Posts by Pascal Monett

Smile? Not bloody likely: Day 6 of wobbly services and still no hint to UK online bank's customers about what's actually wrong

Re: I absolutely insist and demand...

No ! Don't do that !

The financial loss to El Reg will be devastating !

Microsoft to pull support for PHP: Version 8? Exterminate, more like...

So, chalk up another one for Borkzilla's product graveyard

Borkzilla is on a roll to kick stuff to the curb. And PHP, no less.

It looks like, if you're looking for a tool that will give you long-lasting support, anything with Borkzilla's name on it is what should start by writing off your list.

South Korea joins the ‘we’re going to be self-sufficient in more tech and then export bucketloads’ club

Every country cannot be self-sufficient in everything

But it is a good thing that more countries will become self-sufficient in more things. However, if there are more countries selling the same goods, prices will fall.

In the end, it just might mean less international transport of said goods since there will be less countries that need those goods.

On the other hand, more silicon fabs means more poisoning of underground aquifers, and that just can't be a good thing. I really hope that those countries will have a good grasp of controlling industrial pollution, else the health impact of their self-sufficiency will be ghastly.

Pandemic proves just the tonic for PC sales as shipments shoot upwards

"restocking their supplies back to near-normal levels"

And now that this pandemic spike is over, the PC industry can return to lamenting the slow death of the PC.

You know your industry is in trouble when it takes a global pandemic to temporarily reverse the trend.

Email seems lost in the post? You might be a Tsohost customer

Infomaniak is pretty solid for me. Based in Switzerland. Their helldesk is responsive and quick to act. I've never seen them make a mistake for me yet. When I contacted them to transfer my domain to them, they handled everything after requiring the proper authorizations. Everything went smoothly and it's been smooth sailing ever since.

Don't know about hosting a hundred domains in one go, but I think they shouldn't have a problem with it.

Commons cause: IBM, Oracle, CNCF protest over Google's handling of Istio governance

Well it's not really problem

Since Google has pissed off bigwigs like IBM and VMware, they'll have it sorted out I'm sure - one way or the other.

It's not like this was a pure open source project taken over by a hostile entity and turned into a money-making machine, eh Oracle ? Nobody could do anything about that.

This is a power grab by a hostile entity with empty promises, but on the other side of the table there are big guys with lots of lawyerpower as well, so there will be some tense discussions around the poker table, but in the end it will get sorted out.

.NET Core: Still a Microsoft platform thing despite more than five years open source

Well, without defending Borkzilla in any way, if you haven't worked with Windows since 3.1, yeah, you're in for some serious culture shock.

Road trip on Mars: Thrill as Curiosity rover races up to 0.06 miles per hour. Marvel as it takes a mile-long detour

Curiosity

Nine years old and still going strong.

Yay for the trundlebot.!

Heir-to-Concorde demo model to debut in October

"Hardly any conventional planes are flying right now"

Well I don't know about that. When I take a look at FlightRadar's activity map, there seems to be a lot of planes in the air.

Of course, I don't have the map of this time last year to compare, so . . .

Lovely new dongles and lusciously lengthy cables are Intel's new offerings

nVidia is now worth more than Intel

Wow. nVidia can thank its lucky stars that this funny money hoopla has taken advantage of its hardware and paid real money for it.

First Intel lost time with the transition to .13, then AMD started eating its lunch, now this.

I wonder what, if anything, Intel can do to stop the bleeding.

Asia’s internet registry APNIC finds about 50 million unused IPv4 addresses behind the sofa

So, IPv4 addresses are like petroleum

We're out of IPv4 addresses, except hey, here's 50 million more.

Dang, looks like IPv6 is still not going to be taking off.

Civil-rights probe: Facebook has completely failed to… Zuck: Look over here! We’ve banned four groups! Go me!

Fascinating view into the demon's underbelly. Thank you for posting that.

But you are still the product.

Keep it Together, Microsoft: New mode for vid-chat app Teams reminds everyone why Zoom rules the roost

"keep track of what other people are signaling or emoting in a natural way"

I'm sorry, how exactly does Borkzilla's product enhance user emoting in any way ? The camera shows the user, just like any other remote-conferencing tool.

Reading this blurb I felt like I was once again listening to some Magic Leap bullshit. Borkzilla just can't keep itself from wanting to authenticate everyone. Outside of BorkLand, nothing exists.

And together ? Everyone else is just looking at you apparently. That's not what I call together. Together is a group sitting around a table. But of course, a stupid remote-conferencing tool can't replicate that, no matter how much Magic Leap bullshit you append to its description.

Well, Zoom might have some merit, but I can vouch for Cisco Webex Meetings. It's simple, it's fast and it bloody works without a Borkzilla profile.

Suits me perfectly.

No more Genius Bar bottlenecks for you, Mr Customer? Apple exports independent repair provider program to Europe and Canada

"I think they're trying to take the heat off"

It's the same old trick. Fold before a judge makes a ruling that you cannot ignore. Every major multinational conglomerate curiously always settles before a judgement - that avoids getting an unfavorable judgement.

By initiating this procedure, Apple is just trying to quench the flames before a fire truck arrives and drowns everything under water.

That last thing Apple wants is to be obliged to conform to a pesky law. By jumping the gun, it will cost a bit at first, but it will avoid actual legal obligations and give Apple's legal eagles time to find loopholes and turn this whole thing into a profit center.

Because even if Apple has the money to buy all the a few politicians, and near-infinite lobby funds to amend existing laws, all that is a nuisance subject to the existing political climate - which doesn't seem very favorable to Apple at this point in time.

So best not bother with all that and seed the ground for future manipulations.

Microsoft sues coronavirus phishing spammers to seize their domains amid web app attacks against Office 354.5

Don't worry, Borkzilla

“This scheme enabled unauthorized access without explicitly requiring the victims to directly give up their login credentials at a fake website or similar interface "

No problem here, I don't have a Borkzilla account, so there's nothing to phish.

You see, I have an innate distrust of anything that tries to tie me into its universe. That's why I don't have a YouTube account, or a FaceBook account, or an Office x65 account. I fail to see why I should give you all the details of my comings and goings on the Internet, since it's none of your clucking business.

Google forges Open Usage Commons to manage open-source project trademarks, lobs hot-potato Istio at it

“We want to take on this problem of trademark policy. We think it’s important.”

Translation : we think there's money in them 'thar hills, and we're going to make all of it.

This is Google. They're not doing this to protect other projects' trademarks, they're doing it to protect their territory.

What will be interesting will be to see how Google will react when someone else uses their framework to bash them over the head with it.

Looking forward to that.

Oracle tempts users to run its cloud in their own data centres – for a mere '$6 million' commitment

Oracle's Louis said: "That's all based on trust."

Yes. Because Oracle is the company with the best historical record of trusting its customers.

Right, pull the other one.

GCHQ's cyber arm report on Huawei said to be burning hole through UK.gov desks

"your image as a country that can conduct independent policy"

Um, which country are you talking about again ? Germany ?

Because the UK has been subservient to the White House for ages now. It has the policy the USA agrees with.

Leaving Las Salesforce: Paul Smith fashions a new role at ServiceNow

"quit to join cloud platform rival ServiceNow in the same role"

In any other world, the word for that would be : traitor.

Us peons often even have clauses in our contracts that prohibit going to the competition. There have been lawsuits over that.

But the high-flyers ? They do whatever they want. No non-compete clause when you get a golden parachute.

LibreOffice community protests at promotion of paid-for editions, board says: 'LibreOffice will always be free software'

“If people are interested [..] they should have subscribed to the board-discuss mailing list,”

That is last century's Usenet mindset - if you're not on the mailing list, you don't count.

We're in the 21st Century now. People no longer subscribe to anything, they rant on Twitter.

Like it or not, they are still your users.

You should listen.

Re: Such short memories

And that is when OpenOffice started forgetting who and what it was.

Another anti-immigrant rant goes viral in America – and this time it's by a British, er, immigrant tech CEO

"I was taught to respect people of all races"

Yes, that is certainly what you were taught, but that isn't what you took away from that teaching.

Alcohol has the peculiar effect of revealing who you actually are. If you're a nice guy to be with when sober, and a misogynist asshole when drunk, then you are a misogynist asshole but, when sober, you listen to that little voice in your head telling you not to do that.

So, deep down, this guy is actually a racist, xenophobic asshole. I do hope he reflects deeply on that, because it's going to take a long time to root that out.

Captain, the computer has identified 250 alien stars that infiltrated our galaxy – actual science, not science-fiction

So now we have Nyx

Stars that have a similar chemical composition obviously come from the same local area, that much is understandable. That that many stars have the same movement characteristics is also an undeniable sign that they have something in common. Finally, we do know that our Milky Way has merged with dwarf galaxies in the past. So fine, we have a bunch of stellar immigrants nearby. Good for Science, we'll learn things.

Now, though, I have a nagging doubt : are we sure our Sun is not also an immigrant ?

I'm guessing that, with all the studying we've been doing on the source of Life in our Solar System, that fact would already have surfaced, but I can't keep from wondering.

Trump's bright idea of kicking out foreign students unless unis resume in-person classes stuns tech, science world

“They think it’s going to be good for them politically"

Universities do not think politics when they make decisions. Trump is just projecting his own way of thinking without any rational basis.

Which is perfectly normal for him.

It is time that the White House be ignored. Trump does not know how to manage, much less how to govern. Just ignore him and do The Right Thing (TM).

He can wail and rant and talk about sending in the National Guard all he wants, the truth is, he only has power because people are used to listening to the White House. Reality check : the White House is stark, raving mad. Stop listening.

High-flying Microsoft exec jumps to Magic Leap as CEO. No, we haven't got that the wrong way round

Lying right to the end

“We have been fortunate to have a number of extremely qualified candidates express interest in the position of CEO."

Really ? A number ? Well, one is a number.

I cannot believe that anyone in their right mind would want to replace Abovitz in that failing company. Magic Leap does not have good press, has no product worth mentioning, and is in desperate need of funding after having already burned through a dot-com fortune. With practically any other company, you have a product, you either have competent people or you have machines that make that product. You restructure, lay off part of the staff that no longer corresponds to your vision, and you go in a new direction.

Magic Leap has nothing. It doesn't even own its own patents any more - they are collateral and now belong to an investment company IIRC.

I doubt very much that there was a stampede at the door to be CEO. And if there were that many "extremely qualified candidates", when she popped up it would have taken a bit longer to choose.

Micro Focus COVID-19 costs: Carry the one, decimal 9 places to the right... hmm. Holy cow, it's a $1bn+ loss

Re: Complete the transformation to reduce overheads

Yup. The office rental market is going to take a severe battering, that now seems obvious.

Mind the airgap: Why nothing focuses the mind like a bit of tech antiquing

Re: turning off the wifi at home

He's at home. If he does turn it off, there will be an instant revolutionary movement from all the other family members who need that wifi for WhatsApp, Slack, FaceBook, Twitter and whatever other medical drip they use on the thing that is grafted to their hands.

Turning off the wifi at home is not an option.

Three UK: We're sending you this SMS to warn you not to pay attention to unsolicited texts

Re: Same sender and text with bit.ly link

I never follow shortened URLs. They are a security risk by definition.

Give me the full URL so I can see where it's going, or get stuffed.

ITAM Forum asks software giants to stop browbeating customers onto their clouds with threats of licence audits

"the practice was counterproductive in a vendor-customer relationship"

Actually no, it isn't. It is going to be a great incentive for companies to transit to Open Source, free alternatives, and the market for those products is going to expand dramatically.

After that, current closed-source cloud vendors will be begging for companies to return by offering dirt-cheap prices.

That's capitalism. The wheel turns. The future is Open Source. It may take a while, but Oracle & Co are on their last legs already. Dead man walking.

They just don't know it.

If there's a lesson to be learned in these torrid times, it's that civilisation is fleeting – but Windows XP is eternal

"long after Cuenca should really have said goodbye"

Well, if we imagine that XP is being used to control screens and has no possible connection to the Internet, then it should be okay, no ?

It would be no worse if I had a standalone XP machine in a corner of the office without any network connection whatsoever. Sure, it's XP, but it's invulnerable from remote attack, so, who cares ?

When a deleted primary device file only takes 20 mins out of your maintenance window, but a whole year off your lifespan

Good article, because it outlines the two types of goofs

On the one hand, you've got the technician that knows the system, makes a mistake, analyzes the situation correctly, finds the loophole and re-establishes functionality without any major hiccup. Hair-raising to be sure, heavy implications for failure, but in the end his in-depth knowledge allowed him to gracefully recover from the error.

Then, on the other hand, you've got the blithering idiot that knows just enough to make himself dangerous, has no idea of the consequences of his actions, and will be totally incapable of recovering anything.

I know who I'd prefer working with.

Good article.

Detroit cops employed facial recognition algos that only misidentifies suspects 96 per cent of the time

"I would say 96 per cent of the time it would misidentify"

And yet you continue to use it.

Would you continue to use a gun that misfired 96% of the time ?

Would you continue to use a car that didn't start 96% of the time ?

Would you continue to use a phone that couldn't make a call 96% of the time ?

What this guy is saying is that the cops poured a truckload of money into that piece of shit software, and they will use until it works and the innocent be damned.

This is what you get when you combine a monumental IT failure with a bunch of bone-headed officers of the law. A running risk for innocent people. Well done, Land of the Free ! Well done.

If you wanna make your own open-source chip, just Google it. Literally. Web giant says it'll fab them for free

I think this is a cool idea

Good on Google for stepping up and proposing something that might turn out to benefit people in the long run. This proposal has the potential to open the doors to many projects that would like to see the light of day, but are hampered because existing chips are too power-hungry or too expensive to use.

In that sense, It's difficult to judge Google. On the one hand, they're data thieves, making bank and literally printing money with private data they take from you, but on the other hand, Google Maps is useful, Google Translate is astonishingly powerful (even if not always entirely accurate), and now, this.

Congratulations, Google. You've just earned yourself a Suspension-Of-Criticism voucher valid until Monday.

Dutch national broadcaster saw ad revenue rise when it stopped tracking users. It's meant to work like that, right?

Re: You Don't Love Retargeting?

And let us not forget that those stats concern a time where people were starting to be cooped up in their homes, thus having more time for browsing.

I'll be interested to see the stats this time next year - supposing we aren't all shut-in again for the winter.

Oh, because all online media is illegitimate ?

Capita Consulting ditching more than a quarter of its workforce 45 days after consultations with consultants

"Regrettably this will result in a number of job losses"

Even more regrettably, none of them will be in management.

Euro police forces infiltrated encrypted phone biz – and now 'criminal' EncroChat users are being rounded up

"The metadata is always present anyway. But without the message it's nothing more than coincidence"

Maybe, but if the metadata demonstrates that you've been calling a criminal scumbag twenty times in the past month, then the police don't need the content to tell the judge that you know the guy. From that point, it should be easy to gather proof that you're dealing with him financially, or working for him materially, and then you go down for the count.

The Moon certainly ain't made of cheese but it may be made of more metal than previously thought, sensor shows

Re: Density

We know the average density. That value can vary from place to place, just as there are places on Earth that are slightly more/less dense than the average.

It’s happened again: AT&T sued for allegedly transferring victim's number to thieves in $1.9m cryptocoin heist

Yes, well, the day I have more than £85K in my account I'll start worrying about that detail.

Actually, no I won't. I'll just open another account in another bank. Problem solved.

It looks like the Wild West out there

If only there was a structure in place where you could put your money and be confident that it was guaranteed that you could not lose it under any circumstance.

If only there was a legal framework and charter that allowed for the creation of institutions who were responsible for the money you placed in your accounts.

If only there was a way to ensure that, even in case of robbery, your account was guaranteed and you didn't lose anything.

Instead, it's the 3rd millennium and we still have people hiding their "life savings" under the mattress. What a shame.

Oh wait . . .

I was screwed over by Cisco managers who enforced India's caste hierarchy on me in US HQ, claims engineer

"We have robust processes"

Apparently, they are not robust enough.

It seems to me that Cisco is happy to circumvent visa issues in order to get low-pay employees, and after that it doesn't give a damn what happens.

Curious, because a company who is really attentive to its revenue should ensure that all of its employees are happy to work there.

But hey, what do I know ? I'm not at the head of a multinational behemoth. With my stupid ideas of salary tied to what the employee brings to the company, I would probably bankrupt every multi-billion international corporation in a month.

Database maestro Antirez says arrivederci to Redis: Seems he wants an unstructured life writing code, not a structured one managing software

"the underground programming world"

Um, why is it that there has to be an underground to everything IT ?

There are programmers writing code for an open-source project. You can hardly get more above ground than that.

Hey, Boeing. Don't celebrate your first post-grounding 737 Max test flight too hard. You just lost another big contract

Finally some real consequences

First, Boeing is facing an uphill climb to get its 737 Max re-certified and, given the amount of deaths due to beancounter cost-cutting measures, that is perfectly normal.

Second, the FAA has lost its prestige and now international bodies are setting up their own certification procedures. The buddy contract between Boeing and the FAA has backfired so spectacularly that the costs for Boeing are going to climb much higher to get itself certified on the international scene.

Good. The rot that has settled in the top layers of US government agencies has come to light and now no one will trust the FAA on its word. I feel really sorry for the good people that I am sure work there, but their negligence and laissez-faire attitude is also responsible for the unacceptable amount of deaths that are due to the simple fact that the FAA couldn't be bothered to set up an actual test for that cursed model.

The FAA is going to spend many, many years regaining its credibility - if that ever happens.

Remember when we warned in February Apple will crack down on long-life HTTPS certs? It's happening: Chrome, Firefox ready to join in, too

Re: Is there any advantage left by using commercial certs?

I think they should. That way other cert sellers will have all the time they want to get with the program.

I'm sure Telia will be relieved.

Leaked benchmarks from developer kit for Apple's home-baked silicon appear to give Microsoft a run for its money

If the laptop is sleeping then the only background activity that needs to take place is knowing when to wake up.

Let's not start confusing modes, shall we ? Sleep is sleep. If the laptop's CPU is working, then it's not sleeping.

PA Consulting catches £5.3m to develop web gateway that handles access to UK health data – including on COVID-19

And, in next month's news

Cue the upcoming article on how 440 million records of health data was pilfered from an unsecured AWS container.

PA Consulting stresses that "Security is our number one priority" and blames a subcontractor for the mis-configuration.

And the wheel turns . . .

LibreOffice slips out another 7.0 beta: Spreadsheets close gap with Excel while macOS users treated to new icons

Ah CSV. The magic of having addresses with commas in them. I cannot count the number of hair-pulling times I have had to export data into a CSV file and send it off, only to have the recipient call me and say MY file wasn't working.

Buddy, I exported YOUR data. I you can't be arsed to not bung commas everywhere they shouldn't be, you don't get to blame ME for it.

Beijing's tightening grip on Hong Kong could put region's future as an up-and-coming tech hub in jeopardy

"we need clarity on what the laws will involve before we can decide anything"

No you do not. It doesn't matter what the laws will involve, what matters is that Beijing is hijacking your legal system. The jackboots are coming in. Now is the time to leave.

Waiting to see what the laws will be simply validates this procedure. And even if the laws seem acceptable at this time, Beijing will change them when it suits itself.

It was never a question of if. It is now. If you value your freedom, you need to go elsewhere. Because, when China decides to "reeducate" the remaining Hong Kong population, well let's just say blood will be involved.

One does not simply repurpose an entire internet constellation for sat-nav, but UK might have a go anyway

"quantum compass technology"

Dear oh dear, what politicians won't do to make it look like they're doing something about something. Quantum compass technology, really. A cubic-meter sized contraption that uses lasers to super-cool atoms in order to detect movement in a single plane. That could conceivably be useful for a car, which generally only moves in one direction at a time, but I seriously doubt that a Twingo will have either the space or the power output to sustain laser-operated super-cooling just to get from place to place.

And £95 million for a report ? Sounds like the guy who typed that up can retire right now.

A UK-specific GPS system ? I honestly think you have better things to do at this time with what is left of your money. Besides, GPS units that work with the US and EU constellations will soon be available for £99.99, no subscription required. So why are you spending money you don't have on this pipe dream ?

Google Cloud partially evaporates for hours amid power supply failure: Two US East Coast zones rattled

These "wobblies" are starting to pile up

It was IBM not long ago, now it's Google's Cloud and we can be sure that Azure is going to have its problems soon, as will AWS.

I wonder, has anyone done the math on the true uptime of these "services", and compared it to the good ol' local SAS uptime ?

Because being six hours without access to your data on Someone Else's Server is galling, especially when you bought into the fairy tale of Always On.