy idea into reality. And they'll have to make it work because His Manglement will point to his abortion of an idea and say "but it works here !".

Pentagon decrees warfighters don't need 'frequent' cybersecurity training

Department of War

Headed by a bonespur who never got closer to a war than a film he saw on TV. As for cybersecurity, he doesn't even know what that means.

Brick by brick, the orange shitgibbon and his croonies are dismantling the strength of the US.

China will be thrilled.

Windows 10 refuses to go gentle into that good night

Re: Windows 10

It is not only pointless, but completely artificial.

Re: I wouldn't hold your breath...

Indeed.

Businesses obviously have zero memory, otherwise they would have ditched Windows long ago.

Users don't care, they just want a computer that works. Now that more and more things are being done via smartphone, I honestly wonder where Borkzilla is going to keep its revenue flowing from.

Not that I care, though. This pile of DRM-infested shit deserves to die whatever manglement says about its precious, precious Excel pie charts.

New Zealand’s Institute of IT Professionals collapses

Re: Errr

That would depend on the legal status of the Institute.

If it were an association, the rules on reporting are vastly more relaxed than if it were registered as a regular, for-profit company.

US gov shutdown leaves IT projects hanging, security defenders a skeleton crew

Another step towards chaos

Trump is dragging the US down the drain.

Now, after having shoved everyone useful out of the door, he's going to be able to claim a state of urgency, invoke emergency powers, and end up Trumptator for life.

Maybe he's slightly less stupid than I thought.

UK's digital hospital plan meets analog reality check

"treatment in person"

But . . but . . that costs money !

And you can't shove AI in there !

Blockchain just became an utterly mainstream part of the global financial system

"promise to bake it into international payment infrastructure"

So it's not yet "an utterly mainstream part of the global financial system". It's just a promise.

I'm very interested to find how they solve the scalability issue with blockchain. International finance is not going to stand for waiting longer and longer when the ledger gets bigger - and bigger it will get. Fast.

So, unless SWIFT can find a way to solve that issue, this promise is worth nothing more than the pixels it is printed on.

Tile trackers are a stalker's dream, say Georgia Tech researchers

Tile

Yet another product that shuts part of your brain down. You don't need to remember where you put your phone, just press the button and presto! follow the beep. Or something. I don't know, I can't remember what I just read on their site. Oh look ! A kitten !

Civilization. Going to hell in a nice, comfy, padded-cell basket . . .

Salesforce users grumble after Agentforce AI replaces search on some help pages

"results produced by Agentforce are often repetitive or just plain wrong"

Yeah, it's called AI.

It's the future, whether you like it or not.

The funny thing is, when this house of cards finally crashes (and it will), Wall Street is going to punish the companies that used it for mismanagement.

Oh well, I'm not going to be shedding a tear for those CEOs.

Beijing-backed burglars master .NET to target government web servers

"a US-led plot to discredit it and sully its peaceful intentions"

Oh, like the entire fleet China is building to invade peacefully visit Taiwan ?

Pull the other one, Xi, it has bells on it.

Taliban impose tele-ban and take Afghanistan offline

So, Afghanistan is cut off from the Internet

"The Register is not aware of a government deciding telecommunications and the internet have no role in its society "

The Taliban are not a government.

They are a bunch of crazed zealots of a non-existant "religion" that has been cobbled together with nonsense and hatred to put down women.

Women no longer have the right to education, nor to work. They only exist to bear children. I've heard that they are not even allowed to invite their women friends for tea - not that they have tea anyway.

So no more midwives, no nurses and, since men are not allowed to touch them, no medical care from male doctors. This brain-dead thinking is self-defeating. Once most of the women have died in childbirth of from some sort of untreated disease, there won't be enough male children to continue the proud Taliban legacy. That means that, in the worst-case scanario, in fifty years or so the Taliban will all have died out because there won't be enough male children to indoctrinate.

Well done Taliban, you've set your own clock on your demise.

Meanwhile, the women are going to go through unimaginable suffering.

Tesla on the wrong tracks with Fail Self Driving, Senators worry

I doubt that that is possible.

The human brain is absolutely extraordinary when it comes to audio analysis. In a room full of people chatting (more or less loudly), you can still concentrate on what the person you're talking with is saying. Your brain can sort the wheat from the chaff, as they say.

I don't think a computer can do that. Sure, it can record an audio stream, but I do not know of any product that can take an MP3 and seperate the piano from the trumpets, for example.

Asking a Tesla to pay attention to audio is just asking for more trouble.

Britain's policing minister punts facial recog nationwide

Don't worry, I'm confident that this one will be botched as well.

After having cost half a billion, of course. Friends have to get something out of the mess.

Oracle will have to borrow at least $25B a year to fund AI fantasy, says analyst

"one he believes is worth inflating"

Of course it is - for him.

He'll be squirreling away a million here, a million there, stashing the dough in bank accounts he controls.

When the bubble bursts, he won't be left holding the purse in any case. He'll just trot off to whatever mansion he has and open a bottle of champaign for what he will believe is a well-deserved rest.

Meanwhile, Oracle will hit the wall with tens of billions in debt it cannot repay.

Will it fold ? Or will it hike up the licence prices by 1000% ? Who knows ?

NASA administrator says US should have ‘village’ on Moon in a decade

"leaps and bounds"

You will only be able to start leaping and bounding after 2029, when the current orange curmudgeon is forced to take a pause in returning the US to the stone age.

If NASA still exists and the shitgibbon-in-chief hasn't dismantled it on grounds that it's full of democrat-terrorists.

In the meantime, China will be pushing ahead, ESA will probably be delighted to hire all the NASA specialists that will be fired by the orange tsunami of ignorance, and even India might end up with a bigger budget than NASA.

So yeah, there will likely be a Moon base in the next quarter century. It just won't be flying the US flag.

Trump’s tariff‑shaped stick can’t beat reality on US chip fabbing

Re: domestic enemies

There is a very clear domestic enemy sitting in the Oval Office.

The Army should take him out and hand over power to someone who actually respects the Constitution.

Trump demands Microsoft fire its head of global affairs

"It is highly unusual [. . ]"

No, it is completely unheard of.

The US President has, historically, taken care of the country, not of his own personal vendettas.

It would seem that Trump is indeed the greatest US President. He is the most pathetic, vindictive, tiny-dicked asshole there has ever been.

At this point in time, I think the Statue of Liberty should be dismantled and returned to France for safekeeping.

The US doesn't deserve it anymore.

If you can't use AI then it's bye bye, Accenture tells staff

Well I guess that gets rid of all the programmers, helpdesk, network people and system administrators then.

Good luck with that, Accenture.

Many employees are using AI to create 'workslop,' Stanford study says

So, 95% of firms see no ROI

Yet they are hell-bent on making it work.

No wonder the Terminators are going to want to kill us all . . .

Microsoft agrees to 11th hour Win 10 end of life concessions

"upgrades from Windows 7 or 8 to Windows 10 did not carry such limitations"

Additionally, hardware today is largely powerful enough for anyone but heavy users, video editing or high-level gaming.

A Windows 7-era computer is still fine, from a hardware point of view, for reading one's mail, viewing videos on Youtube and generally surfing the Intartubes.

This whole treadmill thing is slowing down because nobody cares what Redmond says, if it works, then it's good enough.

Companies have the money to do endless upgrades, people don't.

Redmond is going to treadmill itself out of existence (in time - lots of time).

800,000 tons of mud probably just made electronics a little more expensive

I just realized something : 800,000 tons of dried mud is going to be one hell of a job to clear out.

The AI boom

Hey, AI is marvelous, right ?

Then why not just ask AI to go get the copper in the mines ?

Hardware inspector fired for spotting an error he wasn't trained to find

I'm guessing that the idiot who soldered had zero notion of electricity and just basically soldered the back of the chip to the motherboard, regardless of the fact that there were pins and emplacements on the motherboard.

So, not only an idiot, but a myopic one as well.

I can't imagine any other solution to this unbelievable situation.

And, if Tex was fired because he pointed out the obvious, then it was obviously not a company worth working for.

Dell enters the earbud market with kit you can control from the cloud

Yeah, sure

Earbuds need The Cloud^TM.

Microsoft cuts off Azure phone surveillance support for Israeli military

Perfect PR opportunity

Borkzilla makes itself look all good and virtuous once the customer has changed platform.

Ain't life grand at the top ?

Google, Meta and Vodafone want smartphone-makers to reduce their bandwidth bills

To be fair

Yes. I absolutely agree. We are, with the Internet, at the same stage Borkzilla was when RAM hit the GB range. Programmers stopped worrying about tight code and started gobbling up resources like it was candy, because it was there.

Today, bandwidth is like candy. You create an app and want telemetry on it ? Go ahead, people are on WiFi with FTTH, so who cares ? On YouTube everyone wants you to Like & Subscribe, so they can send you notifications - more bandwidth usage - and it's always been like that. What happened to good ol' bookmarks ? I don't need no stinkin' notifications, I know where you are and I'm not Pavlov's dog.

Let's cut down on useless bandwidth usage, I agree wholeheartedly.