Posts by Pascal Monett

"respond to lawful orders [..] without fear of running afoul of restrictions on disclosure"

Of course there will be no fear of "running afoul of restrictions on disclosure", those restrictions are being removed.

I'm quite sure that this "agreement" is just a tool to simplify things for the US to go on fishing expeditions abroad. I'm also pretty certain that Australia is in for a rude surprise when they ask for data on a US citizen - they won't get it and will instead get a lot of bla bla about how their request is not relevant, badly formulated, not within the proper time frame, etc.

The US is expert on making everyone else kiss their ass, but avoiding doing any ass-kissing themselves.

How long are they going to last ?

It's starting to look like a demolition derby is taking place near Saturn. We know that the rings already contain the remains of one or more bodies, and with these 20 newly discovered lumps racing around in various groups and completely different ways, there will be more collisions for sure.

Maybe that will lengthen the life span of Saturn's rings for a few more millennia.

Deepfakes are not a problem now

I'm guessing that the tech isn't perfect and fakes can be rather easily detected. A shadow that falls wrong, lighting that is not changed, etc. Today's deepfakes are just the draft versions, it's tomorrow's deepfakes that will be frighteningly realistic.

So I'm going to do what you cannot count on Joe Public to do : if I see a video on the web with a prominent politician doing unspeakable acts, I'm going to wait for journalists to confirm that it is not a fake and the video is real. Until then, by default everything concerning political figures or celebrities is something I will file in Deepfake until otherwise notified.

"It is unclear whether Atari will be able to complete its beleaguered project"

Nope, it is crystal clear that Atari will not complete anything at all. Two years into the project and all they have is one miserable dev board that needs debugging ?

Get lost, Atari.

Not a moment too soon

It's about time somebody slammed the door on those stupid backdoor arguments once and for all.

Law enforcement has everything it needs to obtain data on someone ; it's called a subpoena and it just has to be signed by a judge who agrees with it.

You have no right to transform every petty police officer into a member of the NSA, capable of delving into people's private lives on a whim.

And, talking about the NSA, the violation of people's private lives simply because you can is disgusting.

"We are a small British company up against a monolithic, faceless Goliath."

Yes, and you always were and you knew it when you signed up.

It's only that now, you are feeling just how small you are and how Goliath Google is, and that feeling is not comfortable at all.

A wise man once said : do not put all your eggs in the same basket. You should have diversified, that would have lessened the blow.

In any case, you have little choice now but to educate your users in how to accept the security warning.

"process data at the source"

I can understand the obvious importance of that, but for science it is imperative to able to consult the actual data, not just the result of the processing. So data will still have to be re-transmitted in some form or another.

It might however be feasible to use a backup SSD and bring the data back "manually", rotating a new backup with the next flight.

Turla, another group of highly intelligent people gone over to the Dark Side

Well, at least that kind of tool should be restricted to attacking people that that state is interested in, right ?

Us plebs should be unaffected then, right ?

Please say yes.

So we're back to "Developers ! Developers ! Developers !" then ?

I think that's a good idea. Of course, it's not a new idea, but it's a good one.

That also means that Microsoft is going to have to stick with its tools for the long term. No more burying a product after only a few years, you're going to have to grin and bear it.

In this day and age, that might be a bit too much for Microsoft to do.

"even more customer focused"

With less employees to do the job. Sure, that's going to work.

As of now, I am just waiting for the CEO who will whittle down employee count to 10,000 and spout the same bullshit.

Being CEO in a large corporation is apparently easy : all you have to do is have no soul and cull the staff numbers. Your bonus is ensured, and in the worse case, you have your golden parachute made from the tears of all those people you fired.

So, Oracle is getting desperate ?

Finally.

"IDC reckons the market will hit 55.2 million by 2023"

Did they factor in the fact that current hardware is used for much longer these days ? My current rig was last updated in 2015, and I have no urge or need to update it now. Laptops are a different story, they cannot be upgraded in any meaningful way aside, perhaps, memory, but they can last a good many years as well, especially the more powerful ones.

I doubt that a change in chip availability has that much of an impact.

"cut down on the borkage"

Maybe, maybe not. More borkage will incite more businesses to move to Linux, maybe. I wonder what proportion of new small businesses are not under the Redmond influence. Surely young entrepreneurs are not all afraid of living a Windows-free life ?

"block access to any domain less than a month old"

Interesting idea. Could someone please tell me how to configure that in my hosts file ?

"once companies understand what exactly AI is"

It is a statistical analysis machine, not intelligent in any way. It's just capable of applying statistical rules over a vast dataset.

There is zero chance that that will become sentient any time soon.

Corporate Behemoth Eyes Pie, Takes It

Typical of billion-dollar behemoths, Google has a good thing going with Kubernetes and its stance is to make all the money, so get people hooked on the product and reserve the means to develop on it to only paying customers, thereby adding yet another revenue stream to fill its coffers.

It's an excellent decision - for Google.

And how did he get caught ?

Some unusual activity was dicovered, and then what ? How did Yahoo! find out what happened and how did the finger get pointed to him ?

This is El Reg, I was expecting a rundown of what happened, not just a commentary on legal proceedings.

"move items [..] faster than a human runner could manage"

So, if I understand correctly, right now large hospitals employ people to run around carrying stuff that is needed ? Funny, I've been to a few hospitals in my lifetime and I don't remember seeing employees running around carrying something.

Not-for-profit, right ?

No, it's not for profit, but it's all for money.

Is there a legal way to force it to change status, and what must be done in order for that to happen ?