Posts by Pascal Monett

Remember the Nominet £100m dot-uk windfall it claims doesn't exist? Well, it's already begun

Shouldn't that normally be the first one to register it ?

Re: Nice publicity stunt

Please do not make Nominet say : Hold my beer.

Curioser and curioser: Little Mars rover sniffs out highest ever levels of methane

Reality. Always with the pesky details.

Out of Steam? Wine draining away? Ubuntu's 64-bit-only x86 decision is causing migraines

I think I read last Friday that Mint has declared no intent of dropping 32-bit support.

Could someone confirm ?

Driving Xtreme Cuts: DXC Technology waves bye bye to 45% of Americas Security divison

"there will be fewer certifications to maintain [..], which is costly and time consuming"

Yes, but it is also a way to guarantee quality, which does not seem to be part of DXC's goal any more.

Also, letting an engineer go to hit financial targets ? Of all the dumb reasons to fire someone, that one has to take the cake. It indicates without a shadow of doubt what really matters at DXC.

Another rotten place to work at.

Having bank problems? I feel bad for you son: I've got 25 million problems, but a bulk upload ain't one

"the bank's reputation would be left in 'tatters' "

Yeah, as if that matters. A certain TSB is still open and still has most of its customers, if I'm not mistaken.

You're Huawei off base on this, Rubio: Lawyers slam US senator's bid to ban Chinese giant from filing patent lawsuits

I'm pretty sure he hasn't given a moment's thought to how it will end.

He obviously can't think that far.

Hot desk hell: Staff spend two weeks a year looking for seats in open-plan offices

Re: My experience is even better

Agreed. Hotdesking is always a joy for me, because nobody prepares a desk even if they know I'm coming since a week before. So it's always "Where do I sit ?" and a half-hour wait being paid to watch them scurry around trying to find a desk. Then, of course, there is the time wasted to walk from my desk to the guy I'm working with to clarify points or request data, then there's the time wasted to go find the manager and keep him updated, etc...

So, sometimes I'm being paid to walk around for half a day. If there's really a lot of work, that means I come back another day and we start all over again.

Chrome ad-blocker crackdown preview due late July. Here's a half-dozen reasons why add-on devs are still upset

It will be all right in the end

Although the ire is strong - and I share it - in the end, it won't really matter. Google will force ads on Chrome, and users mindful of their privacy and security will stop using Chrome.

Right now those same users, a small portion very likely, are blocking ads, so Google isn't "serving" them. Losing those users to another browser that allow ad-blockers won't make a dent to Google since, for all intents and purposes, they are already out of Google's ad space.

So, by all means, let us rant and vent - but we know how this is going to end.

Digi-dosh exchange Coinbase: Someone tried to pwn our staff via this week's Firefox zero-day security hole

"continue burning down attacker infrastructure"

So they are retaliating. The cyber war is hot right now. I wonder who is getting caught in the crossfire.

Because the hacker may have taken control of innocent PCs and servers. Burning them down is going to inconvenience the hacker, but it is going to seriously bother the people who have no idea why their machine is borked.

Firefox is safe with NoScript

The problem is Javascript, as usual. Stop that abomination from running and there is no vulnerability.

It's now officially the WhackBook Pro: If the keyboards weren't bad enough, now MacBook Pro batts are a fire risk

Nope. It is designed to get your money. After that, it can die.

Bollocks or brutal truth: Do smart-mobes make us grow skull horns? We take a closer look at boffins' startling claims

"she hasn't seen phone-induced bone spurs in her practice"

Does that mean that she has seen bone spurs ?

Comms room, comms room, comms room is on fire – we don't need no water, let the engineer burn

"the (suicidal?) bravery (stupidity?) of our colleague"

If you manage to catch a fire when it is just starting, you likely have a good chance of stopping it without much risk - with the proper equipment, of course.

However, we're talking seconds, here. If the fire has had more than a minute to get going, you're most likely not going to succeed in putting it out and you're taking a much bigger risk. If the fire has been going for five minutes or more, just get out and call the fire department.

A $4bn biz without a live product just broke the record for the amount paid for a domain name. WTF is going on?

It is now

Shameless Facebook treats its poor human moderators like absolute dirt. But y'know what it does treat right? Robots

No, but FB definitely wants them around.

Must watch: GE's smart light bulb reset process is a masterpiece... of modern techno-insanity

"smarter lighting in every way"

I have very smart lighting. It turns on when I touch the switch, and it turns off when I touch the switch again.

Why any able-bodied person needs anything else is beyond me. If you want disco lighting, buy a mirror ball and three colored lights.

Wankers.

Hipster yap app chaps Slack finally strap into NYSE: Shares of 'WORK' open at $38.50 apiece

Slack, as in slacking off ?

So they position themselves as "where the work flows", and their name is basically the opposite of work ?

Another bunch of brilliant idiots, to be sure.

Autonomy integration was a 'sh!t show', HP director tells court

Re: I'm confused

"they claim Autonomy people sold them a false position"

Well, HP is guilty of buying a house based on nice pictures without ever bothering to go set foot in said house before writing the check.

As I've said before, if you or I did that, the judge would throw us out in an instant, but because it's HP, everyone is wasting time on this.

You got conned because you didn't do your job. Own it and move on.

Re: HP people I have known

He said shit show. That is something anyone can understand.

Obviously, he hasn't been at HP long enough to be impregnated by the sickness.

Google takes the PIS out of advertising: New algo securely analyzes shared encrypted data sets without leaking contents

"the merchants can identify which individuals purchased what, and the city can identify which individuals traveled where and when"

Not if the individuals pay in cash - which is likely happening less and less what with all the phone payment and contactless stuff that is happening these days. But honestly, you can't blame the merchant for recording the fact that you bought something, nor can you blame the city for recording the fact that you used its transport system. What I mind very much is somebody going all Big Data on the two different data sets, and this tool (in beta and forever will be until it is dropped, as usual for Google) allows for that.

What I would accept more readily is the city gives it a try and asks the merchants to tell it if they had a better day because of it. Nobody is messing with anybody else's data and they still get the answer.

This is just another excuse to hook up third-party data, and I am against that by principle.

If Uncle Sam could quit using insecure .zip files to swap info across the 'net, that would be great, says Silicon Ron Wyden

I was once faced with having to send confidential business data to someone oversees. We agreed that I would send the data via encrypted 7z file, and I would text him the password.

For a seldom occurring thing, it was fine and it worked, but I don't see myself doing that every day.

We knew it was coming: Bureaucratic cockup triggers '6-month' delay of age verification block on porno in the UK

There's something I don't get

"the holdup is due to DCMS having failed to notify the European Commission in time"

Why is that a problem ? Is the UK not leaving the EU any more ?

I find it hilariously stupid that the EU is still being bandied about as a restriction to what UK Gov can do now. You're leaving, so what do you care about notifying the Commission ?

Bot war: Here's how you can theoretically use adversarial AI to evade YouTube's hard-line copyright-detecting AI

Exactly that.

For a good insight on what happens when YouTube prefers a copyright enforcer, check this out.

It is simply disgusting what they can do to you, and you don't have any way to retaliate.

Imagine being charged to take a lunch break... even if you didn't. Welcome to the world of these electronics assembly line workers

"the cost of which would be automatically taken from their wages"

Sorry, your employees having lunch is not a cost, it is what allows them to continue working. Fuck that mentality. We're in the 21st century now, grow up already. You employ human beings, not robots.

*Spits out coffee* £4m for a database of drone fliers, UK.gov? Defra did game shooters for £300k

Yeah, but you're not the minister's nephew.

As above, so below: El Reg haunts Scaleway's data centre catacombs 26 metres under Paris

"aimed [..] at customers reluctant to entrust Microsoft and Amazon with their data"

Which should be all European banks and administrations by default, with many large European companies coming in a close second. Nobody should make it easy for the NSA to get their grubby mitts on our data.

So their business should be thriving.

It's all in the wrist: Your fitness tracker could be as much about data warfare as your welfare

"data warfare"

Yes, there definitely is a data war going on : the one between my private life and all the tricksters who promise me trinkets in order to throw ads at me.

And you want them to unite ? You actually want to have your life dictated by a database ? Are you out of your mind ?

You gotta be kitten me: Pakistan politicos feline silly after filter farce hits purrrfect conference

Indeed, let it remain in the hands of our home-grown terrorists.

Boffins' neural network can work out from your speech whether you'll develop psychosis

When did the study take place ?

I can't find a date for when they started this study. If they had time to follow through and conclude that some got psychosis and some didn't, then it means that the study had to be done at least ten years ago. AI was not so prevalent a decade ago, so how did they use AI to bolster their study ?

Smash GandCrab: Free tools released to decrypt files scrambled by notorious ransomware

Well then, one down, a hundred thousand to go

They say (in the linked article) they have proven that crime can be without retribution. So it's a lot easier to do crime with the Internet, well duh. Did they actually think that needed to be demonstrated ?

With the Internet, you are all over the world, but there is no world police. You can create and launch processes from your computer but they can execute anywhere in the world. If that process is malicious, it will hurt someone who does not have any other possibility to track you down except call the police - who cannot do anything because the perpetrator can likely not be found.

It would take quite a few experts to track the origin of a malware, and it would require local law enforcement cooperation to get the details that would allow an actual arrest. That is not something that is going to happen for issues that are less than a few thousand dollars, because it would probably cost more than that to bring the criminals to justice.

Finally, an AI that can reliably catch and undo Photoshop airbrushing. Who made it? Er, Photoshop maker Adobe

It's a household name now

The term photoshopped is as common as the notion of googling something. Is there any irony in the fact that the very company who made that happen is now wanting to "keep it real" ?

I think so.

London opens stock market for a tickling from Chinese tentacles

"deepen our global connectivity as we look outwards to new opportunities in Asia"

Shanghai, a city directly governed by the central government.

But, I thought there were "security issues" when dealing with Chinese companies ?

Does this mean that the Shanghai Stock Exchange is immune to requests from Beijing ?

Or does this just mean that, as usual, money talks and politicians can just stay out of the way ?

Greatest threat facing IT? Not the latest tech giant cockwomblery – it's just tired engineers

"the sympathetic vultures of the Register"

Now, what does that remind me of ?

Oh, right : this.

UK industry calls for delay of IR35 off-payroll tax rules to private sector

Interesting article, but for one thing :

"The analysis found the UK’s deficit would largely have been eliminated in the 2018-19 financial year if Britain had voted to Remain"

I'm sorry, but I don't believe that for one second. That sentence raises my credibility warning to red alert. There is no way any country will get rid of its debt, and pretending that an alternate reality would have seen debt disappear in just one year is the product of one of two things : either they are smoking some real good stuff, or this is a puff piece designed to damage the government and attempt to reverse the UK population's opinion on Brexit, for some goal I cannot imagine.

In any case, that article contains some amount of smoke and mirrors.

I guess I misunderstood the situation

I thought the UK government just wanted out of the EU, but it would seem that it actually wants out of the economy entirely.

Well, carry on then.

Blighty's online pr0n gatekeepers are begging for a regulatory beating, says digital rights org

"We want the UK to be the safest place in the world to be online"

Simple : do not let children go online without supervision. Do your bloody job as a parent, instead of using a screen to do your child's education.

And can someone tell me why, for the love of all that is holy, an age verification scheme is voluntary ? Let's be logical : if there is a law that says that age verification is mandatory, then there should be a mandatory scheme to verify age that is compliant with the law.

Get your ducks in order.

HP CFO Cathie Lesjak didn't even read KPMG's Autonomy due diligence before $11bn biz gobble

Re: OK, that does it!

Totally agreed. It is now official : HP's top management takes the money, but doesn't do the work.

Atari finally launches its VCS console. Again.

Re: Why the pessimism?

Because the leadership has its mouth full of buzzwords and makes declarations that are the polar opposite of what they are actually doing. On top of that, we are less than a year from launch after two missed launch deadlines and they can't even show a demo unit.

That is not a good sign, and good faith is not enough to produce a working product.

Re: This is about retro and nouveu combined

Well don't forget to tell us about your experience - if you ever actually get one, that is.

Flight Simulator 2020: Exciting new ride or a doomed tailspin in a crowded market?

Re: So...

Well, given that Win 7 is EOL, I doubt that Microsoft would allow it's next-generation flight sim to run on that creaking platform.

Even though it could probably use the Win 7 population to get more subscriptions, while teasing them about how much better the game would be in Win 1 0.

Welcome to English-speaking journalism. Not having the info is not an impediment to writing an article.

You'll always need VMs says, surprise, VMware: Run on any cloud you like and get portability

"the industry is sufficiently wedded to VMware technology"

Yes it is, so much so that declaring that VMware is here to stay is not only superfluous, it borders on pandering to the ego of the CEO.

There isn't a single IT department that doesn't use VMs. Heck, even small companies can use it - I know the company I worked for before does, and we were a 3-person shop at the time. Okay, it helped that my associate was a network administrator, but still.

So yeah, VMware has a long and bright future ahead of it. I think we all know that but hey, a successful CEO has the right to stroke himself the right way every now and then, doesn't he ?

Facebook won't nuke deepfakes? OK, let's tear up those precious legal protections from user-posted content, then

"in order to tackle the rise of deepfakes"

Right, because now that politicians have been the subject of such alterations, We Must React.

That private citizens may have had their lives or reputations destroyed by such activity, or may risk that, is just collateral damage to the great march of Capitalism. We can't regulate that.

But touch the politicians and ohh buddy, then you get their attention real quick.

'AI is not the cause, it’s an accelerant. The pace of change is challenging' Experts give Congress deepfakes straight dope

"People watching falsified videos of political leaders could be duped into believing lies"

Yeah, well people watching Fox News are regularly duped into that and I don't see anyone doing anything to stop it.

settlement.js not found: JavaScript package biz NPM scraps talks, fights union-busting claims

"conflicts represent the natural order of the open source world"

And apparently you handle them very badly in your own company.

But hey, it's nice to know that you have such an open mind about the other companies that are sprouting up due to your incompetent handling of your staff.

Not that you have much of a choice anyway.

When customers see red, sometimes the obvious solution will only fan the flames

Re: Dolt

Agreed. When I am faced with a presumed error that I cannot replicate, it's the first thing I ask for : show me how it goes wrong.

Mirai botnet malware offspring graduates from uni, puts on a suit, slips into your enterprise

So now IoT can pwn your company

It really seems time to declare a moratorium on this market and freeze sales of all IoT things until the makers can prove that they've understood that they need to think security before thinking product.

It's also time for fusion to become useful, but I'm guessing the latter will happen way before the former.

Gonna be so cool when we finally get into space, float among the stars, work out every day, inject testosterone...

You can't get pregnant in space, because the guy has no way to get an erection.

In order to become erect, blood needs to pool in the loins, action which can only happen in a gravity well. So, no hanky-panky in space, sorry.

Hacking these medical pumps is as easy as copying a booby-trapped file over the network

One silver lining

At least the latest firmware is not subject to this particular threat, apparently.

How to upgrade something that is embedded in a person's body is something else though, and given that I already fear upgrading my motherboard firmware*, I shudder to think of me having one of those things inside me that needs upgrading.

* : somehow I never can bring myself to trust those things - I always fear that, after the update, the board just dies and never starts up again