Posts by Pascal Monett

100 mysterious blinking lights in the night sky could be evidence of alien life... or something weird, say boffins

Remember : it's never aliens

Re: Time for a SWAB link again ....

That was a great read, thank you for the reference !

Why is the printer spouting nonsense... and who on earth tried to wire this plug?

Not just a wall socket

We changed house at the end of 2017. The previous owner of our new house was - apparently - an engineer, and had a (very) high opinion of himself. He even bragged about having done all the electrical stuff himself. When we moved in, we discovered a few quirks that we had not noticed before, notably a slight buzzing sound in the ceiling of the entry hallway. We didn't make much of it at the time, it wasn't loud enough to be annoying.

Some time in 2018 we discovered that the electric heaters in one room were defective and needed replacing (not something you notice when visiting in the summer). So we shopped around for replacements and found something to our liking, which we got installed in August. When the installer came, he asked to look at the electrical cabinet. I showed it to him and, on opening the panel, I saw his expression change. He looked at me and said "Sir, I cannot install your heaters with this mess. I'm going to have to redo your panel entirely."

He explained carefully and clearly why the existing installation was not only defective and obsolete, but could very well be source of serious trouble (ie a fire). I obviously gave him permission to do everything he thought necessary.

Once everything was cleared up and the heaters installed, the buzzing had disappeared in the entry hallway.

It would appear that the previous owner was less competent than he thought.

Oracle leaves its heart in San Francisco – or it would do if, you know, Oracle had a heart

"poor street conditions"

So it smells of hobo piss there as well ?

In 2016, for my daughter's 20th, we went to the USA to show her the places her daddy grew up and around. Of course, passing by Los Angeles, we toured Hollywood Boulevard.

It stinks of piss. Every tree is "watered" all night long, and in the morning there are repeated heaps of snoring blankets every few yards. It's sad.

If San Francisco is going the same way, I'm not surprised Oracle is pulling out. As shitty as Oracle is, that is competition it cannot hold up against.

Non-unicorn $700 e-scooter shop Unicorn folds with no refunds – after blowing all its cash on online ads

smartphone-enabled locking

Of all the stupid things to include, that takes the cake alongside integrated GPS.

Just put a cradle on the handlebar to hold the phone the user already has that has GPS in it already. Add wireless charging to it since you're selling to the hipsters.

As far as locking, a nice, solid, physical lock is the only solution.

It's a billion-ton, 14-million-mile long mysterious alien formation – and Earth is heading right into it

“Something catastrophic [must have] happened to Phaethon a couple of thousand years ago"

If it was catastrophic, it must have changed Phaethon's orbit, right ? I'm thinking impact.

If Phaethon had an impact with something where the Geminid cloud is, then I would think that it does not go through that area now. Is that the case ?

Because if Phaethon is still going through that area now, then whatever happened was not catastrophic enough to change its orbit. Then what ?

Hey Dixons, you know what's mobile? Your rapidly shrinking sales

Ah, ERP again

Two large companies merge, two different ERP systems exist. There can be only one.

Right there is millions, if not tens of millions, of investment thrown out the window. Plus millions more making the side whose ERP is not kept adapt to the new system. With the inevitable remarks of "hey, we can't do [thing] anymore, how dumb is that ?".

Plus a few more million adapting the remaining ERP to the new company configuration.

All that for a group that is on the decline. Was merging such a good idea, or is it just better to fail together instead of alone ?

Disgrace of Base: Scammy hordes force Keybase to end cryptocoin giveaway

"they got to experience what it was like"

It seems astonishing that companies these days still act like the Internet is 1995, then get all surprised when it becomes clear that, no, the Internet is full of assholes and if you want to have customers, you need to implement the means to deal with said assholes.

It's not news, people. Wake up.

It's time you were T0RTT a lesson: Here's how you could build a better Tor, say boffins

Depends on how much you value your privacy.

ERP disaster zone: The mostly costly failures of the past decade

Can ERP actually be a perfect fit for any company ?

Take an off-the-shelf solution and you're going to customize it. Sorry, no company is going to change its structure to fit a program, whatever the promises are.

Make your own ERP and you foot the entire bill all the way, plus whatever changes need to be made to fit the changes of the company. And you have no support from anyone, you have to make do with the resources you have in-house. Good for whoever is in charge of the programming, not so good for the company in the long run.

I can't see that there's a good choice there. Maybe it's better to go with individual products that do one thing well, and arrange for software to tie them loosely together. Might seem clunky, but it is modular so easier and cheaper to deal with. Maybe.

Microsoft movie tried to Azure Ignite attendees about CPU side-channel flaws, but biz wouldn't be drawn on details

"We could never ever put our customers at risk"

Bold words. Especially when, just a few paragraphs later, it is said that no, Azure does not turn off hyperthreading. You can talk mitigations 'till the pigeons come home to roost, you're putting your clients at risk.

That being said, and my having already stated that I cannot, for the life of me, turn off hyperthreading, I'm wondering just exactly how much of a risk it really is. Is an Azure server always a Windows platform ? If it is Linux, that's already a lot of malware that is ineffective. Is there an actual exploit in the wild, being used at this time ?

I'm not saying that the side-channel attack is a figment of imagination, I'm just wondering how easy it is to actually implement and get data out of from a hacker's point of view.

Colorado cryptocoin execs spark up blunt '$722m ponzi scheme' criminal charges after investments go up in smoke

How is it possible

With all that has been said about virtual currencies, how is it possible that people are gullible enough to fork over real money in order to "invest" in funny money.

If you're dealing in nonsense money, you do not sell shares, you give a mining program and tell people to download it and run it. That is the only form of investment that is required.

Anything else and you should just call the cops and keep 'em talking.

You cannae break the laws of physics, cap'n... Boffins call BS on 'impossible' black hole, fear readings were botched

Time to refer to Feynman again

And post his explanation of how to build scientific theory.

Re: Time for a kicking

I don't think it was a basic error. It seems that it was an honest mistake made by misinterpreting what a given data variation meant.

Personally, I've already a hard time understanding what exactly the error is, so I find it understandable that the initial authors made the mistake.

Capita lights One Revenues and Benefits bug bonfire: ALL reports older than 12 months to be ignored

"we are saying they will not be fixed"

To which the proper response should be : we're not saying you're wrong, we're saying you will not be paid until they are fixed.

Why does nobody have the balls to do that ? Because nobody's going to do that.

LightAnchors array: LEDs in routers, power strips, and more, can sneakily ship data to this smartphone app

Re: Yes, but for what?

For blinking ads at us on our phones, of course.

Re: That can't convey any useful info.

It conveys the position in the transmission. If the phone captures the end bits, it knows to wait for the next transmission.

It's important because the phone cannot connect to the LED to ask it for its data.

Scientists use machine-learning algorithms to map out 10 billion cells from human bodies in fight against cancer

In any case, this is a Good Thing (TM)

I'm glad to hear that statistical analysis machines are being put to uses other than comparing my face to a terrorist database.

And who knows, this might help with the fight against cancer, or even more stuff.

Go science !

Google Chrome will check for leaked credentials every time you sign in anywhere

"you have to sign into Chrome"

Yup, well that's that, then.

Not gonna happen, ever. Google has enough data on me as it is without me handing it over on a silver platter.

Microsoft's Teams goes to bat for the other team with preview on Linux

"There is no escape from collaboration"

Unless you're name is Wunderlist.

Huawei 5G kit in Faroe Islands: Chinese ambassador 'linked Huawei contract to ... trade deal' – report

Actually, it's a situation in the same vein as an episode of Yes Minister, except that in that episode they managed to have the interview suppressed.

So I consider myself vindicated when I said that Yes Minister was a documentary.

Boffins find proof that yes, Carl Sagan and Joni Mitchell were right, we really are all made up of star stuff

Thank you for clearing that up for me.

"[Palladium] is easily destroyed by heat"

What kind of heat are we talking about, the heat at the center of a red giant where palladium is formed ?

Because what palladium we have mined and refined around here has been smelted, if I'm not mistaken, so it can easily hold up under several hundred degrees of heat at least.

If palladium can be destroyed by the heat of where it is created, how can there be any that exist out here ?

I'm confused now.

Bad news: KeyWe Smart Lock is easily bypassed and can't be fixed

As usual, "smart" is anything but

Ok, fine, you'd need to know how to use Wireshark, which is probably not on the list of abilities of every thief in the area, but still, this is just one more thing to add to the ever-growing list of things IoT has promised and not kept in Real Life (TM).

A bog-standard lock may not be the right solution to protect a front door, but a good, 5-point security lock is.

And you don't need to worry about the state of the batteries.

With a warehouse of unsold AR goggles, Magic Leap has a brainwave… let’s rebadge ‘em and sell to business!

Good article

And good blog reference as well. I will refer people to this article in the future when asked my opinion about current VR technology.

ICANN demands transparency from others over .org deal. As for itself… well, not so much

Well done

That is an impressive list of the things that are going wrong in this particular instance.

It is also a damning indictment of ICANN's attitude towards respecting its own rules. Transparency is a cornerstone of ICANN ? Really ? It may have been at one point, but if it's still there it's buried under a mountain of hypocrisy.

ICANN, bah !

And then there were two: HMS Prince of Wales joins Royal Navy

The lesson here

Never mess with history buffs unless you like getting spanked. Hard.

Don't pay off Ryuk ransomware, warn infoseccers: Its creators borked the decryptor

"be sure to back up the encrypted data first"

How about backing up the regular data regularly ? You know, with a normal backup schedule - one per day, one per week, one per month, one per year ?

Like any serious company should do ?

Microsoft plays 'Spot the Azure VM that can disappear any time'

But it's on Azure, so it's better.

Co-op Bank online and mobile banking goes TITSUP*

Nothing is perfect, but you're not going to say that the UK hasn't had a bumper crop of outages this year.

And yet they still have their customers. That boggles the mind.

Wow, you managed to find one article. Congratulations.

Now pit that against the dozens of articles on El Reg about UK banks and tell me who is more reliable.

The UK really is a marvellous country

It's the only country in the world where there is on average an online banking snafu every quarter and yet the inhabitants just continue using those same banks.

I've never heard of the BNP, the Credit Mutuel or the Sogenal having problems with their online banking for years. Does UK banking IT use less reliable hardware, or are UK banking IT managers just not up to the task ?

The Windows Phone keeps ringing but no one's home: Microsoft finally lets platform die

"Just in time for Microsoft's next attempt at a mobile phone"

Which I will copiously ignore, since Microsoft has a proven track record of bungling everything it does aside from Office, and letting everything else go to rot.

Honestly, why anyone buys into the Microsoft "ecosphere" is beyond me. Nothing lasts outside of Office, which is now being jacked into the Cloud by every conceivable orifice.

No thanks.

Oh noes! Half the NHS runs on Windows 7! Thankfully, here's Citrix with a virty vaccine

Re: Same old reason

Not to mention that running on Windows 1 0 requires you to accept that some update at some point in the future is going to completely bork you entire system base, and you'll have to wait for Microsoft to get its finger out and fix it - if that is possible.

It really is high time Linux comes to the desktop.

Kiwi tax probe squeezed $25m out of Microsoft – now it's Oracle's turn

Not a problem for Oracle, really

All it has to do is file a suit claiming that the Inland Revenue Department does not have the right to impose tax law.

Right ?

Ad network ransomware crook to flog £5k Rolex after court confiscates £270k in ill-gotten gains

That is actually a legitimate question

Ericsson throws $1bn at US authorities to make bribery probe go away

Re: Ah I love the fact

So right. What ? You accuse us of bribery ? Here, take a billion and leave us alone, deal ? Cool.

Apple tipped to go full wireless by 2021, and you're all still grumbling about a headphone jack

Re: yawning now

This is the Internet. If you're not interested, you don't have to read, you can go to another page, or another site.

Re: Au revoir Pomme

I can't wait to retire and chuck out the effing "smartphone" I have to get an incredibly stupid dumb phone.

I miss the days when a mobile phone would last a week on standby.

SIEMs like a stretch: Elastic searches for cash from IT pros with security budgets

"If you think about it,"

If you think about IT security, it is a minefield of ever-changing threats and issues that are a nightmare to manage and impossible to forecast.

I guess that means job security and continuous revenues.

Managing the Linux kernel at AWS: 'A large team of security experts' dealing with fallout from Spectre, Meltdown flaws

Schlaeger is doing the right thing

He his helping the community get the solutions to a very complex problem. Sure, he's doing it because he would prefer not to have to redo the changes for each kernel update, but still, he's trying to help everyone. That is a Good Thing (TM).

The fact remains that hyperthreading is more than 30% of your CPU performance. That's 30% I absolutely cannot do without.

Xerox woos HP stock owners with talk of layoffs, selloffs and cash payouts post merger

Re: Savings

Xerox promises all of this for after the merger :

"On the $2bn of "synergy savings" promised, Xerox said it will consolidate from 8,000 to 3,000 suppliers to cut costs; slash its own IT bill to 1 per cent of revenue from 4 per cent; simplify stock keeping units and beef up inventory management, as well as rationalise (ie sell off) real estate in 555 locations to cut property owning down to just 261 sites."

Why wait ? Go ahead and do all that stuff, it will help you survive a little bit longer.

Amazon: Trump photon-torpedoed our $10bn JEDI dream because he hates CEO Jeff Bezos

Just a minute there

"President Trump [..] puts the very integrity of the government [..] in question"

There, FTFY.

We've heard of spam filters but this is ridiculous: Pig-monkey chimeras developed in a Chinese laboratory

"all died within a week"

So they brought into the world a few monstrous creations only for the poor things to suffer uselessly for an entire week before departing to a better place.

It is cruel what we do in the name of Science.

In tribute to Galaxy Note 7, BBC iPlayer support goes up in flames for some Samsung TVs

Once again, you paid for something but now someone else decides for you

All this "smart" and "connected" hoopla is cesspool of failure waiting to happen and, when (not if) it does, invariably it's the consumer that is left high and dry.

I am boycotting anything with "smart" in the name. I intend to be able to use my stuff for the long run.

Join us on our new journey, says Wunderlist – as it vanishes down the Microsoft plughole

The Age of the Customer is over

We are now in the Age of the Company, which decides what the customer wants and monetizes the customer's private details for maximum revenue.

It is insane to kill off an app that people actually like using. Of course, from Microsoft's point of view, it's obviously insane to keep updating an app that can - gasp - actually work with non-Microsoft platforms.

Get with the program, Microsoft. The future is about Cloud, not platform.

Gee, S/4HANA. Just what I always wanted: Customers are wary of what's in SAP's sack

It really is impressive

I find it astounding that companies are willing to write off decades of SAP ERP investment to start over just so that they can make calculations in columns. I mean, they've been managing so far, what's the problem ?

Honestly, if my company was big enough to need SAP and I had a working system, I'd hate to budget for an entirely new system just because of a new calculation method. I know IT is all about redoing stuff, but this is pushing things a bit far.

I hope there's some other advantage that justifies spending all that money all over again.

Homeland Security backs off on scanning US citizens, Amazon ups AI ante, and more

"extending the process to include American citizens was too risky"

But treating every tourist like a potential terrorist isn't ?

And why do they decide to do that when they just ask the NSA to warn them ? Come on, people, a bit of inter-agency cooperation isn't that hard, now is it ?

WebAssembly gets nod from W3C and, most likely, an embrace from cryptojackers online

Starve.

It's only the Internet, you can live without it.