Posts by Pascal Monett

Pick three people you think will replace Google Cloud CEO Greene, then forget them – because it's Thomas Kurian

Who said she considers it to be work ?

She apparently decided to do what she wants, which is exactly what you do when money is not a problem.

Holy moley! The amp, kelvin and kilogram will never be the same again

So we've gone from six to five

We have set aside 6 imperfect measurement units and now rely on 5 very expensive locations for a perfectly precise result.

We may have gained in precision, but we've lost in numbers. I don't know how expensive one of those balances are, but I'm pretty sure we're not going to be building a whole lot more in any case. What else can a Kibble balance be good for ?

Where to implant my employee microchip? I have the ideal location

Re: Oh dear. WAKE UP PEOPLE.

Wow. You'd almost think that chipping employees has become mainstream overnight.

You need to calm down, your blood pressure is going to kill you before you reach 40.

Re: Chips are so 20th century

We have facial recognition ? That is 100% reliable ? I think not. They are endlessly trying to make it work in airports, but we're not there yet.

Eye evaluation ? Do you work in a Level 4 bio lab ? Has anyone ever seen those outside of Hollywood films ? In theory they're great. In practice, they're nowhere.

Multiple other biometric mechanisms ? Really ? Which ones are actually used in your fictional universe ?

Please do realize that you are taking your documentation from the Science-Fiction section of the library.

Microsoft menaced with GDPR mega-fines in Europe for 'large scale and covert' gathering of people's info via Office

Re: "get a CEO's head on a pike"

I like the way you think.

5.. 4.. 3.. 2.. 1... Runty-birds are go: 12,000+ internet-beaming mini-satellites OK'd by USA

Oh come on

I found that that movie was a gripping tale, relentlessly holding my attention from start to (not really feasible) end.

As far as demonstrating the threat of debris, it was a resounding success.

As far as demonstrating the reality of getting from the ISS to whatever that other place was, yeah, that was pure Hollywood drivel.

But the debris storm ? Perfectly realistic.

Re: And how many of those 500,000 objects [..] already de-orbited unobserved due to drag

Um, they're observing them.

So : ZERO.

Your mistrust of the US government, I applaud. Do not extend it to the scientists. They don't give a fuck about what drivel comes out of the White House, and I'm willing to bet that there's only a infinitesimal fraction (that's the scientific way of saying NOBODY) who would jeopardize their credibility to toe the Orange Carrot's line.

The men and women who are tracking these orbital threats have the safety of the ISS astronauts as first and only priority. All other priorities are rescinded. They will not sell their souls for White House-imposed views.

Up to three million kids' GPS watches can be tracked by parents... and any miscreant: Flaws spill pick-and-choose catalog for perverts

What the hell ?

Why on God's green Earth do you need ANY detail about the person wearing the tracker ?

The only thing you need is the ID of the device. The people who bought the device are the only ones who need to know who is wearing it.

If the kid gets lost, they can give the ID of the device to the cops. There is ZERO need to have ANY personal details associated with the device.

Please excuse the caps but my GOD that is making me angry.

Facebook's CEO on his latest almighty Zuck-up: OK, we did try to smear critics, but I was too out-of-the-loop to know

Re: If they can't fix it they should be shut down

Well, yes, and no.

Let me be clear : I hate FaceBook.

That said, I do remember UseNet as a rather motely collection of trolls. Slashdot is still online and oh my God is it full of shit. It is nothing new, it's in human nature.

So, objectively speaking, The Zuck is (yech) right. This is not a problem that has an easy solution. Certainly not a technical one.

The only proper solution is constant vigilance. That costs money and requires long-term focus. If The Zuck is honestly committed to this long-term effort, then I don't think we can ask for more.

I'm still waiting to see that commitment have any effect.

Won't be holding my breath.

Trump in Spaaaaaaace: Washington DC battles over who gets to decide the rules of trillion-dollar new industry

"America would again put a man on the moon. And [..] on Mars too."

And build the wall. And secure space. And grab all the pussies.

U-S-A ! U-S-A !

Reality is grand when you are the one defining it. For the rest of us, it's called being delusional.

Nvidia just can't grab a break. Revenues up, profit nearly doubles... and stock down 20%

Well one must admit that, these days, the trend is : it's not.

If at first or second you don't succeed, you may be Microsoft: Hold off installing re-released Windows Oct Update

For all the good it does them . . .

In any case, I'm glad Microsoft is doing its level best to promote the use of Linux.

You really couldn't find a better advocate.

John McAfee is 'liable' for 2012 death of Belize neighbour, rules court

"The eccentric millionaire"

Translation : the rich fucking loon.

This is no longer 18th century England, Macafee isn't a Lord and his "exploits" are common knowledge.

Let's not sugarcoat things, shall we ?

Google: Our DeepMind health slurp is completely kosher

"nothing will change without our consent"

So says the new babe on the market.

When you're working with Google, one thing is certain : you're not the one altering the deal.

Where's the Vader icon when you need one ?

Sorry, Mr Zuckerberg isn't in London that day. Or that one. Nope. I'd give up if I were you

The committee [..] will not let the matter rest

Wow, them's fightin' words. The Zuck must be tremblin' in his boots.

Guys, how much are you worth already ? Put together ? Right.

And what can you do against him, exactly ? Right.

Let me spell it out for you : until you make refusing or evading an international committee "invitation" illegal and place it under the purview of an international warrant, he's got zero incentive to waste his time with you.

Re: Glad I'm not him

So is he !

Brexit: UK will be disconnected from EU databases after 2020

Ah, the UK gov

Still pretending they can move out but keep the keys.

I've stocked up on popcorn, I'm ready for the show.

A new Raspberry Pi takes a bow with all of the speed but less of the RAM

Funny you should say that. I think that is exactly the argument used back in the day to diss the 486 DX and, if memory serves, it was spectacularly wrong.

Douglas Adams was right, ish... Super-Earth world clocked orbiting 'nearby' Barnard's Star

Re: "The detached sail will accelerate but the probe will decelerate"

Why ? This is space, there is no aether to decelerate the probe. The probe will continue at its speed, and the sail, being pushed by the laser, will accelerate further and go faster than the probe.

But the probe has no reason to slow down simply because it detached from its sail.

The only way for the probe to slow down is to have a mass drive of some sort that exerts the necessary pressure in the right direction to slow it down.

US China-watcher warns against Middle Kingdom tech dominance

Oh really ?

"or when Chinese IoT products and services transfer US customer data back to China, where the government retains expansive powers to access personal and corporate data."

Because the US government does not have "expansive powers to access personal and corporate data" ? That's news to me.

Of course, I realize that this is a US report on "dangers" to US citizens with China-manufactured IoT stuff, but I think that, for the international audience reading it, it would be good to re-read that paragraph with the proper placeholders, like thus :

"or when foreign IoT products and services transfer your data back to that country, where the laws on personal and corporate data may not be in your best interest."

Then maybe you'll think twice about that FitBit, or that POS "smart" lock that you have somehow convinced yourself that you need.

As far as I'm concerned, IoT is a world of badly implemented useless or bad ideas. I'll stay well away from it, but this report is just another nail in the coffin.

Alexa, cough up those always-on Echo audio recordings, says double-murder trial judge

"captured audio of the killings, and subsequent removal of the bodies"

On a one-second buffer ?

Unless said buffer is sent off to Amazon servers immediately, which effectively transforms the device into an audio streaming device that records everything onto Amazon servers, I really don't see what that thing could possibly have sent to the server that is of any use.

And if the Echo is effectively recording all sounds 24/7 in your house, then it is by far the most disgusting application of technology ever brought into this world and Big Brother is purple with envy.

Six critical systems, four months to Brexit – and no completed testing

a "pragmatic" approach by prioritising the most essential work

Hmm. This might just be exactly what is needed. No more time for meetings, the busybodies will stay away because there's actual work to be done. The ministers will stay away because the project is doomed and they do not want their reputation drawn down with it.

This just may be a time for those who actually know what they're doing to be able to do it in peace and quiet, without the useless weight of those who only appear to work. Then, when the basic functionalities are demonstrated to work and the day is saved, we'll witness ministers swooping in to claim credit and the busybodies will press around them to share in the glory.

After Brexit they'll all have time to fuck it up again, but at least a good foundation just might have been created.

Nah. I'm dreaming. But I think I can make a good scenario out of that . . .

Oi, Elon: You Musk sort out your Autopilot! Tesla loyalists tell of code crashes, near-misses

I went and read that "detailed critique" and, wow.

It's no surprise that Musk insists that the Autopilot is to be used with your hands on the wheel. With the amount of confirmation requests, it seems like the driver doesn't have time to take them off the wheel.

The list of things that go wrong would be hilarious if we were talking about a game, but it is chilling when you realize that we're talking about real life.

I have no intention of buying a Tesla, but if I did I would not use Autopilot for damn sure.

Scumbag who phoned in a Call of Duty 'swatting' that ended in death pleads guilty to dozens of criminal charges

Re: Guns vs Laws

It's not when someone wants a gun that there's trouble, it's when everyone and their dog have a gun, so the proportion of nutters that is armed goes way beyond what is safe.

Re: Hostage situations...

"Put yourself in the cops shoes"

Okay : I am pointing my gun at a man who has his hands up. I should be able to clearly see that he is not armed. His hands, for some reason (because he's innocent ?) go down (that's a mistake). I can :

A) Shoot

B) Shout at him to get his hands back up

Yes, the cops thought they were dealing with a violent guy, but I'd think you still need to see a weapon before feeling threatened.

All of this confirms what I think I will do if ever I find myself facing a bunch of US cops with their guns out for me: hands up, drop to my knees, hit the ground and spread-eagle. If they want to talk to me after that, I'll be listening, but I won't move until they tell me I can or come and cuff me.

NBN satellite user waiting for extra gigabytes? Keep waiting

When we moved last year we found out that there was no Internet cable options for our new home. The available options were a communal WiFi or satellite. I inquired about both and I was clearly told that satellite had a 2-second upload latency.

We went for the WiFi option because a) I'm a gamer after work hours, and 2 seconds is guaranteed to keep you from logging on to any server, not to mention playing, and b) my wife would have gone nuts shopping with that kind of latency, and I would be the sounding board for her misery.

Thankfully, FTTP is on the way, hopefully before the end of the year.

Cheeky cheesemaker fails to copyright how things taste

Re: On yer bike, CJEU tells Dutch dairy dealer

I am arbitrarily offended by your lack of examples.

We definitely don't need more towers, says new Vodafone boss scraping around for €8bn savings

"creating a virtual tower company"

With virtual performance as well, I'll wager.

And virtual customer satisfaction.

Re: pay out dividends...despite reporting a €7.8bn

But they are - it's just that, this year, they'll be a share of past profits.

FPGAs? Sure, them too. Liqid pours chips over composable computing systems

Why does it look like a video card ?

And can it run Crysis ?

Ok, stop pushing, I'm going, I'm going.

It's November 2018, and Microsoft's super-secure Edge browser can be pwned eight different ways by a web page

Re: Never mind the flaw, look at the *pattern*.

I'm guessing yes. It's not your code to release, it is Microsoft's and MS has the copyright to prove it.

Try that and you'll have Microsoft lawyers all over you. Probably literally.

Re: if an open source project had MAJOR flaw rates like this

Microsoft has never re-written anything from scratch (well, not since 95) because if it had, we wouldn't have seen the same bugs affect everything from 7 to 1 0 including effing Vista.

Microsoft has said that all those versions were written "from the ground up", but that is simply bullshit.

OK Google, what is African ISP Main One, and how did it manage to route your traffic into China through Russia?

"Even corporations [..] with massive resources at their disposal are not immune . . ."

Well duh, you're depending on someone else's network. It doesn't matter how much resources you have, what matters is how much resources they have.

Re: BGP

It was referenced in the previous article on this subject.

The link sent you here.

Ethernet patent inventor given permission to question validity of his own patent

Re: Curiouser and Curiouser

I don't think it's a grudge. He moved company, so now he wants to be able to use that thing that he got patented without having to pay the royalties.

Or something along that line.

Between you, me and that dodgy-looking USB: A little bit of paranoia never hurt anyone

Re: A paranoid mount option ?

Would be a nice option but for one thing : you have to be sure that said mount option cannot be tunneled through or otherwise worked around by the USB device. If done right it should be efficient enough to contain most malware, but a determined review by those damn blackhats could well uncover an unprotected exhaust port . . .

Personally, I'd prefer a device external to the PC. Some brick-sized thing or block, with a USB slot and a small flat screen that would, upon being turned on, simply list the files on the key, including hidden files if there are any. That way I could see if there is only the one file, or a host of other files, and decide what I want to risk : plug it in my PC and analyze it, or just trash the key entirely ?

A reformat option would be good as well.

Maybe someone could dream that up with a Raspberry Pi ?

OK Google, why was your web traffic hijacked and routed through China, Russia today?

So that explains why I had no trouble with accessing either Google, Youtube or GMail yesterday. Since I live in France, the BGP failed here on account of reroute request denied.

Damn, that sounds so simple. I wonder why US telcos don't give a damn like that ?

Just a little heads up: Google is still trying to convince everyone that web apps don't suck

I tried Squoosh

Damn effective in reducing the file size of an image, I must admit.

Then, to see if there was any phoning home during the process, I quit it, relaunched it, and cut my WiFi. It worked a charm. Of course, I still need the WiFi to call the page, but it does not seem to do anything network-wise once it's launched.

France: Let's make the internet safer. America, Russia, China: Let's go with 'no' on that

"Macron said he will keep trying to bring the US back on board."

That's wierd. The US is not on board and, given that this is the first announcement of this initiative, it never has been on board.

So it's less a case of bringing it back than a case of getting it on board in the first place.

Unless, of course, during the discussions prior to this announcement, the US was on board, but then the orange turnip pulled the other one and changed what passes for his mind.

Sudden Windows 10 licence downgrades to forced Xcode upgrades: The week at Microsoft

Searching is what Everything does better than anything else.

Uninstall Windows Search, install Everything and find out what Microsoft has never, ever understood.

YouTube supremo says vid-streaming-slash-piracy giant can't afford EU's copyright overhaul

@ msknight

"Shed loads of content on YouTube is pirated"

I do not disagree. Take it down and be done with it.

But SciShow, PBS Space Time, Brainy Dose and shedloads of others are perfectly legitimate and very interesting.

What is asked is not to close YouTube, it's to clean it up. And as I pay for my films, I see no problem in outing the pirates. On the other hand, I see a very big problem in the rampant abuse of the DMCA that YouTube exerts absolutely no control over. So out with the fucking DCMA and in with proper copyright control.

French president Macron insists new regulations needed to protect us all from Facebook's claws

"made it a little surprising"

It is hardly surprising to want to work with FaceBook. As much as I hate that fucking platform, it is not going to go away simply because I hate it. It is here to stay, and my President is perfectly pragmatic in trying to work with the beast and maybe weaken it from inside.

Because from outside, it is invulnerable.

Yikes. UK military looking into building 'fully autonomous' killer drone tech – report

current rules of engagement [..] "could change"

The rules of engagement are meant to change, because the battlefield is never in a static situation.

So they damn will change, and only the layman isn't aware of that.

Sometimes I wonder if they don't make some mistakes on purpose, just to stir things up and see how far they can go.

Palliative care for Windows 10 Mobile like a Crimean field hospital, but with even less effort

Can't bury all of MS with a spade. You'd need at least a backhoe and a fleet of trucks to cart away all the dirt.

@ John 104

"You see it in games as well. "Early release", "Beta Release", etc. People lap it up to get games sooner."

Sorry but I feel you're missing the point. Early Access is not to get the game sooner, it's to participate in the elaboration of the game. It's your chance to have input in the game in its creative stage.

When it's well done, that is, and not used as a shoddy excuse to foist a turd upon unsuspecting users, make a few promises, then leave and never make another update again.

But when done right, it can create a gem of a game.

Cathay Pacific hack: Airline admits techies fought off cyber-siege for months

Looks like things are getting worse

Credit card details seem to not actually be the end game for criminals any more - they're after user data. IDs, identifiers, passwords & other details.

We have spent the last three decades handing out this information willy-nilly to anyone who asked, and now we are reaping the results of personal information databases created without preparation or a thought for security. Oh sure, they were carefully thought through for business purposes, but not from a security standpoint.

It is obvious that companies are now going to have to implement the needed security as a bolt-on, after-the-fact measure and I doubt that we'll stop hearing of these hacks any time soon - unless the required budget grows a certain factor of times bigger.

Even then, doing it fast doesn't mean doing it right.

Junior dev decides to clear space for brewing boss, doesn't know what 'LDF' is, sooo...

I might have something of an answer. As a programmer, say you have a log file for activity recording purposes. When the server comes up, you check that the log file is there. If it isn't, you create a new one and the server is good to go.

But when the server is up and running, why check for the _existence_ of the log file ? You know it was created at start, so it should be there. You also have a tendency to foolishly assume that the people who will be administering the server have a clue and won't be deleting files willy-nilly.

Also, just recreating the log file and continuing operation is not really a good idea. If the log file disappears while the server is running, it means that there is a problem and it is actually better to crash the server to bring attention to it, rather than just trudging on and ignoring such an issue.

Bloke jailed for trying to blow up UK crypto-cash biz after it failed to reset his account password

Re: surely trying to kill someone in a business quarrel isn't terrorism?

When the police are alerted to a bomb threat, do you really think that they assume it's not a terrorist ? What reason would they have to do that ?

Knowing how to make a functional, deadly bomb is not something that is common. Hell, actual terrorists have been known to foul it up. So when you do discover a bomb somewhere, your first thought is certainly not "oh, this is just from some bloke who didn't like how the helldesk drone handled his call".

A bomb is terrorism, it is not just violence. Frankly, I think he got off light. He has the skills, and lacks the restraint. I'd have sent him down for the maximum.

Irony meters explode as WordPress GDPR tool hacked, cell network hack shenanigans, crypto-backdoors, etc...

Since when can the FBI arrest someone in India ?

"one young man from the Jalaun district in India [..] they instead arrested him"

There is a host of confusing things about this article, but the worst is the fact that the author of this article does not mention that the FBI didn't actually arrest the boy and there is an investigation going on.

At least get the facts straight in article whose source you link to.

Brit boffins build 'quantum compass'... say goodbye to those old GPS gizmos, possibly

Impressive kit

Unfortunately it seems to be the size of the engine in a car. It'll have to be squeezed down to half a brick if they want to use it in vehicles, and you can forget about having that in a phone before a few decades at least.

But still, interesting kit.