Posts by Pascal Monett

Microsoft-owned GitHub: Open source needs funding. Ya think?

Borkzilla begging for money

Hey, Redmond, you bought GitHub.

You pay for its maintenance.

Tesla bets on bot smoke screen as political and market realities bite

"Elon Musk was optimistic about the future"

When has he not been ?

Especially in front of investors.

Mistral AI environmental report confirms AI is a hungry, thirsty beast

And don't forget to set your thermostat to 19°C because climate change . . .

The tiny tech tribe who could change the world tomorrow but won't

"There are ten people in the world who could decide tomorrow"

Name and shame.

This needs to be done. Kick the anthill and get them moving.

UN World Court declares countries must curb emissions or be held responsible

Oh, so the UN has passed a decree

Gosh.

Will that be followed by a sternly-worded letter ?

And after three SWL, what do you get ? A black star on your notebook ?

Trump AI plan rips the brakes out of the car and gives Big Tech exactly what it wanted

"[..] AI that pursues truth, fairness and strict impartiality."

And the orange shitgibbon is the one defining truth.

Fairness and impartiality are words he does not comprehend - they were added by the press secretary for PR purposes.

Nothing to see here: Brave browser blocks privacy-busting Microsoft Recall

Thank you Brave !

Thank you for standing up to the industry that is endlessly trying to milk our private lives under any excuse they can find.

You don't remember what site you were on when you saw those shoes ? Too bad. Live with it.

SAP warns of 'extended approvals' for spending in manufacturing, US public sector

SAP

They should use Hotel California as their official anthem.

IRS has lost one-quarter of its IT staff since Trump took office

Don't you just love it ?

There's too many administrative personnel.

Let's start by cutting down the personnel that ensures government has revenue.

Is that in The Art Of The Deal ?

Stop flooding us with AI-based grant applications, begs Health Institute

Keep it up, Trump

With a President like you, who needs enemies ?

The real reason why Trump is killing the Mauna Loa observatory in Hawai'i

"the most abundant and consequential greenhouse gas"

Really ?

What about methane ?

Check the link before Trump manages to extinguish it.

From the article :

"Methane is more than 28 times as potent as carbon dioxide at trapping heat in the atmosphere"

Mike Lynch estate owes HPE $943M over Autonomy fallout

"in the best interest of shareholders."

Decency is apparently not their best interest.

This whole thing is a vast clown show. HP ignored internal warnings and pressed ahead with a purchase it did not need because of one guy's ego, which the Board did not oppose.

HPE should just swallow the loss and shut the fuck up.

NASA Goddard Center Director quits as agency staffers issue dissent letter

Not her fault

I salute her courage and her own form of protest. She is not reponsible for the budget cuts of the orange baboon and his clique of crazed monkeys.

The message is clear : the US is no longer interested in funding Science.

Another year and Trump will find a way to get rid of STEM classes entirely.

Oh wait, he's already cut the budget of education as well . . .

Re: Depressing

Not surprising, though

UK Post Office names public inquiry as risk to £410 million Horizon replacement project

Poor little things

"Look, this public inquiry into why and how we knowingly drove innocent employees to suicide is really crimping our style. Could we just keep our lives, salaries and honors and move on ?"

Icon for my response ->

Science confirms what we all suspected: Four-day weeks rule

Next year in Breaking News : 3-day week paid 5 is a roaring success

Well duh.

Look, I have personally seen the benefits that COVID-19 has brought (albeit to horrible expense). I am a freelance Notes specialist working in Luxembourg. Before COVID-19, I was on the road every day going to one client or another. Hours wasted in commute (Luxembourg highways are notorious for being locked up in traffic jams). Up at half past five, on the road at 6:20, get to my destination at best at 8:30 - destination that is at most 50km away. That's an average of less than half a kilometer per minute. The return trip was never much better.

During COVID-19, the lockup meant that my customers all sent me detailed log-on credentials and procedures. Suddenly, I could work from home, log into a secure VPN from my professional laptop (or I was given a company laptop), and work continued. Targets were hit, progress was attained. Life went on. I had a discussion with one IT manager during that period and I told him : "Look, you call me and, if I'm available, I'm logged in and working within 10 minutes. Before, we'd have to schedule a day for me to come in, which might have been tomorrow, or next week depending on my workload and when you were able to recieve me. Isn't this better ?".

It was. But now it's almost over. The majority of my customers have recovered their precious laptops, forcing me to once again go to their office. Those for whom I have a VPN login have, for the most part, left it active - probably because they appreciate the reactivity more than having me occupy a desk in their workspace (some people are actually intelligent).

The fact is : in my line of work, working from my office/home office is 100% efficient - and sometimes I even stay logged on just to see the result of an agent running after hours (without billing that time - hey, I'm just logged on with my work computer, while I wait I'm playing Diablo III on my gaming rig).

I do not have a crystal ball, I have no idea where the workplace is going. I am sure, however, that if we manage to get beyond the "I need to count my peons and see them sweat" type of management, working will be better and more productive for everyone.

In these conditions, I don't need a 4-day week to feel and be productive.

Vintage computing boffin releases expansive Intel 286 test suite

Unbelievable

Only in computing do you see so much effort deployed for something that few people actually knew and almost nobody has any more.

Yes, I know that there are people who go through a lot of trouble to restore vintage cars, but somehow it does not strike me as so incredibly useless and impressive at the same time.

Please, FOSS world, we need something like ChromeOS

Re: The trouble with endof10.org is its step 1

Yup.

That's the problem I find with the penguin community. They all laugh at you when you're on Windows, but choose one distro and you get yourself a barrage of insults because you didn't choose their preferred distro.

For all the holier-than-thou behavior of the Linux community, there is a whole lot of pre-teen testosterone behavior in a lot of them.

Re: The elephant in the room

I absolutely second your point.

I was once involved, as IT support, in a project that was supposed to be a non-profit organizing IT trainings for the poor in order to help them get positions in the workplace. A laudable goal, I thought, so I participated gladly.

At one point, the lead responsible made an off-hand remark about how expensive MS Office was and I immediately offered to install LibreOffice for them, explaining that it was free and had all the functionality they needed. I was showered in thanks and installed LO on their five admin laptops (admin because they were the non-profit management, not because they had any particular IT skills).

A few weeks later I went back to configure this and that, par for the course for a non-profit project, and the lead responsible commented on the fact that everyone had gone back to Excel and Word because LibreOffice was "too complicated".

I kept my mouth shut and made a noncommittal "hm hmm" noise.

From what I've heard since, that non-profit has dissolved into nothing.

Composer for worst Tomb Raider games jailed over COVID-19 loan fraud

Well :

1. There was no central database to check whether he had an exiting loan : that's called administrative overhead - the less you have, the better right ? England prevails and all that.

2. The loans were granted based on a claim of over stated earnings without checking last audited accounts : It was difficult times. The Government did the best it could. God Save The Queen.

3. The responsibility for distributing public funds was given to banks : okay, but seriously, who should have shouldered that responsibility ? Hospitals ?

I agree that the whole management of COVID-19 was a vastly overinflated mess, but the small fry are getting fried now.

The big fish will, of course, continue par for the course and get away scot-free.

Alaska Airlines grounded itself due to mysterious IT problem

So they were hacked

C'mon, guys, just admit it and we can throw you a "Welcome to the Club !" party.

Under-qualified sysadmin crashed Amazon.com for 3 hours with a typo

"which did not seem like a good omen"

I have to admit, if I were responsible for something like that in such a company, my butthole would be so clenched I wouldn't even be able to fart until I was told that no, I wasn't fired.

I'm glad that he escaped that episode unscathed (well, almost).

Japan discovers object out beyond Pluto that rewrites the Planet 9 theory

It's impractical. Isn't that a beautiful excuse to not obey the law ?

I'm sorry, Your Honor.

It was impractical for me to not hack that bank account and transfer the $60 million to my account.

I needed the money.

Vibe coding service Replit deleted user’s production database, faked data, told fibs galore

Coding

It requires a coder. Someone with experience who will understand what you are asking, what the caveats are, and how to implement it on your choice of platform.

In any case, you went from "Wow, this is great ! I'm a coder !" to "Jesus, this thing is shit and I don't trust it" in record time.

And you paid for the privilege.

Microsoft patches failed to fix on-prem SharePoint, which is now under zero-day attack

Don't worry, Microsoft

Nobody has ever dropped your shitty products because of bugs or security issues.

Carry on !

Re: Guy I know

In France it is forbidden to record images from your property to the sidewalk or street.

You can install a camera that watches your front door on your own property, but if it proven that you can also record people walking their dog on the sidewalk, you're in trouble.

Meta declines to abide by voluntary EU AI safety guidelines

"legal uncertainties"

Translation : we don't know how to milk that cash cow now.

Coldplay kiss-cam flap proves we’re already our own surveillance state

"we're perfectly able and willing to surveil ourselves"

Yup.

1984, Brazil, and other works (of perfectly valid content and justifiable intentions) were all based on the idea that it is Goverment that is the watchful eye responsible for a dystopian future.

Then along came Facebook and it's been a downhill ride ever since.

I'm rather happy that George Orwell is already dead, because he would certainly have a heart attack if he saw what our "modern" civilization has become.

As companies race to add AI, terms of service changes are going to freak a lot of people out

If they were that clueful about privacy and security, they would be using Sync.

"We regret that our terms caused unnecessary confusion"

No. You regret getting caught.

There was no confusion. There was you slipping in a bit of text written by a highly-paid besuited Porsche-driving lawyer to ensure that, in the future, all of your options were open and available.

Unfortunately, it would appear that there are people who actually bother to take the time to read those coma-inducing piles of legalese (no, it's not English, it's its own language) and who have enough knowledge themselves to decrypt and unravel the truth behind the waffling.

And it would appear that, this time, they are not your friends.

Who knew ?

Watch out, another max-severity, make-me-root Cisco bug on the loose

Bleak, but I can't fault you.

Yeah, but that's called work.

Something you avoid generally for as long as you can.

Re: What is the tally now for Cisco?

On this you are perfectly right.

Huawei got crucified because it was Chinese. No proof, no demonstration of vulnerability, just chanting over and over again "Huawei must obey Beijing. It's a threat to our security !"

Well, Cisco must obey Washington, but I don't hear anybody complaining. And Cisco is apparently a very real threat to our security.

Time for Britain's CMA to strike hard – or risk losing the cloud competition fight

Not a lot of enthusiasm here

Then again, there's not much to be had.

But saying that you're broke ? I think that's going a bit too far.

You are generating wealth. You're just not the ones that are benefitting from it.

‘I nearly died after flying thousands of miles to install a power cord for the NSA’

"told the software guy the machine ran fully validated production code"

Then why was the software guy there in the first place ?

Open, free, and completely ignored: The strange afterlife of Symbian

Re: Of course we know how Nokia's dalliance with Windows turned out

You do not ally with Windows.

You submit, or you don't. You'll get the shaft anyway.

Laid-off AWS employee describes cuts as 'cold and soulless'

How interesting

The CEO predicts layoffs and, lo and behold, they happen.

Gosh. What power of vision. What insight. What courage.

I'm breathless.

Ukrainian hackers claim to have destroyed major Russian drone maker's entire network

Re: Lesson

Unfortunately, business and infrastructure do not learn until something blows up in their face.

Infrastructure has been warned repeatedly and continuously for the past 25 years. It hasn't changed anything, apparently.

As for business, what to say ? I guess it costs less to get hacked than it does to have competent people doing their job. That's a Board-level decision and, if they're happy with the consequences, I don't care more than they do.

Re: Well

Your reply sparked a thought and I tried doing some research.

I found this, and I thought I should share.

People can, and sometimes do, kill. No question there. The circumstances matter, though.

If I find someone raping my daughter or my wife, he had better pray that the police are not far because I will slaughter him with the nearest sharp or blunt object I can get my hands on.

If you attack me with the clear intent of ending my life (for whatever reason), and I have a gun at hand, I will defend myself and shoot you. If I don't have a gun, I will fight for my life and if you die, well, you started it.

If you tell me that thousands of invaders are coming, give me an assault rifle and a handful of mags, and ask me to defend my fellow citizens, I do believe I will try to make every bullet count.

But if you hand me that gun and mags, ship me off to a place I've never been before and might not even have ever heard of, and then order me to go kill some people I don't know and never will for some reason that has nothing to do with me, I'm not convinced that I will become Rambo and go kill everything that moves.

Well

Whether or not this claim is valid, it does indicate that future warfare is not going to content itself with only what is happening on the front lines.

If Napoleon failed to conquer Russia with his Great Army, if Hitler failed to even get to Moscow, if the Japanese failed to hold their conquests in the Pacific during WWII, it all boils down to supply.

I don't remember the exact figures, but I seem to remember that, in WWII, for every US soldier sent into battle, there were 100 people working 24/7 to get him his ammo, food, gear and whatever else he needed.

Napoleon said an army marches with its stomach. That may have been enough back in the day, but today's modern armies need way more than just food.

And successfully hindering any part of that supply line could make quite a difference in the final outcome.

Google sues 25 alleged BadBox 2.0 botnet operators, all of whom are in China

Loved that

"and crime, too"

Oh yeah, there's that. Might as well tack it on.

Superbly done, El Reg.

OpenAI deputizes ChatGPT to serve as an agent that uses your computer

"told to behave and observe safeguards"

And be a good little boy and play nice. For fuck's sake, I can understand that Marketing believes this bullshit but how in the world can anyone with functioning neurons swallow this and actually believe it ?

THERE IS NO SUCH THING AS ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE.

Stop pretending. Wake the fuck up.

Or do I have to drop in the Board meetings with a cluebat ? Because I'm starting to think I do, and I'm starting to kinda want to do it.

Intel swings the axe again as it looks to lose 5,000 staff

"After coasting on its x86 dominance for decades"

Indeed. And the AMD Thunderbird was the first sign that Intel was on its way to the old people's home.

AMD fought tooth and nail to climb and gain recognition, while Intel puttered about. Sure, in the 90s Intel was the king, no question there. But when AMD was first to have a Ghz CPU, Intel should have seen the writing on the wall.

It didn't.

As usual, it's the employees that will pay the big price, while the Board and management will retain their high salaries and bonuses and get hired elsewhere with similar paychecks.

Yet, it is not the employees who failed.

JWST peers through dusty curtain to catch young star making baby planets

I love Science.

UK tech minister negotiated nothing with Google. He may get even less than that

And I note that you post anonymously, so you're so proud, are you ?

Uber to roll out thousands of robo-cabs built by China’s Baidu

Uber

Now part of Xi Ping's information network.

Apparently, those shits are clawing their way up in the world.

Britain's billion-pound F-35s not quite ready for, well, anything

Re: we'd make our own aircraft

But . . that's expensive . . .

Nvidia to resume sales to China – with Trump administration approval

"attending a million-bucks-a-plate meal at US President Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago home"

That is one fucking expensive McDonalds kid meal.

Scientists spot massive black hole collision that defies current theories

"Black holes this massive are forbidden"

Black holes this massive don't care about your puny theories.